Hey Sheila, thanks for your list of interesting things. I had some good reading, and some provoking reading.

Regarding the last article... are they kidding?! $120,000 a year is hardly middle-class! Unless you live in a city with a very high cost of living, an income like that will allow you to live very comfortably indeed. I agree with certain points made by the writers, however I have to disagree with the overarching impression that people with low incomes or no incomes don't deserve to be helped. Christ's disciples lived in a kingdom economy, where those who were rich sold what they had and distributed the proceeds to the poor. Christ was the best example of a social leveller.

Making $40,000 combined family income does not make someone irresponsible, it makes them hardworking with less opportunities. Show me a job available today that pays more than $35,000 a year and doesn't require years of specialized training - or hazard to life and limb. Some economy for people with families!

 

Hi "Happy Domestic"! Thanks for your comment!

You're right, $120,000 is a large family income. I think the point that the article was trying to get across--and which attaching dollar values to it probably didn't help--was that often people make decisions assuming that others will bail them out.

I've known friends, for instance, who have spent 20 years in grad school, earning multiple degrees but no money, because they didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives. But they had no problem asking the government to fund them for what was, essentially, a "discovering oneself" experience. And I've known people who have refused to get a job, or have worked less than they needed to, because they knew that they would still be taken care of.

I don't think the issue is income so much as attitude. We have a lot of people trying to figure out how to game the system--how to work the minimum number of weeks to qualify for unemployment insurance, or how to get the government to pay back their student loan--and it's because government has so many programs. It breeds laziness. That doesn't mean that everyone who needs government's help is lazy--otherwise we wouldn't have started these programs in the first place--but just that the more entities of government that hand out money, the more people will try to figure out how to get that for themselves, rather than trying to figure out how to support themselves and earn a living. That's what irks me!