wasa, back in the days that Ford did not take government money I bought some stock at $2.35. If your poor would have bought just ten shares that would have been $23.50. Not a gread deal of money even for a poor person. Today that stock is now going for $12.50. That 23 dollar investment would now have brought them $125.00.

I bought Tata Motor stock for $6.00 per. today trading for $26.37 per.

Nice um? If people who pull their head out of there small box, there is money to be made. Now money is'nt everything but I have yet to see anyone turn it down.

They don't want to catch their own. That would mean changing the comfortable (for them) way of life they've become accustomed to.

Just because I cannot act like an animal and want everyone to stay down below me so that I can be above them, I am accused by him of living off their paycheck. When people are getting a military retirement as well as a good job and yet accusing others of living on the dole, I do not think they have a right to put someone else down.

I get social security, which I am sure everyone on here will want to collect when they have paid in for 51 years, and I have said that enough times on here that only those who are blind would not be aware of that.

Since Ohio has a republican governor, same as Indiana, I am sure that even a single mother cannot live on welfare for her lifetime. Here they have to spend and prove it, that they have spent 20 hours a week looking for a job and without childcare while they look.

Have you gotten to know these people? If everyone I had to deal with growing up had the views you have I would have never gotten anywhere. And to be honest I had to fake it until I made it.

I worked a job at a packaging plant as a teenage one summer. I recalled hearing the supervisor saying about another employee that if he had known he was homeless he would have never hired him. Its f**king rediculous. I don't know what your true opinion is but if your anything like that guy people in this world haven't got a chance. He was trying to change his situation. He wasn't asking for anyone to help him. And still he got that kind of treatment. And a week later they fired him for being 1 minute late from his lunch break. That is why people don't try and they get what they can and with a**holes in this world like that I don't blame them. Even though its the wrong way. It is very easy to look down your nose at someone and judge them for what you "think" they are. Now I know you have talked about the marshall islanders calling off work because they need their govt benefits. I detest things like that. But its not that simple. If it were that simple wouldn't communism work? No, communism don't work. Why? Because people have dreams and desires. They want more out of life. The fact that in that kind of system everyone gets paid the same no matter what and you never get upward mobility requardless of what you do....In your world view about people, wouldn't communism work? If they really had no other ambition in life than to suck off govts tit. Inspire and educate, use a little tough love and I bet we'd cut the people on govt programs in half and end generational welfare. I bet if we addressed the root causes we could damn near end the program. But depending on where you live, welfare may not exist anymore. It don't in Ohio for the most part. You get help if your a single mother or something. Other than that it don't exist anymore.

Ive been thinking about something I wrote the other day. I said pell grants have became the new welfare. I want to expand on that. Now I know that it seems that schools and higher education seem to be off limits for critizism. That needs to change. I got to thinking about how many hoops I had to jump through (atleast in undergrad) to graduate. And how it seemed that half of the people I went to school with wouldn't be there if they hadn't had some govt help. Now I'm not knocking the idea of pell grants and loans. I qualified for them for awhile and I used them. But I had a purpose, and I was very upset when all of a sudden I had more classes I had to take that wasn't related to my major. Thus creating more debt.

The reason I bring this up is I ran into a girl I went to school with....in 2001 that is still in college. Still getting loans and grants etc... And she don't have a degree and I asked her if she's been in the entire last 10 years. She said yes. She said she was part-time for the last 5 years.......Wtf!!!! No wonder this program is going broke. Not only are some of the people who use this program to blame. So are the schools. But hell the schools don't care. They just keep making tons and tons of money. While turning out students....if they graduate that are worthless....I mean I know a girl who has a major in basket weaving....Basket weaving.....Another wtf major!!! Damnit man, I'm all about providing opportunity. But really....basket weaving. I mean whose going to employer her? The easter bunny?

Not sure which side you're coming from but what does it matter if people in the lower 49% of taxpayers paying no income tax are paying sales taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes and fees as long as they are paying them with other people's money? Short answer? None. It just means that the people that EARNED the money not only pay income tax, they are also paying your taxes! Geeze.....some people......

The IRS publishes income tax collection statistics each year going back many years. I published the link to the IRS web site on a forum here a while back. According to them 49% of people subject to income tax effectively paid no income tax for calendar year 2011.

Many of those people paid something in for sure. However, those 49% got refunds equal to or greater than the amount they paid in. A commonly not understood phenomenon is that in many of these cases it involves single parents with several children where the credits they receive are more than the tax they owe.

Hence, in the worst cases (two of which are personally known to me) a single mother with 2-4 kids can work at temporary jobs, earning just under the limits where they would lose their social assistance programs (e.g. welfare, food stamps, FINS or Families in Need of Services in Arkansas, etc.) pay maybe nothing or a few hundred into income tax on their own that does not include the employer match which is also only a few hundred, yet get a refund from IRS exceeding $7,000. That means that they were given as much as $6,000 more than they and their employer paid in together.

I personally know two single mothers who did this this year. One has two kids, one disabled with "behavioral disorders". She has a full time job where I work and makes about $15 an hour. The other is the neice of a co-worker. He reported that she has 4 healthy illegitimate children and only works occasionally for temp agencies carefully watching her income so as not to lose government benefits. Both of these ladies got refunds in excess of $7000.

Since the money they got back has to come from somewhere who do you think paid it? The answer is the 51% of people that got back less than they sent in. Even I got a small refund, a few hundered back, but it was much less than the nearly $17,000 I paid in in state and federal income tax. That means that I like 51% of other taxpayers effectively paid these two to get free money from the government. At 49% there are millions of them out there.

Though I am not nearly in the top 1% or even 10% I am firmly part of the 51% that is paying for pretty much everything the government does. The other 49% pay almost nothing in any kind of taxes because many of those taxes, like sales tax, etc., are being paid for with money the got from other people when they got the federal income tax refund. In effect, most of the taxes they pay in any form are being paid with other people's money. That is the money the government collected from the 51% that acutally paid something in.

I wish it were so, and perhaps the government lies? It does about almost everything else under the current administration. However, personal experience cannot be discounted. If the two women I know can do it so easily it seems that millions of others can, and are, too!

Welfare wouldn't be an issue if well some issues not ignored -- take this point, 13yr old girl pregnant -boyfriend beats her up and takes the welfare away from her and baby for his own partying he's 27 yrs old and I'm sorry not prosecuted for statutory rape, not paying child support and when she can't provide for that child she gets it from the state child taken away and money and she gets beaten and rapped again to have another baby for more money - now the police don't go after the father and the social worker doesn't go after the father and the family doesn't do a thing. .......................

Yes, and every one screams at that girl and tell her get her tubs tied how I know at 16 yrs old I faced off that girls abusive baby daddy cause he was choking her . got a broken nose and yes she was pregnant at the time ..........called the cops the police yelled at the girl for giving him money and the social worker told here she was being kicked out of the apartment for misappropriation of welfare .............

It's not all scamers but in the end that girl & kids got killed and the father walks still free today I drive by him as he sleeps under an overpass I'm sorry to say this but I smile when the temperature drops or the weather misery for him. Some times the very system creates victims too! - just saying it's a double edged sword!

The truth it's a matter who is managing it!