Even Some College Students Are Starting to Get It

[IBCoupe]

Short version: You can't have a Kurt Warner without a Bill Bidwell. No one said anything about "laziness".

I'm not really into pokemon

[AZhitman]

The resources it takes to get political influence and the resources it takes to buy a pack of cigarettes are not comparable.

That was my point.

It's all relative and you know it.

Political influence (or influence period) need not come from vast wealth, vast time investments or vast resources.

There's a whole bunch of angry brown people overseas who are influencing things with none of the above.

[AZhitman]

Short version: You can't have a Kurt Warner without a Bill Bidwell. No one said anything about "laziness".

I'm not really into pokemon

When you're being condescending, it helps if I picture you as Whoopi Goldberg (only smarter).

[IBCoupe]

HE'S WHITE!?

[IBCoupe]

It's all relative and you know it.

Political influence (or influence period) need not come from vast wealth, vast time investments or vast resources.

There's a whole bunch of angry brown people overseas who are influencing things with none of the above.

I'm not actually convinced that it's the brown people doing the influencing.

[szh]

Brings to mind something I've tried to share with my kids as a "life lesson": When we were dirt-poor, just starting out, with 2 kids and one on the way, 3 months on food stamps, working 2 jobs AND slinging newspapers in the middle of the night for extra cash, eating ramen... you get the idea...

...lots of my peers / coworkers lived a different lifestyle. They'd hit up happy hour at the bar, spend money on CDs and movies, b**** about the boss, complain about their lot in life - but the one universal thing about all of them? They all hung out together.

I declined their invitations. Instead, I sought out people who had "made it" or were well on their way. I became friends with a few key people... a well-known psychiatrist, a successful financial analyst, a very wealthy real estate developer, and an inventor. I'd spend as much time with them as I could spare. I'd invite them over, with no shame for our ramshackle residence. I'd ask as many questions as they'd tolerate. Those people really shaped my future.

Criminal Justice / Profiling 101: The top two predictors of behavior are past behavior and the company you keep. Maybe, as Adam Carolla says, we should quit being so afraid to judge people. Rather, judge away, and choose your circle of friends wisely... they can change your life.

Not to toot my horn, but ... this long, rambling spiel explains where I come from and the context about why I talk about personal finance and money and taxes, etc. the way that I do.

I came to the US in the early seventies with $50 in my pocket on a one-way airplane ticket ride, with one suitcase of clothes, and a letter of acceptance to an outstanding college and a hope and prayer for the future.

I did not have excess money to party with - most fun I ever did was go with my fraternity brothers to bars (even though I did not drink anything but Coke or Pepsi) so that I could walk them back to the house.

No movies, theatres, night clubs ... nothing! I could not afford it.

Most of us could not afford cars in college either, by the way! Between the 50 people in my fraternity house, we had about four or five cars - most in need of continuous repairs. I will never forget one old car bouncing over a bad railroad crossing on a back-street of Cambridge, grinding to a halt and us all watching one of the rear wheels (rim, hub and tire) go bouncing down the road while we sat there just past the tracks - unable to move! The owner of that car, by the way, is now a very successful doctor on the East Coast.

I worked my butt off in college - full-time study, as well as 20+ hours/week of waiting tables, stage hand and orchestra pit mover, concert usher, making beds, cooking breakfast, etc. ... all at a minimum wage of $1.90/ hour in those days. I didn't take money from my Mom (my Dad died the year before I came to the US) ... had scholarships and loans (high interest rate, since I was not eligible for US Govt student loans).

In my final six months at college, more often than not, I slept at my desk in my shared office at the college because I did not have the money for a ride home on the Boston Green Line.

I graduated from college with next to nothing in my bank account, owing 8 to 10 months apartment rent share to a fraternity brother roommate, and a massive loan to the college.

I borrowed $1000 on a 9 month personal loan from a local bank in Cambridge, MA. I did not have any collateral - so I will be forever indebted to the bank manager who put his trust in me after reading my job offer letter - for a down payment on an econo-box car, car insurance and some new clothes so that I could start work (company required us engineers to wear ties to work in those days) the day after I handed in my thesis to my advisor.

No after-school vacation break ... in fact, I did not take any vacation days off for 5 years, so that I could accumulate enough vacation time to go overseas and visit my family that I had not seen in 9 years.

Then I paid off my student loans (over ten years), came up through the ranks, and am finally comfortable now - the only monthly debt my wife and I have, is our house mortgage and even that is 75% paid off now. All credit cards are for convenience - the bills are paid off at the end of the month (so, no interest or penalties). With the exception of the first couple of cars I bought after college, we have saved up and paid cash for all our cars and appliances and home repairs and vacations and private school for our son, etc., etc., etc.

I don't fall into the "rich" camp (the Obama "$250k per year" definition), but am working to get there if I can before I die. I absolutely don't begrudge the rich their money. Most of them (not all, of course) earned it the hard way too.

I look at many college students today and find myself shaking my head in disbelief at how they could feel such a sense of entitlement all the time.

I look at people who live from paycheck to paycheck - blowing it all on partying and cars and an expensive life-style, with no thought for the future - and wonder what motivation drives them.

The unrealistic sense of entitlement that people have of the government handouts just drives me bonkers sometimes!

Z

[heliochrome85]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/ ... reeloaders

[donandal]

I read this entire thread and don't remember seeing this discussed....
It seems to me it doesn't matter so much what the replies posted
here on this forum say....
what really matters is the education of the college kids and
THEIR reaction to this GPA redistribution analogy.
I for one am happy that at least these kids are getting exposed
to the analogy.... maybe the liberal point of view in many college settings
will be challenged more often if this analogy and others like it gain some
traction nationwide

[Cold_Zero]

Hey now, let's not make fun of the Christians. Oh, you mean Apple is the dark side.

I thought Helio was the darkside. He is the trifecta, lives in Baltimore, loves Apple products and is a Muslim. love you T

[heliochrome85]

Hey now, let's not make fun of the Christians. Oh, you mean Apple is the dark side.

I thought Helio was the darkside. He is the trifecta, lives in Baltimore, loves Apple products and is a Muslim. love you T

you forgot gay. GAY FOR GREG THAT IS!

[AZhitman]

I'm not actually convinced that it's the brown people doing the influencing.

You give our gub'mint WAY too much credit.

It's the brown people. At least until the missiles start.

[AZhitman]

Not to toot my horn, but ... Z

If you don't, I will.

The most impressive thing about Z is, he did all this in a time before 99% of you in here were bord. Long before anyone could conceive of a POTUS of color. Probably before 90% of the US population would have ACCEPTED a brown POTUS. He did all this when middle-eastern immigrants were still third-class citizens... before computers and technology made them the IT rockstars they're becoming... before medicine and pharmaceuticals made them healthcare heroes.

So, when someone says something stupid about limited opportunities and not being given a fair shake, I feel offended - on his behalf, and on the behalf of men who did it in EVEN HARSHER times, like my grandfather. At least in the 70's, they didn't assign you a new name when you stepped off the boat.

Fair shake? Pfft. Spare me that silliness.

If you're ever in Northern California, look up Z, take him to lunch, and witness FIRST-HAND why America kicks a$$. It'll be money well-spent.

[Cold_Zero]

Seems like today, all IT is from India. Forget the Middle East. My cube is in down town little Chennai. Other than myself, the only guy that is not from India on my row, is Vietnamese. /commentary. Point well taken Greg.

[IBCoupe]

I'm not actually convinced that it's the brown people doing the influencing.

You give our gub'mint WAY too much credit.

It's the brown people. At least until the missiles start.

Oh, I'm not suggesting that our government has good intentions. I'm suggesting that whoever's convincing our government to go and act in the Middle East has skin as light as mine.

[IBCoupe]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/ ... reeloaders

This is kinda what I was getting at in that other thread:

How do they arrive at such a stunning conclusion [as 47% of Americans paying no income tax]? By combining two tricks. First, they focus entirely on the federal income tax, because most people will not understand this constitutes just one portion of the overall tax system. I'll let David Leonhardt explain the game of Three Card Monty that's being played here:

The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax liability.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Here's another way to put it. Americans pay different kinds of taxes to different entities. State and local taxes tend to be regressive. Payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, are also regressive. To balance this out, we have a pretty progressive income tax. If you focus only on the income tax, it makes it look like the rich are getting screwed. But of course the income tax is just one element. And conservatives are working hard to make the tax code more regressive at every level of government.

The other trick is to describe the share of taxes paid by the rich in isolation. Wow, 1% paying 38% of the taxes! It sounds unfair. You intuitively think that 1% should be paying more like 1% of the taxes. But, of course, that number leaves out the proportion of the income earned by the rich. Indeed, as the rich earn a greater share of the income, their share of the tax burden rises as well. Conservatives in turn cite this fact to justify lower taxes on the rich.

[szh]

The article is deliberately misleading for a variety of reasons.

Just one single example: flat tax ... I am certainly not proposing a situation where each individual pays the same amount regardless of their earnings.

Obviously, if it is done as a flat tax - fixed percentage of whatever you make - the rich will still contribute a much larger percentage of tax revenue than the their numbers in population.

Z

[AZhitman]

I'm suggesting that whoever's convincing our government to go and act in the Middle East has skin as light as mine.

I don't disagree with that at all.

For all our faults, we've avoided the asinine sectarian infighting and outright violence that they contend with over there on a daily basis.

[IBCoupe]

The article is deliberately misleading for a variety of reasons.

Just one single example: flat tax ... I am certainly not proposing a situation where each individual pays the same amount regardless of their earnings.

Obviously, if it is done as a flat tax - fixed percentage of whatever you make - the rich will still contribute a much larger percentage of tax revenue than the their numbers in population.

Z

You haven't explained at all how the article is misleading. The whole point of the article is that, if you take out the Federal Income Tax, the rest of our system of taxation is regressive, which has nothing to do with who's paying the largest dollar amount.

In fact, that another of the article's points is that the fact that the rich pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes (1% paying 38%? The horror!) is a red herring. They have most of the resources.

This was my criticism the last time you talked about this, Z: in looking to reform Federal Income Taxes, you have to look at the systems a whole. The Income Tax, claims the article, is excessively progressive because the other layers of taxation we all go through are excessively regressive. This chart was particularly useful:



In the larger view of Federal taxation, it's pretty flat.