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Says the person who has never needed social services. Maybe you should be thanking your lucky stars instead of criticizing people and the government for something you know nothing about. It truly is not affecting your personal pocketbook so why do you care so much?
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Originally Posted by pathrunner
moguldreamer, whom I was addressing specifically, has let it be known several times that he has plenty of resources.
You presume to know much about me.
Regardless, my statement is self-evident: The USA has a broad and extensive social safety net. That safety net includes direct transfer payments of cash, discounts on the purchases of goods and services, direct discounts, outright gifts, state-provided healthcare, etc.
No one disagrees with that. Well, no one with intellectual curiosity who has investigated the data for themselves rather than regurgitating urban legends.
***
But as to your presumption of me as a one-dimensional person, let me clear the air a bit.
Like so many men of his generation, my father dropped out of high school, lied about his age, and joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. Indeed, he was on a US Navy Destroyer in the Pacific that was hit by a Kamikaze while he was onboard, killing many sailors.
About 5 and a half decades ago, my dad died of a heart attack quite unexpectedly, leaving behind a widow ill-equipped to be a head of household, my younger mentally retarded sister, my older autistic brother, and me -- a pre-teen. And a pile of debt with no assets to speak of.
Mom was unsophisticated -- she grew up on a rural ranch and had been educated in the proverbial One Room School House. Indeed, it was far enough away from the ranch that her step-father drove her to the school on Sunday, and mom stayed with the lone teacher in the attached Teacherage, picking her up on Friday afternoon -- and by "drive" I mean horse & buggy. No, they were not Amish; they were poor.
After dad died, we survived. I figured out how to make some money as a then-unskilled pre-teen. I learned to hustle. Nothing illegal, but anything an unskilled kid could do (wash & disinfect trash cans in the neighborhood, clean out garages, clean up dog poop, etc.) I gave the money to mom, and she made me put 25% into a passbook savings account at a local S&L.
We struggled financially - when dad died, mom went back to work, bringing home a modest paycheck. My brother had an especially rough time, as autistics frequently do not deal well with change. We lived on the proverbial "wrong side of the railroad tracks" in what could charitably be called a slum, because that's what we could afford. We were glad we had a roof over our heads. As the bespectacled skinny nerd, I had the snot beat out of me every now and then. The high school I attended was among the worst in the state; my graduating class had 660, and 12 of us went to college. I remember the police coming through on horseback several times/year to break up gang or race fights. I remember looking at the wrong end of a handgun in school. Fortunately, no one was shot - at least, not on campus.
Mom insisted I go to college. She also insisted I figure out how to pay for it. For example, I bought a used push lawnmower at a yard sale, hustled for customers near the college, and made money mowing lawns (no weeding or planting; that takes time). I called myself the "Lawn Ranger." Over time, I hired first one and then several high school kids to do the actual work. By the time I graduated, I had a trailer with 4 ugly, used but working gas lawnmowers & and a bunch of high school teenagers in rotation based on their availability (not quite day laborers). I'd get new customers, and then do my best to calculate the optimal driving route for the circuit. Only later did I learn this was the classic "Traveling Salesman Problem" in mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel...lesman_problem. I'd sometimes “fire” existing customers because they were no longer on an optimal driving route. I'd pick up the teenagers, deliver them & lawnmowers to customers, circle around and pick them up, and go on to the next set, etc. Other college kids were preparing for winter formals or a fancy spring break; I towed a trailer with old lawnmowers and lawn clippings. When I graduated, I sold the "business" to a rising sophomore who thought he could run it. I found out later it didn't last a year under his management. He wasn’t “hungry” enough, I guess. But I went on to earn a good living and to help fund my mom and brother.
Circling back to your stated view of me as someone who has never needed social services, I came of age while poor but not starving. I didn't come from money. I inherited nothing. I still support my 96 year old mom, recently placing her in Assisted Living (I expect she will move to Memory Care within the year) and of course picking up the tab. I pay rent for my autistic brother so he can be somewhat independent - I spent the summer teaching him how to make pancakes and peel an orange. My mentally retarded sister died of pneumonia about 6 months after my dad died. I haven't been given millions; just the opposite - I've given away millions: I've funded scholarships, I've endowed professorships at research universities, and I've given to my favorite non-educational charities which include the National Ability Center and the Autism Research Institute, among others.
And btw, I'd gladly trade every penny of financial success I've enjoyed if it would have brought my dad back.
One comment I'll call out in particular.
You state "Maybe you should be thanking your lucky stars..." I do not consider myself lucky. I consider myself fortunate - but most of my friends agree with me when I say I am quite unlucky. Bad things happen to me and my family. I won't go into details, but I could write page upon page of very low-probability, one-in-a-thousand type of bad things that have happened to me. I've learned to embrace Andy Grove's famous mantra, "Only the Paranoid Survive."
Last edited by moguldreamer; 10-22-2023 at 11:00 AM..
I know that no one wants to hear this but feminism basically did this. Women wanted out of the kitchen and into the work world. So here we are and we've put ourselves in a place where it's now very difficult to live on one one income in many places so two people NEED to work. Not everyone has the luxury of quitting and staying home with the kids now even if they want to. Childcare providers know this and can now charge exorbitant amounts since this is something people NEED.
women wanted to be in the working world but didn't think decades ahead to what families would do when they were forced to be in the working world with no one to watch their kids.
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Originally Posted by Ice_Major
I'm going to defend feminism on this one. While I do agree the ideas put forth by feminism particularly second wave feminism have changed society in a manner that lead to the problems we see today regarding family creation, at the end of the day it wasn't feminism or women for that matter that changed the preexisting laws, culture, or customs. It was the men in power at that time. It's not like women took up arms and demanded these changes or else war. The men in control of society made the changes, thus it can be argued "it's men fault" in a way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msRB311
Ok, I wont blame women completely but families are now really being taken advantage of with how much childcare costs and they can't just quit work now. It's hard to justify because there ARE still some women who choose to stay home. Some dads these days stay home while wife goes to work. I'm just saying that with costs in certain areas most people cannot be on one income and the daycare costs show no mercy. It's a problem and some not so great choices have to be made for many who want kids these days.
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Originally Posted by springfieldva
I think the saying "You can have it all, just not all at once" is true. I know quite a few women who worked a decade or more before having children and then stayed home when their children were little. Once the kids entered Kindergarten they returned to work. They benefited greatly from having previous work experience and had a long career ahead of them.
These days quite a few women can say that they have been both a breadwinner and a stay at home parent at different times in their lives.
Any family that depends upon one income takes a great risk -- there can be a job loss, disability, divorce, addictions, death, etc. The days of a spouse having a union or comparable job with one company for life is long gone.
I was determined not to be a "stay at home" spouse with skills that are not current after experiencing the financial misfortune my stay at home mother suffered. It had nothing to do with feminism.
Any family that depends upon one income takes a great risk -- there can be a job loss, disability, divorce, addictions, death, etc. The days of a spouse having a union or comparable job with one company for life is long gone.
I was determined not to be a "stay at home" spouse with skills that are not current after experiencing the financial misfortune my stay at home mother suffered. It had nothing to do with feminism.
If you have an established career, along with contacts and references, taking a few years off is no big deal. I could have gone back to my previous employer within those first few years. But I opted to continue to stay at home because 1) My husband's work schedule, including occasional business trips, would have meant that I would have been (and was) the default parent 2) My husband was also a PT college student and steadily earning credits for a degree which his company paid for 3) We had saved early for retirement and had bought a home that we could pay for on one salary while we keeping our consumer debt to a minimum. In the end, our quality of life was much better with me at home with the kids.
We made sure that my husband carried adequate life insurance so the kids and I would have been protected in the event of his untimely death. It would have been horrible to lose him but, financially, we would have been alright.
The problem isn't staying at home with the kids, the problem is when people don't plan well for it.
I think some people are missing the point that many folks get trapped. If you HAVE to work, then you HAVE to hire daycare if you want kids. Not everyone has the option of taking a few years off. There is simply a big demand for childcare services because so many people need them now. The prices have become insane. Watching children is not rocket science. It's not easy but it's also not really skilled labor. You want decent people taking care of your kids but it's work that has been done for centuries...it's almost seen as a luxury now to be able to hire someone to help you with your kids...
Gone are the days of finding neighborhood people to watch your kids for $12 an hour. I see teen girls charging $25 an hour in my area.
If you have an established career, along with contacts and references, taking a few years off is no big deal. I could have gone back to my previous employer within those first few years. But I opted to continue to stay at home because 1) My husband's work schedule, including occasional business trips, would have meant that I would have been (and was) the default parent 2) My husband was also a PT college student and steadily earning credits for a degree which his company paid for 3) We had saved early for retirement and had bought a home that we could pay for on one salary while we keeping our consumer debt to a minimum. In the end, our quality of life was much better with me at home with the kids.
We made sure that my husband carried adequate life insurance so the kids and I would have been protected in the event of his untimely death. It would have been horrible to lose him but, financially, we would have been alright.
The problem isn't staying at home with the kids, the problem is when people don't plan well for it.
Not everyone is in your situation. That is the point of this discussion. There are many misfortunes that can befall a family to create a risk for a one income family.
Not everyone is in your situation. That is the point of this discussion. There are many misfortunes that can befall a family to create a risk for a one income family.
I think the point is that you need to mitigate the risks for yourself. You do that with planning, saving, cutting back and making darned sure that you have adequate life insurance. We kept life insurance on myself when I was a stay at home mom because if something had happened to me, my husband would have suddenly had the enormous expense of childcare.
If we had started a family 10 years before we did, we both would have HAD to work OR we would have had to move back into one of our parents' basements, assuming that was an option. We could not have done it on a single income. But after working FT jobs for 10+ years, buying a less expensive house than we could have qualified for, keeping our loan debt to a minimum and watching our spending while we built a nest egg...we had a solid foundation in place before we had kids and that is what allowed us to live off of one income. Neither one of us had a college degree at the time, either. We did both have extensive work history and we were both employable. If I had needed to go back to work, I could have done so.
So i guess add 'childcare' to the list of things people need to save for then. The list seems to grow and grow. Pressure for savings, buying a house if you dont have one (or rent), emergency savings account, 401ks, college, fun stuff...Or you can just wing it.
So i guess add 'childcare' to the list of things people need to save for then. The list seems to grow and grow. Pressure for savings, buying a house if you dont have one (or rent), emergency savings account, 401ks, college, fun stuff...Or you can just wing it.
We put our energy into supplementing the kids' educations at home and their good grades along with their scores on the SAT/ACT allowed them to qualify for some merit scholarships.
When I say "supplement" at home I only mean that we made sure that our kids read a nice variety of classic literature from birth through early HS and discussed the books with them. We practiced their math facts. And we communicated with their teachers when we saw them struggling in a subject. They were able to get college credit for AP and dual enrollment in HS. That, combined with their merit scholarships and college savings have allowed them to graduate debt free from college.
Problems arise when a kid is "all of a sudden" a junior in HS and college has never really been thought of before much less saved and planned for.
If you want to know the funniest part of it all, we weren't saving early because we wanted children. We were saving early and setting ourselves up so that we could retire early.
In fact, we were debating whether or not to get a dog or a parrot and whether or not we wanted that responsibility when we found out that we were going to have a baby.
So, yeah, stuff happens. Man plans, God laughs.
We also hadn't planned for my husband to injure himself and wind up in a wheelchair for 4 months. But that happened, too, and we managed it. I'm not sure what we would have done had I been working at the time.
Yes, taking 5 years off is going to be harder than taking 2 or 3 years off. You've got to weigh the pros and cons for yourself.
Last edited by Mike from back east; 10-23-2023 at 06:29 PM..
Reason: Removed quoted material that had been deleted.
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