Quote:
Originally Posted by casey35
Well geez, I think i do pay for most of that, due to the fact I pay taxes and home owner insurance. Pay state taxes and county and city taxes. Pay taxes on everything I have or use. I do not have medcaid or food stamps. I dont sit on my ass and draw money from the government. So I do pay my fair share in life.
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You seem to be missing the point so I'll try this again.
You claimed, erroneously, that you pay your own way. That doesn't mean that you pay *part* of something and others pay *part* of something. If I'm 'paying my own way' to the movies, I'm not putting in a dollar, and my wife puts in another dollar, and the person who is behind us in line puts in yet another dollar and so on. Rather, it means that whatever gouging I'm about to endure at the box office, I pay every red cent myself.
You pay taxes. I pay taxes and by doing so, we ALL, can afford things like roads, satellite connections, etc. that (and this is the really important bit)
would not be able to afford to pay, out of our own pockets, by ourselves. That is not "I pay for everything myself" which is what your original statement was, Casey.
You draw innumerable benefits from the government that you
do not actually pay for directly because you cannot afford to do so. You may *think* that you are completely self-contained, dependent upon no one else, but that is an illusion. It is an illusion maintained by the hard work and sweat of thousands upon thousands of ordinary workers, who get up every morning and go to work for the government--local, state and federal. THEY maintain the roads, so you aren't being charged $2.50 a quarter mile to get out of your neighborhood. THEY maintain the air traffic control system so you aren't paying the truly exorbitant amount you would have to pay if you had to contract that on your own. THEY keep the streets safe and show up when your house is on fire, services that would be prohibitively expensive if you had to pay for it yourself. One day you're going to get old and you're going to start collecting Social Security and Medicare. Will you THEN be 'lazy', 'sitting on your ass'? Think carefully before you answer because that's a lot of people's parents you're talking about if you're going to say those retirees are lazy, shiftless and of no account.
You are not 'self-made'. A whole network of support created a society that is not, just to take one obvious example, Somalia. If you lived in that society, you would be too busy trying to just take care of the daily necessities like clean water to do whatever it is you do.
I have to make one last comment on your boasts (and they are boasts) about how hard you work and your complaints about how others are lazy. My day began at 5:15 this morning, I will be off work in about 10 minutes and then I will go to class and be in class until about 8:30. Tomorrow, I have a 'short' day that will mean I leave the house around 6:30 and home about 7:00 and then I'll have a couple of hours of homework to do before Thursday when I'll have another 6:30 to 8:30 kind of day. The next three *years* of my life is going to look like that and then there'll be a year of working part-time (at the same job, my boss wants to hold onto me that badly) while going to school full time for another year and three month practicum in a lab. THEN I get to find another job in a lab someplace.
I bring this up because it seems to me that the people who *most* begrudge those who collect welfare or are on disability or social security or medicaid are those who boast loudest and longest about how hard-working they are. In the meantime, many of us get up and pull insanely long days, have not much in the way of days off because of outside commitments with things like, oh, school and yet, for the most part, we aren't the people I hear shouting about how lazy other people are. I don't begrudge people on welfare or disability or unemployment or medicaid what pittance they get. I don't begrudge that my tax dollars go to pay for people to be on welfare or what-have-you. One, I'm too busy to begrudge them that; two, I am far too aware that I am extraordinarily lucky to live in the comfort that I do; and three I am all too painfully aware that but for a twist of fate, there goes Adrienne Davis.
Now, you'll react however you react. You'll look at those who are less fortunate than you and perhaps you will see them and realize it could just as easily be you there, or you may look at them and see someone who is lazy, shiftless and don't want to work. That's all on you. But I have to say that I find it instructive and interesting that those who yell loudest about how hard working they are are the also the first people to complain about others who don't work as hard. I take PRIDE in being able to push myself longer, faster and harder than almost anyone around me. Maybe I'm just too high on that feeling of being a superwoman to begrudge those who don't have it as good as I do.