Quote:
Originally Posted by XYZ
Just out of curiosity, would you tell us what your current age is?
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My current age is 11,997 days. My approximate age is 32.
Maybe I should have a 12k day celebration! I happen to have that day off. Beers in Portland, anyone?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xist
Dad had $60,000 in personal debt at age sixty-six and paid for his own healthcare.
That healthcare was not good enough at all.
Net worth? Perhaps enough to pay his debt.
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My grandpa is a retired lawyer and his household collects from 5 pensions. When I go to breakfast with him, he will often accidentally find $7,000 in his trousers and say "oh, I forgot I had put some cash in my pockets". This is not an uncommon occurrence.
Grandpa hasn't been paying into the system his entire working career like younger people have, and paid nothing for the expanded "Part D". Yet, he still gets to draw the benefits of Social Insecurity and Medicare, even though he doesn't need it, and arguably didn't pay his fair share to support it.
Anecdotes are pointless (including my own) because the opposite experience can always be found. I still maintain that
most subsidies do more harm than good because they come about by lobbyists that gain support for special interests by appealing to emotion, rather than being grounded in sound reasoning. The wealthy don't need any more subsidies, the relative poor need motivation to prosper, and the few that are in true desperation need support from family, friends, and community.
The gov't should be where one goes when all else has failed, not the first or only place to solve a problem.