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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (64519)	12/1/1999 4:01:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

Really? I have not. I see many acquaintances trading up to bigger and bigger homes. Buying new cars when their old ones are perfectly fine transport- spending EVERYTHING they make- even though they have huge incomes (and many times double incomes- with both parents working). The use of credit cards is outrageous. We know people with large incomes who ought to know better who are in hock to the credit card companies. You can call it greed or compulsive spending or consumerism run amuck, but whatever, it will end badly.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (64519)	12/1/1999 4:09:00 PM
From: Alexander	Respond to of 108807

LIzzie..It has been my experience to find much more greed in our generation than our Elders..Who were forced out of Jobs with the story that they would have SS for the rest of their life..and on and on..Little did they know they were headed for the DEATH CAMPS..called Nursing Homes..Drugged into a coma as their SS Fund kept getting Raided over and over..Their Health Care ate up all of their savings etc...That is a Road you best not travel..lest you want to hear the entire story...:-) That Generation had no Rolex or Volvo..They were too busy educating their Children and look what happened to them.The 'Indians destroyed their culture the same way we are..Lack of Respect for Elders....

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (64519)	12/1/1999 10:33:00 PM
From: Ish	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

<<My other favorite topic, the greedy elderly voting bloc. >> Maybe not so much greedy as fearful. In my area a couple in their 60s with no kids, living in a home they paid 20k for in 1960 pays $4k in taxes on it. Another family with 4 kids in school pays $85 if they live in a mobile home. Health care is sky rocketing, taxes out the ying yang, plus a loss of their ability to generate more cash flow. The threats to cut what they have paid in to SS. These elderly people are just trying to live as they have always lived. That's not greed. To go from a normal life to living in a government hi-rise full of crime and eating dog food because of taxes is a crime.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (64519)	12/2/1999 3:31:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Respond to of 108807

Lizzie, I have to go along with Alexander and Ish on the subject of the "greedy elderly voting block." Perhaps because of your own circumstances, you were not exposed as thoroughly as many of us were to the generosity of these people toward their own elders. Of course, it was easier geographically to be of help to parents and grandparents, since people were not as apt to move so very far away as they are now and could be of all kinds of help--help that an elderly person now must buy all too often. Even intensely loving children are now faced with being able to help only on weekends, after a long commute. Meanwhile, Social Security was not originally intended to be a primary source of support, merely a sort of safety net. But I am older than you and I remember all too well the rhetoric that these people heard subsequently with each COLA increase, which always managed to lag during the periods of high inflation. They may be drawing more now than they contributed, but what they contributed was a pretty nice chunk of change from their incomes and rose repeatedly. Now in their old age their children are often far away and not there to help. Moreover, their children have families of their own and the burden on the adult children has grown as lives are prolonged: It's not one or two elderly people for whom to care and run errands and be helpful, it's half a dozen or more. And the spectre of a nursing home always looms.... Lizzie, as you know, I am libertarian and do not endorse most of what has gotten us to this state of affairs. However, I can all too easily understand how these people feel. My uncles, mother, and aunt were lucky in having so much of the next generation on whom appropriately to rely as the previous generation had relied on them. People without this support network have reason to feel fear and anger.