Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> Nice way to avoid the point.
Nope, didn't avoid a thing. As you admit your case was constructed.
Furthermore it did not address what I said.
> You said, and I quote:
>>> The short, short form is that EICs are issued for people being
>>> irresponsible (like, having kids while well below the poverty level),
Your constructed example was that someone who had kids *then* lost their
job. My case is the more common no job or single, low wage job, have a kid
because the nanny state will take care of it or they can't figure out how the
darn things are made. That's two completely different cases.
> My point was that lots of people end up qualifying for EIC's due to a
> variety of factors outside their control.
Uh, no, a lot of people qualify for factors entirely in their control;
having a child is a choice not a biological inevitability. Most people don't
have a kid then fall on hard times. Most people have a kid and do well or
have a kid to hell with their situation at the time. Furthermore my example
was to show when a person gets money sent to them for not paying anything into
the system. You are aware that EICs are not just for the poor and there are
cases where households with an income far in excess of the poverty level get
EICs as well. The reason I specified what I did was because at least those
households, in theory, are contributing something into the system in the first
place. Granted they often get it all, and more, back but for a time the money
was contributed.
> That is not being irresponsible. That is being unlucky.
So? There are ways to mitigate bad luck like planning for hard times.
Savings, sadly, is a dying breed in this nation of instant gratification
credit lines and a tax system which discourages actual savings.
> I am only
> pointing out how you have classified an entire group of people in one
> sweeping generalization that has little or no bearing in reality.
No, you set up a strawman to knock down. I never said someone who already
has a child and loses a job. I said someone who is below that line and
decides to have a child. One is after the fact, the other is not.
> But for you to characterise all those people as
> "irresponsible" is disingenuous and wrong. If I was the hypothetical
> person in my example I'd be down-right offended at your statement.
Sorry, but you'd be hard pressed to find an exception I'd agree with that
wasn't constructed as yours was. If you were the hypothetical person in your
example you'd be under scrutiny on what you could and could not do as well.
Hard times is not an "I give up" button. Hard times is when you look
seriously at what's going on and do what needs to be done.
> EIC's are issued for people who fall below a certain income
> level and meet other criteria. How they got in that situation is
> completely outside the question and has no bearing on whether they
> are "responsible" people or not.
You're not well versed in what EICs are issued for.
> So lets try an experiment.
Lets.
> Lets give you a good job with decent
> income, benefits etc. Lets assume you have 2.5 dependents.
Choice #1. This is not a biological inenviability.
> Lets assume
> you live in a reasonably priced house and are reasonably responsible
> with you money. YOu don't spend more than you make (except the
> occaisional vacation :). You save a decent amount of your
> paycheck. YOu've built up a nice little nest egg. Things are good.
Ok, so far.
> Now outsource your job. Outsource your industry. YOu've got no
> income. so you start looking for work and you start living off your
> savings.
With ya so far.
> That's what its there for. Now, tinme passes, you can't get a
> job in your field, your whole field is basically gone, at least in
> your region.
So move.
> .... more time passes... you've worked your ass off
> looking for a job, our wife has taken part-time work to help with the
> bleeding, you end up taking a low wage job just to help contorl the
> bleeding, but your bleeding.
Question, why wasn't she working before? That's choice number 2. This
isn't the 1950's and thanks in part to the very tax system which funds EICs
most families these days are dual-income. The days of stay-at-home moms are
well and truly dead.
> You WILL lose your house,
Sell it and move to where the market is better.
> you HAVE lost your savings,
No. You have spent your savings on what savings are meant to be used on.
Unforseen changes in your personal situation.
> you WILL have to draw out your retirement funds and pay
> the penalty to keep from losing your house for a while. But, luckily,
> you now qualify for EIC's and get a little money back on your taxes.
Big Brother to the rescue!!! Don't want the little woman to work, don't
want to make the hard choices of moving or selling the house? Never fear, Big
Brother is here!
> Where in this scenario are you being irresponsible? You did everything
> right up to the point your got shafted and continued to do things
> right. It's not your fault you have two kids you can't afford. It's not
> your fault you're going to lose your house. Yet you would call
> yourself irresponsible?
But I did point out that things were done wrong. Wife not working?
Choice 1. Kids, choice 2. Not selling the house, choice 3. Not moving to
where the market is better, choice 4.
> Nothing I said in my original response addressed anything except that
> I felt it was inappropriate of you to characterise all EIC recipients as
> irresponsible.
In most cases that's true. Let me tell you a counter story.
Dot.com worker living in SoCal is tired of his job. He's recently shacked
up, not even engaged, and quits. He's got a nice new motorcycle to pay for
and rent due every month. Unfortunately it was right in the middle of the
dot.com bust and there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of unemployed workers
are vying for each tech job in the area. He takes out his savings and spends
it. His GF at the time can support them but they're going under. Over a year
passes and his job search goes from the local area to the state to the nation.
Some thoughts of other countries flit through his head. After almost 2 years
a job is offered to him and 1/2 his last pay. It's in a different city,
different state. His now fiancee would have to quit her job but they're
confident she can find another. They scrape the money together and pay for
their own move.
She finds a job at almost half her pay within a few months. They get
married.
A year later the company he moved to work for goes under. Start the
process over except this time he's able to find temp work in this new market.
He takes one and two day temp jobs, week long temp jobs, works freelance
online, gets money here and there. They're slowly going under. There's new
bankruptcy legislation looming which would make it harder to file. His wife
talks seriously of filing while it's easy to get out from under their debts.
He doesn't want to because he still feels there is time; he could always sell
his motorcycle which he's now built up some nice equity.
Then he's offered a job with a daily commute of 2 hours (3 on public
transportation) but it offers experience in skills needed for the local
market. The pay is 2/3rds of his prior job, coming up on 1/3rd of the job he
had in SoCal. But they're stable. He's gaining needed experience for that
market. Their creditors are still being paid and, in fact, steps are main to
dramatically decrease their debt load. They're looking to buy a home within a
year or two where just months prior they were looking and bankruptcy.
Constructed? Nope. That's me from '02 to present day. EICs taken 0. Of
course I doubt I qualify based on the fact my dependents are a chihuahua and a
calico cat. So please, before you start with the handwaving about matters out
of people's control realize you're talking to someone who's been there, who's
faced the hard choices and didn't take the easy road out. It was hellish for
a while there. Toughest choice was moving from Long Beach to Las Vegas,
having my wife quit her job as it was the only security we had left on the
chance she could get a job here before we went completely under. We still
hadn't exhausted our resources. We still had friends and family that would
have helped us as best they could. Something you left out of your constructed
fantasy. There's always things people can do. They may not be easy choices.
They may not be what the people want. I certainly didn't want to sell my
bike as it was my only transportation but I would have. And I was willing to
fight until the last, even face harsher bankruptcy laws, so my creditors
weren't shafted for my problems. So realize that when I talk about all of
this it isn't from some lofty comfortable position of luxury. I've been
there, thank you.
--
Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | And dream I do...
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