Re: Obama's Remarks on Retirement Security

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:05:34 -0400, "Evelyn" <evelyn.ruut@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"jim" <jim10293@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:lg1a545kl3r81baimi8d6n4uik6jv0s6g6@xxxxxxxxxx
[Default] On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 06:42:18 -0400, "Evelyn"
<evelyn.ruut@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Hi Jim,

That all sounds very well and good. But the truth is that there are many
possible reasons why people end up in less secure circumstances, and many
of
them are not attributable to some blame of their own. Are you aware that
the biggest cause of bankruptcy in this country is NOT attributable to
fiscal foolishness, but to catastrophically huge medical bills?

I don't believe it. Getting medical bills may be the straw that
breaks the camels back but I have also done my homework on those who
file for bankruptcy. Most are up to their butts on overextended
credit, no equity in home, etc, They have borrowed out their 401's
and had to pay the increased federal taxes and penalties.


Of course maxxing out ones credit usually precedes bankruptcy, no matter
what the cause. People usually try everything possible first. And
everything possible means maxxing out all the credit.

I will grant you that I know of people who overextend themselves foolishly
on every luxury they can think of, then whine when it comes time to pay the
bills, but those kinds of people have always existed. In the past they had
debtors prisons which were pretty inhumane. Today there is no punishment
other than limiting your credit for a couple of years.


The one's we know personally were living a high lifestyle and
typically stuck between two generations. Kids in college with demands
and parents in hospital with nothing. A dear friend today is in
bankruptcy just like this. We like them but frankly, every damn time
we play mahjong, all the stories about their cruise on the inner
passage, their cruise down Chinese rivers, his grand finale trip back
to Vietnam and Thailand, her endless raving about the latest mega huge
SUV that not only cooks dinner but does the dishes too, and blah blah
blah. The real estate bubble got them and while they used to rave
about their three houses including two on the water, now they can't
pay the mortgages and have lost one house and will lose a second in
August. I got fed up with all their bragging and then my wife telling
me how 'rich' they were for past decade. Great folks otherwise, but
his father had extended time dying and one daughter had real messy
divorce. Toast now.

Those folks probably deserve what they get, I agree. But there are people
in my town that I happen to know of that truly didn't deserve the hard times
they fell upon. I am sure the honorable ones complain less loudly due to
pride.

I don't know about everybody. But, if people did put money into
savings and did avoid debt and live frugally, they would be far better
prepared to deal with medical bill situations. As it it, I am
unconvinced that it was the medical bills alone that sunk them.

I have heard of some that it really did happen to. Real people with real
situations.



It's happened to friends of mine. She just died from cancer after a
3-4 year battle with the disease. He was a tree surgeon who fell from
a tree, injured himself and couldn't work. They lost their insurance
just before she was diagnosed. Now that she has died, he has been
billed hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'll bet Jim will blame them
along with their kids. The fact is that most of us in the USA are
only one serious illness away from bankruptcy, foreclosure and even
homelessness.
Thumper
Fortuitous circumstance has made it easy for you, and that was good.
For
others, it is not and was not so. The myth of equal opportunity and of
all
men being created equal, should have made itself evident to you at some
point in your life, Jim.

Of course it did. But it is not a myth. It is the truth.

Perhaps you haven't thought that through so carefully. There are people
who are born with lesser IQ, with mental and physical illnesses and
handicaps, people who came from abusive homes or no homes at all. Just as
there are those who were born in the right bed to the right parents who did
right by them. Physical beauty and strength alone vary so much that it is
impossible to think we are all truly equal. I think "the equality of man"
is a nice myth we all like to believe in, but all one needs to do is look
around you and you will see someone with limitations you really and truly
would not want to have. There are equals but there are also those who have
more handicaps and less handicaps than you do. That is not equal. That's
luck (or karma), for good or for bad.


Of course,
some will hit walls and have bad luck. But, people succeed or fail
generally on their own designs.

How has a blind or crippled or mentally ill person "failed on their own
design?" I don't say you are wrong, as there are obviously those who don't
plan or think ahead, who do, but there are also those who do all the right
things and life screws them over.


All I want from the government is a
fair playing field where there are some paths for those who apply
themself. I've sat in classrooms with others who also chose to spend
their Saturday preparing for a better future for their families. Those
who didn't - it ain't luck. It is choices.


There is no fairness in life or in government. It's another myth. It's a
nice thought we can sometimes use to justify certain things or to discount
others, but if you are the only one playing fair, then there is no true
fairness.



You are right. But, for the person who gets up daily with some intent
of doing the right thing, they will fare better then those who don't.

Definitely true. But there are always the exceptions.

Surely some deserve your scorn for their fiscal foolishness, but
not all.

It is really not scorn. It is frustration that because we did make
decision not to go off to the beach in the summer or the mountains
every winter, while others our age may have, now are screwed with
downturn economically.

Us too.

Years ago I said that life was pretty good but
the day would come when the economy would really turn down and they
would go under. That is just the way it is. My anger comes from
people like you and others who somehow believe the government should
now just step in and save them. Why????????


Perhaps because I don't think people should starve in the streets like they
do in some other countries. I think that a minimum of care for others is
"civilized"..... another of my quainter ideas :-)


Why should they be rewarded for a lifetime of sloth and greed. Why
should they be saved from their own bad decisions. They ate the meals
in restraurants all the time, they took the vacations they could not
really afford, they decided to replace cars with cars they did not
need and could not afford, they bought houses they could never afford
and bought furniture to fill it they could never afford.


They should certainly not be rewarded, but a handout sometimes is just the
right thing to do, even if it costs a little, it might help the innocent
ones under their care.


Do you
really read the business news? Do you ever read the national savings
rates?


Depressing.


When I look out and see people driving 40,000 automobiles everywhere
and see all the buying going on, see the planes filled up to flit off
to beaches and beyond, somebody sure as heck is buying this stuff!!!
It is the same chumps who are now crying they want the government to
save their homes.

I agree. But living in a capitalist society, where advertising bombards us
from morning till night everywhere we look, people are learning what they
are being bombarded with. They learn they NEED a fancy car to be cool,
that if they don't wear the right brand names they will be uncool. They
learn that their only value is as a sex object (mostly girls get this part)
and that they had better starve themselves skinny or they have NO value
whatsoever. Young girls are getting boob jobs and risking their health.
They learn that nothing is worse than pimples and that there are drugs to
cure whatever ails you. They learn that diamonds are forever. They learn
that if you spend more on the right products and services you SAVE! You get
the picture....... people are learning the wrong message. Saving money and
being careful where you spend it is not good for the economy, so take your
stimulus check and SPEND it rather than put it in the bank or pay off the
credit card...... That is what they are learning. I grew up with the
following adage, and maybe there are some others who remember this
one........

"Use it up, wear it out
Make it do or do without."

Try telling that to the young ones today! But it is still good advice.

Why should we now dig our hole even deeper for them? No! You spend
your families money to save them and leave me alone!


Just as we don't each have our own army and our own personal police force or
our own personal fire department, there are some things we have to agree
upon and work together. Some will agree with me and some will agree with
you. If more people agree with you, then you will get your wish. If more
people agree with me, then you will be shelling out along with the rest of
the country. That's democracy.

I don't discount that you have lived wisely, but the lack of
disastrous circumstances is another matter altogether. That's luck.

You know the details of my life?

Only those you have shared. I do know that you say you have lived wisely,
spent wisely and saved wisely. You also seem to have chosen a wife wisely,
and are still with her today. Those are all good things.

No, there were some real bumps along
the way. Some very difficult and costly including high costs for
health care for family members on both sides of our family. We also
had kids go off to school and did not stick them with the bills or
debt as many seem to do. Neither daugher had a penny debt and we paid
every penny for attending good schools. Why? Because we place high
value on family and education. It is beyond luck.

That is of course true, but you shouldn't deny that there was some good
fortune that came your way and some bad fortune that didn't, which made your
own efforts at gaining security so much more effective.

And what of the massive debt that the current '***,'.... Bush and Co.
has brought upon us?
Somebody has to pay that off, you know. Guess who
it will be? It will be us and our children and grandchildren.


Not just our kids but you and I. We will see our savings deflate at
costs increase.

We are already seeing that. Everything costs more now.


The
bridges are crumbling and the roads are in bad shape people are losing
their
homes, and too many people can barely make enough to survive from paycheck
to paycheck. We are being robbed at the pump, and the crunch is coming
down hard on the poorer people, and not all of those are that way from
foolhardy fiscal practices. The government can watch our entire society
crumble from underneath, or it can try and shore up the foundation a bit.
Easy choice as far as I can see. It's going to have to be done, and we
need to start now. Unless the rich want to crash along with the poor,
there is going to have to be some reshuffling.


But, what does Bush or any other president have to do with how I will
live my life? We were careful and frugal under all these presidents
and in some form, they and the congresses along the way have made it
more difficult. I am not hearing a lot of excuses about why others
may have nothing to their name after they consider their obligations.

Life isn't always kind. Sometimes no matter how hard people have tried,
*** just came at them. I do know real people who would illustrate this
point.


A story: Wife was very young girl when communists began to take over
Shanghai. Her mother used gold and silver saved for generations to
get passage to Taiwan for children, granny and her. Husband was off
at war and later joined them in Taiwan. Most of the rest of family
that did not excape either died or lived a life of pure hell. That is
a guiding memory my wife carries and motivates her to see living
foolishly as foolish. Every family will probably have some such
moment in their lives. Whether war, incompetent government, or other
forces, we all have to consider what is really important in life.

Good example. I grew up knowing wartime only from afar. Hubby of course
spent some time in Viet Nam. He knows what war is like firsthand. Reality
hit home to me a couple of times, but not very close. Kids today have no
clue whatsoever about what your wife and others like her went through.
Perhaps those related to people who went through the holocaust might have a
clue or two, but for the most part we in the USA have lived in a fools
paradise, with a false sense of values. The young ones especially. Life
is a fantasy for them. They can hardly be expected to know what is
important in life, if we haven't taught it to them.

I can find how others live as interesting. But, when they insist life
is not fair and my family is somehow responsible for their welfare
thru the hand of government, I have a problem. Then I get real
agitated.

It is interesting that you and I are both buddhists and both have been both
fairly and unfairly at times, accused here of being 'bad buddhists.'
Buddhism and Xtianity both teach that caring for the indigent is good
spiritual practice. Alms giving and such is a big part of the other major
religions of the world too. But when it comes down to "me, me, mine" all
of a sudden we all get selfish and grasping. I don't believe that
rewarding bad behavior is a good thing either. But if someone is in the
street, either old, young, emotionally or physically sick, hungry, thirsty,
giving them a minimum of government assistance is fine with me. I'd rather
see that, than the money being pissed away in Iraq .......where our efforts
may be working somewhat, but after we leave they will resume killing each
other and blowing each other up again, just like before Saddam. We upset a
terrible dictator, but it took a terrible dictator to keep them scared
straight.


I would tend to agree with you about a revolution, and
think it may be already happening, but not in the way you may have thought
it would.

A woman and black candidate are only viable because they claim life is
not fair and some have had it too damn good while others have suffered
at their greed. That is the backbone of Obama's church and it is the
backbone of most of the programs the promise. You can't promise every
kid a free college experience without somebody paying for it. You
can't promise to save those homes when we know the buyers can never
afford them.

The mortgage industry has proven it needs some kind of federal restraints.
They created this mess. I predict that this mortgage mess will have ALL
home prices coming down. That means that ALL of us will have to take the
loss collectively. Supply and demand will do it. Too many houses
glutting the market, and not enough buyers, the prices will come down.
That means your house and my house will be worth less when we go to sell.
Again, some fat cats got rich and everyone who owns a home is picking up the
slack.

.

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