Posted on 01/12/2009 3:07:13 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
> She’s been making $80-100K all these years and he’s a biochemist and they don’t have savings to live on? Huh?
I have some sympathy for that. In that tax bracket (at least in NZ) you aren’t quite “wealthy” and you aren’t “average” — you are Upper Middle Class.
This is the group that gets socked with all the costs “because they can afford it”. They pay tax at the top bracket “because they can afford it”. If there are wealth surtaxes, they get them “they can easily afford it”. Whereas the lower-middle-class gets concessions and lower tax and allowances “because they’re needy” there are no such thing for this Upper Middle Class. These things are “targeted” at “need”, you see, and they “don’t need it”...
If the do get an unemployment benefit it will be the same as everybody else’s — maybe a couple hundred dollars per week. That doesn’t mean that their expenses have scaled proportionally tho — no siree! Things like mortgage payments, loans, and other ongoing obligations have a nasty habit of hanging around, and the creditors usually insist on payment “or else”.
The Upper Middle Class pays in good faith all while they are earning on the false assumption that the systems will be there for them should they ever need them.
It just ain’t so.
What? I cant claim to have run a consultant group for underwater basket weaving at the corner of 47th and 2nd, and get benefits?
The guy’s wife’s income nosedives and he retires?! This is even more galling than the fact that they haven’t saved money. GET A JOB instead of expecting the government to be Santa Claus.
He retired late last year, which I would assume is just a few months ago. Why would anyone retire in this economy unless they HAD to or were well settled? Also, he retired before qualifying for medicare and has a self-employed wife with no group plan available. Did he think a magic fairy was going to provide him with cheap insurance?
Our highest (graduated) tax rate is 38% IIRC. Georgia, along with most of the old Confederacy, is usually not known for high taxes (we don’t even have state income tax here in Texas).
This is a structural problem with how they decided to build their company / business. In the good times, they decided to not to create a company and make themselves employees of their own business. There are benefits to making that CHOICE. One such benefit is that you do not have to pay into the employment insurance fund. This leaves more money for them to enjoy.
However, there are CONSEQUENCES to that choice, namely, when times get lean, they have no company to lay them off and since they did not paid into the unemployment fund, they do not get to enjoy the benefit of unemployment insurance.
Yes, if you believe anything that Larry Sinclair has to say...
“Gary Ratner decided to retire late last year...
The couple is using their retirement savings,
and that worries them...”
- - -
Ours is 39% on everything over NZ$60,000. It was 33% but Auntie Helen brought in her “envy tax” as her first item of business 9 years ago. I doubt it will disappear with this government: taxes have a way of staying put once implemented.
This couple has been saving - “for their retirement” which will apparently be delayed. They seem to have been true entrepreneurs - paying for their own medical insurance and taking care of business.
That they are making plans to survive without “government welfare” speaks volumes. It is surprising that NPR even considers them human beings...they are both educated and at least one of them is clearly self-sufficient and creative.
There's their problem...BAD DECISION!
> he has an entitlement mentality and expects the government to support him for the next forty years.
Which, if he has been paying into the greedy gummint’s systems for all those years, is possibly a reasonable expectation for him to have.
Plain fact is, he *is* owed some level of support. I don’t like the idea of “social contracts” but that is part of the deal the gummint enters into when it taxes you for social services: you *are* entitled to collect if you need it. Just like everyone else.
Yes, this is exactly what's wrong with our society today. They're too self-absorbed to even realize how socialist they've become.
These people think Obama is going to come along and save them and "turn the economy around." All his plan will do is give the impression that things are better and only for a brief time. His economic plan is a house of cards...it will eventually do far more damage than it will good.
But these self-righteous, so-called intellectual liberals can't see beyond their noses to recognize that.
Can some one tell me what Gary did for a living?
All I see is that he held a degree.
The guy looks like a mooch to me
Here's an idea, if you can't get a job as an architectural illustrator, pick up the newspaper turn to the want ads and start pounding the pavement.
...Retirement account, isn’t that like a savings account???
And it doesn't sound like they did their homework before making that decision.
> Can some one tell me what Gary did for a living?
Not me. That part was quite unclear. I assume some sort of academic...?
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