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jbo5112 commented on the article |Let's examine part 3. I'm a responsible American who didn't purchase a house when he couldn't afford one, and is currently saving some money for one. Obama is planning to take my money (via taxation at gunpoint), and give it to someone who bought a house they couldn't afford. Not only could they not afford it, they took out a loan that they wouldn't be able to pay back!!!
My money is taken from me (who is trying to get enough to buy a house), and given to pay for the mortgage of someone who bought a house they couldn't afford. I am paying someone else's mortgage, in order to keep housing prices artificially high. I am actually paying to keep myself from owning a place to live! I can't imagine why responsible Americans wouldn't be clamoring for the opportunity to pay someone else's mortgage with the added benefit of pushing housing costs out of their own reach!
Are we all in on this plan? YUP!!! We call and call Congress and they pass whatever nonsense they please, despite overwhelming opposition. Then the IRS shows up with guns if we don't supply the funding for a program to keep us out of a house.
Will it pay off? Most of the people in financial difficulty are there because they lack the ability to keep a tight budget and live responsibly, never realizing that in life, one mistake can cost you everything. There is probably a sizable chunk of the people who will receive aid under this plan, that still end up homeless or bankrupt because of other debt. It does nothing to constrain reckless spending by consumers, so in the end, banks will probably end up with a greater control of the American public than they would have otherwise. For overzealous, oppressive governing bodies, control is the payoff.
I remember something about us shooting people responsible for taxation without representation in American history. Obama and the Congressthieves better pay attention to the people getting angry. Riots or even war may break out. People are already stockpiling guns, ammo and food, and quickly growing number of states are taking a stand of one sort or another against illegal actions of the federal government. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |Isn't marriage a religious act, which the government is banned from interfering in by the first amendment? If so, no government body can set terms constraining it, force anything to view anything as marriage, or even perform a marriage, outside of there being an amendment to change things in the US Constitution.
That means courts can't marry ANYONE (gay or not). Churches can marry anyone (straight, gay, animal, etc.) they see fit. Churches don't have to recognize any marriages. Churches don't have to allow divorces and can actually make them binding to death. Court's (or any other government branch) cannot recognize if a person is married or not.
The government would probably be forced to come up with some sort of union that is a super-set of all marriages and other family formations, leaving us with the same problem we have now with marriage. The only other option at that point is for Government to stop meddling in family affairs entirely.
While I'm quite against gay marriage (a term that all my dictionaries define as being between a man and woman), I'm for the government leaving people alone to live at peace with one another. I realize that unless citizens are willing to uphold a law, it's rather worthless, but whichever of the citizens or the law is bad, it needs to be fixed. I think the only grounds for overturning Prop 8 can be the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |I have friends that are poor immigrants. They were both planning on working full time while the husband went to seminary, but his first term of classes was fall 2001. All the rules changed. The husband could only work 20 hr/wk work study (and only work study), and the wife couldn't work at all. Along with other members in our church, we've helped cover their living expenses.
I've sat and talked to the homeless in a soup kitchen. I've gone out with blankets, riding along with a charity organization that tracks down the poor. I've built houses and set up a computer lab in a third world country. I've dined in the home of a family there and talked with the 3 generations living in the small house (we supplied the food for them to cook). As far as I know, the only government assistance any of these groups I worked with gets is a tax break. Some city tax revenue might go to the group that drives around to help the homeless in the streets, but it mostly runs on donations and volunteers.
Over a 20 month period starting with 2007, my family brought in about $43,000 (less than full time employment for two people at minimum wage) and spent over $10,000 in medical expenses because out of pocket maternity costs are cheaper than insurance that covers maternity. After medical expenses, that's $1650/month. I had to pay self employment tax on most of that (an extra 7.65% over FICA), student loans, and we were forced into a two bedroom apartment by fire code. We weren't poor by any means, but it's not as high as the amounts that people here are saying you can hardly live on. It didn't take any government handouts for us to get by either.
I suppose that finding a charity isn't as easy as it should be. It used to be that churches gave plenty of help, but now they're too burdened with over-zealous building projects, too much staff, too many programs, and maintaining a plethora of rooms that usually sit empty. God tells Christians to care for the poor, and most of the little they give goes to their social activities. Augustine wrote over 1500 years ago that when Christians don't give, the tax man comes and takes it.
It's not okay that the government is taking someone else's money and giving it to the already rich either. People, corporations, and other organizations, with good lawyers and fancy accountants shouldn't be able to dig loopholes to avoid their fair share of the tax burden. The government shouldn't be handing out such lucrative contracts that we have things like soldiers living in four star resort conditions and eating lobster dinners either. There are some government contracts needed like building and repairing the roads you drive on, but nothing compared to what our government spends money on. They definitely have no business bailing out businesses because they were unable to sustain a profitable business model by just buying up everything.
Having watched my paychecks for many years dwindle from the money I actually earned down to what I got to keep, and having spent 3 years mailing a check to state and federal government for taxes on the fruit of my labor, I am against the income tax altogether, not just the crazy tax schemes of corporations. The corporations just pass the cost on to the consumer anyway, since their the only source of income is the consumer anyway.
If we get rid of all federal projects and spending that isn't sanctioned by the US Constitution (which are made illegal projects and illegal spending by the 9th and 10th amendments) and if we paid off a significant portion of the national debt (easy to do after step 1), then the Federal Government could afford to simply and permanently eliminate the income tax (also eliminating all schemes against the tax) and replace it with nothing. Imagine that as a stimulus package!! There are enough other taxes by the Federal Government to pay for what would be left. If you study the US debt, we didn't have much debt before 1910's when the income tax was instated, and very little before the civil war. Check out http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm (note: the buying power of the dollar was relatively constant before the Federal Reserve took power at the end of 1913). This is getting off topic, but read the Constitution and listen to Libertarians and Constitutionalists. Our Federal Government was set up to be something much different, much smaller and better than what it is today.
I agree that "I would much rather the rich give the poor a 'hand-up.' We either invest in families when the children are young or we pay for it through our criminal justice and social security systems." I just think our country got into its current shape by not taking this into our own hands, and expecting our government to just take care of everything. The average American doesn't even know who his neighbors are, much less if they are in need of anything or have willingness to carry the burden of helping, and government help often comes too late, places too many restrictions or doesn't address the roots of the issues.
There are still cultures that consider it an honor to take a guest in, and cultures that will work 100+ hr weeks while living in poverty in order to recover when disaster hits. I don't think most people in America realize that helping others means working hard enough to provide everything you want, then working hard enough to provide for someone else, or simply giving up what you want. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |Considering the US Federal Government isn't allowed by the US Costitution to do such a thing, and we have -$10.7 trillion dollars in spending money (not to mention $50-$100 trillion in unfunded social security and medicare liabilities), then the government cannot reasonably spend more than $0 to buy out the mortgages and subsidize them. However the government has been known to act rather unreasonably.
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jbo5112 commented on the article |
It's not a Republican/Democrat issue. It's an issue of what you want the size and scope of the Federal Government to be.
If you want a large government that bails everyone out of their problems and has complete control of the housing market, then you'll be in favor of the government doing everything to fix this.
If you want a limited government that leaves you to make your own housing deals that you deem as good, without interference (other than something like fraud or failure to uphold the contract) and without a mountain of regulations in buying or selling a house, then you'll want to keep the government from overstepping its boundaries. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |
It would be nice if we didn't keep giving money to these banks who are evicting renters who haven't done anything wrong. It would also be nice if my money wasn't being destroyed by massive bailouts, massive spending, and methods of keeping housing prices high, while I'm trying to gather resources to purchase one.
When I got married, housing prices were too high for my income where I wanted to live, so I got an apartment, even though someone would have given me a mortgage I could barely make payments on. Now I'm making more money, and in a better economic situation. It's more than a little unfair to me if someone now takes money from me, money that I've worked really hard for, and uses it to pay for the housing of everyone who bought a house while I moved into an apartment. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |
Some of my friends banded together to pay off all of an old widow's bills on an ongoing basis. Several churches had helped her for a month or two before that, but it was obvious that she would need the support for the rest of her life.
I think local charities can do a better job than government programs. They usually have more personal involvement, and can better see if the need is genuine. If it's from being too lazy to work, buying ipods and cell phones, or blowing all your money on drunken gambling every night, then there are other problems that need fixing, and giving them more money will only prolong it.
I've talked to a couple different people who work at a place that provides free housing, budgeting training and other life skills to people and families like you've mentioned, who are now homeless. They both said that everyone who comes in pays for cable TV that they can't afford, and there are usually $100's/month more spent on unnecessary, unaffordable entertainment.
If you're genuinely concerned, you can start helping almost immediately by finding local charities or possibly by getting to know your neighbors and co-workers better and sharing with them. It's a good deed to give your money to someone in need. It's theft to take someone else's money and give it to someone in need. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |
It's a lot cheaper if you find a roommate and get a two bedroom or better yet, find a couple of roommates to move into a three bedroom. There are places in many cities where having a couple of housemates paying you rent money is enough to cover your mortgage.
Assuming you don't have friends you want to move in with. There are a lot of places in the world where three generations live under one roof. Have you ever spent any time getting to know families in a third world country? We're rather spoiled in America, living richly on cheap goods from China, where they live on an average of less than $5500/yr (PPP not straight dollar conversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita). Sure, the economy is getting worse. People will have to make sacrifices they considered unthinkable, but most can learn to get by.
I've lived on part time, $6.5/hr wages (now slightly below minimum wage). I've also spent 130 hrs/wk doing school work in college. Neither were fun. Neither were the end of the world. I had a friend who was raising a family on $12/hr working 30 hrs/wk, while his wife stayed at home to raise their first child. They now have 4 kids that are 5 years old and under, and it's one of the happiest homes I've ever visited. I'm not sure how long I could last at 130 hrs/wk, but I once talked to a business owning mechanic who had recently cut back to 100 hrs/wk after years of working 120 hour weeks.
I do recant my statement about $20k being chump change for someone making $60k/yr. If you're starting a family, it might take a couple years of frugal living to save up. My wife and I make a little under $45k (the same as 130 hrs/wk @current minimum wage w/o overtime) and even with car payments (a poor decision), making $100's/month of charity donations, raising a young daughter, and renting a 991 sq. ft., two bedroom apartment in a city large enough for a couple pro sports teams, we have close to $1000/month to save towards a house or emergency expenses.
Is there anything else I haven't mentioned that you would like to address? Your derogatory statement was rather vague and lacking information.
I do agree with Troy that things are going to get much worse with the value of a dollar declining after these bailouts. I think it was Glenn Beck who recently did an Al Gore style chart of all the extra money that has been released into the economy by the Federal Reserve over the years. It was pretty much flat until 1971. It showed a rather small increase until around 2000 (I forget the exact year). It had a small spike that came back down, before increasing moderately every year. The title is "Inconvenient Debt" and if this website doesn't mangle the URL, you can find it at http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21812698/inconvenient_debt.htm -
jbo5112 commented on the article |Good luck with that price. 1Gbit RAM chips are currently selling at over $1 a piece, and for 2GB RAM, you would need 16 of them. Add that to a $20 computer screen, and you're already WAY over budget. In order to reach that price anytime soon, the government has to heavily subsidise it.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is designed by people at MIT, with less aggressive hardware specs and a goal of being $100. I don't see India beating MIT that badly on price. -
jbo5112 commented on the article |
BTW, my first scenario where you have $460 left to live on after rent and taxes, is based on working 40 hrs/wk at minimum wage.
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