If You’re Still Wondering Why Your Taxes Are So Ridiculiously High . . .
. . . this article might explain it:
Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov’t Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers
Here’s the summary: in 2011, 108,592,000 persons in America were receiving some kind of means-tested benefit from Federal, state, or local governments. That same year, only 101,716,000 people worked full-time year round.
Unfortunately, that’s only part of the “good news”. The total of nearly 108.6 million above does not include persons receiving non-means-tested government benefits – e.g., benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, non-means-tested VA benefits*, or unemployment compensation. Again according to the Census Bureau, the total number of persons receiving Social Security, Medicare, non-means-tested VA benefits, and unemployment compensation in 2011 was 104,617,000.
There’s obviously some overlap between these categories. There’s overlap as well as with means-tested government benefits. Still – this is well past ridiculous, and fast approaching obscene.
So, the next time you wonder why you pay all those damned taxes, just remember: there are now more people drawing means-tested government benefits in America than are working full-time. There are also more people drawing non-means-tested government benefits than are working full-time. That just might have something to do with why the government seizes so much of your earnings.
And it also might explain why we can’t seem to come up with enough dollars to defend the nation adequately, too.
*Note: most VA benefits are not means-tested. However a few VA benefits – such as VA pensions for low-income vets and the VA Aid and Assistance allowance, to name two – are means-tested.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Defense cuts, Economy
The grasshoppers outnumber the ants…
No argument with your general premise here, Hondo But, I have an issue or three with the definitions of the terms used. Maybe.
Social Security may not be means tested to determine one’s eligibility for it, but income from other sources certainly determines how much one will receive. Is that not means testing?
That said, it should be obvious to anyone who looks that this mess is simply not sustainable. Adding yet another expensive program (the ACA) was never intended to do anything other than bankrupt the country. And convert additional populations from independence decision makers into gubmint dependent leeches.
in 2011, 108,592,000 persons in America were receiving some kind of means-tested benefit from Federal, state, or local governments. That same year, only 101,716,000 people worked full-time year round.
I think that it would be interesting to publish a comparison of phone expenses, car expenses, and weed expenses for both groups as a percentage of “income”
If you want to know what the sliding scale for income tax actually is, you can find it at the IRS’s website.
After either the standard or itemized deductions, the sliding scale tax on single taxpayer income goes from 10% of the amount of 10% on anything over $8.925, to a tax of $116,163.75 plus 39.6% of anything OVER $400,000.
That applies whether it is earned income, meaning subject to social security and Medicare tax, or ordinary income which is not subject to FICA/Medicare.
At least we now know where our taxes are going. One-third of the population, consisting of working people, supports a full third of the population, whether they work or not. I find it appalling that fast food workers, who are picketing fast food chains now in Chicago, are paid so little ($8.25/hr) after 20+ years that they have to rely on food stamps and food pantries to put food on the table. The after-tax income for the working poor barely pays the rent. It may seem like they aren’t hit as hard as you are, but they are. 15% out of your $8.25 X0 hrs/week adds up.
And that bozo-in-charge wants to raise taxes.
This is like that scene in ‘Ladyhawke’ where the corrupt bishop tells his henchman ‘I raise taxes again, only to be told there are no more taxes to be had. Can you imagine it?’
Is barter still going on?
Oh..and cable bills too.
Yep. Unfortunately, the leeches receive all sorts of under the table income which is not taxed, and feel entirely justified in keeping it, and taking mine as well. I really think they should keep what they make under the table, but I should also keep what I earned.
OWB: that’s precisely why I’d be in favor of a national sales tax on ALL purchases in lieu of an income tax – no exceptions. It wouldn’t stop all tax evasion (people could still barter or do “under-the-table” transactions), but it would definitely recapture part of the taxes now lost by people hiding illegitimate income when they spent the proceeds.
And spare me the “that’s unfair to the poor” BS argument. There is nothing “unfair” about everyone being treated equally, regardless of income. That’s called “equality”.
Absolutely! What could be more fair than each of us deciding exactly how much tax we want to pay based upon our consumption? The source of the income becomes irrelevant.
(I am willing to negotiate the exemption of food and medicines from taxation, but nothing else.)
Whatever the particulars–and they are plug ugly–the underlying issue is that public assistance has become a way of life for far too many people. We now have generations of people who have known no legitimate source of income outside of subsidized housing, home heating and air conditioning bills paid by others, as well as food, clothing and healthcare. There are millions of people who simply take these supports as permanent and expected, with no sense whatsoever that millions of others who earn their living forego much to support them. Time was that welfare, as it was commonly called, was something some people necessarily turned to for limited and temporary help. There was a certain stigma attached to it, as well, a little social prodding, as it were, to get off of the public dole ASAP. It has not been that way for decades. Look what happened a week ago when the welfare cards went limitless for mere hours. People turned savage, taking and taking until the shelves went bare. And when they learned that the glitch was fixed, they left perishables by the ton in their shopping carts. Stores prematurtely closed and violence erupted. But did we hear about it repeatedly, if at all, from Big Media?
I am in for two counts, 66= SS and a disabled vet = VA pension. I feel no guilt as earned both. A national sale might be very equal and workable. I add a import tariff tax to cover major off-shore purases. Joe
I go to work, so you don’t have to!
The VA means test also impacts co-pays for visits and medications. Being means test exempt is the difference between health care and no health care (or paying for prescriptions instead of food) for many veterans with very limited incomes and no insurance or eligibility for medicare/medicaid.
I work for a metropolitan EMS system that serves almost a million residents. 60% or more of our calls are for people with Medicaid or no insurance. Half of that are simple “BS calls”. But what is worse is several of our Paramedics have opted out of the Health Insurance because they qualify for Medicaid!
When our contract came up two years ago, the county said they could not afford to pay higher wages, had to cut hours, and reduce training. So now they have over worked responders with minimal training, who work full time but use Medicaid and food stamps. This is acceptable to the county because the state and fed cover 3/4th the cost and they pay less for insurance.
I agree with those who say Anyone working full time should not need a means tested program.
Top W Kone: not sure what you’re saying with the “anyone working full time should not need . . . ” statement. Are you saying no full-time wage should pay minimum wage? Or are you saying anyone working full time should be ineligible for means-tested government assistance.
I’m afraid I can’t agree in either case. Some jobs IMO simply aren’t worth more than minimum wage. Flipping burgers or dropping fries at a fast-food restaurant come to mind. (For the record: I did that part-time in high school, so I do think I know what I’m talking about here.) The marketplace, not the government, should determine wages; and some jobs simply aren’t worth more than minimum wage.
On the other hand: if you’re saying full-time work should automatically negate eligibility for means-tested programs, I also have a problem with that. I have no problem with able-bodied adult who’s unwilling to being homeless and hungry. But I do have a problem with seeing the child of someone working part- or full-time go hungry simply because Mommie/Daddy can’t find work.
“And that bozo-in-charge wants to raise taxes.” Ex, that’s because his bud over in the Senate, Harrycade Reid, made the following statement, ““The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress,” Reid told the radio host, according to Roll Call. “Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/harry-reid-everybody-willing-pay-more-taxes_764666.html
Indeed, that is completely unsustainable. Why don’t people get it is beyond me.
And I’m with Hondo-Equality means that every working person pays taxes. Having a national sales tax is akin to the VAT tax in Germany. Last time I checked it was 17%. That’s a chunk of change and may be exactly what is needed to put things into perspective for people.
Everything is relative and if people learned to plan and live within their means, it can be done. I have clients making squat, but they live well. What could you do on 16k a year? This guy wants nothing from the govt because he has pride and ownership of who and what he contributes to society. Sick and tired of the whiners and “fair”!
UPNorth, I’m SURE Reid wants to pay more than the 39.6% he already pays, unless he’s found a way out of paying anything at all.
He must have spent too much time talking to Warren Buffett, who ran his big mouth about how HE pays less in taxes than his secretary. I doubted that crap line when I heard it, and unless Buffett is taking home $1 per year in salary, he’s lying in his teeth.
No surprise here. If nothing changes, I wonder how much longer before the whole house of cards collapses?
Ex, I’m sure that Harrycade and his accountants have found a way to make sure that he pays little. He managed to craft a subsidy for him and his cronies on the Hill for the trainwreck that is Obamacare.
As for Buffett, I’m sure you’re right. Either that, or his secretary knows where all the bodies are buried and she’s compensated appropriately.
Joe Williams: a VA pension is NOT the same thing as disability compensation. A VA pension is a money paid by the VA to (1) non-service-connected vets who (2) served during a period of war, (3) were honorably discharged, (4) no longer can work due to age or disability, (5) have income from other sources below a defined threshold, and (6) have a net worth below a defined threshold. It’s essentially welfare for non-service-connected vets with little income and few assets. In contrast, VA disability compensation is compensation for disabilities incurred as the result of military duty.
http://benefits.va.gov/BENEFITS/factsheets/limitedincome/livepension.pdf
— break —
Anon (12): only partially true. No co-payments are due for medications related to the treatment of service connected conditions. No co-payments are due from veterans with a VA disability rating of 50% or greater, or who are recognized by the VA as being “catastrophically disabled”. Medication co-payments are reduced by 80% if incomes are below specified thresholds. The only persons who pay full medication co-payments are those with VA disability ratings between 0% and 40% AND who also have a reasonable income. And they only pay co-payments for medications prescribed for the treatment of non-service-connected conditions.
http://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/resources/publications/IB10-431-copay_requirements_at_a_glance_jan2013.pdf
Just remember that we have one party that’s entirely committed to the spoils from D.C. program we have now and the other party is basically facing a civil war over the issue. So long as the “gimme stuff” coalition outnumbers those who are expected to foot the bill there probably won’t be any reform from Washington (though reality will eventually impose its own harsh reforms).
What is hidden in those number is the more than 12 MILLION illegals and refugees who are also on the dole. The fraud is rampant as well. Many women up here have said that their husbands have run off, etc, when those guys are still living at home. It used to be that the state would send case workers to the actual addresses to check things out, but nowadays they claim not to have the money to do that. As a result, MANY of those folks on welfare or SSI have an undeclared source of income because their spouse works full time. The illegals up here, and many of the Somalis are also gaming the system in the same manner. It’s beyond ridiculous and the only way to stop it, or at least eliminate a good chunk of it is to put “boots on the ground” and send caseworkers back on the streets to physically check these things out. I’ve seen a lot of gaming the system with our food pantry as well. Recently, they had to go to requiring a photo ID to get assistance, and that is limited to once a month. Prior to that, they had folks coming from outlying areas and claiming to be residents. Those folks knew when each food pantry was open and where it was located, and would go from one to another “grocery shopping” as it were. It was draining resources and finally, most of the local food banks have gone to the ID as well as proof of physical residence, such as an electric bill, in order to weed out the fraud. Sad yto see, but so many of those on welfare these days are professionals at it and have absolutely no shame. One of the benefits of requiring a government-issued photo ID for receipt of welfare would be the weeding out of a LOT of those who shouldn’t be getting them. I volunteer a LOT and I know that there are folks for whom the system is their only hope, and I don’t mind that. We have folks who ARE… Read more »
As a then unemployed disabled American vet/USAR retiree, I received means-tested benefits in 2 of the categories.
What are the real numbers? We’re bordering on the Progessives’s ‘Truthiness” by throwing out inaccurate numbers just for emotional effect.
Um, DaveO . . . those numbers are from the Census Bureau. They’re official numbers, and probably as close to “ground truth” as anyone can get. Read the linked article for details.
Wait, Hondo. Let me dig out the old Ouija board. Maybe that will tell us the real numbers. In the meantime, Census figures will do. No, I do not believe them to be entirely accurate, but they are at least as accurate as figures gained by any other method. Except maybe via a crystal ball.
To support what Defend said, my income is (currently) SocSec and VADC, and that’s it, unless you (helpful, wonderful) people decide to splurge and buy my books and give me some royalties. (That’s what I’m working for. I’m not sitting idle.)
But sticking to the subject, socsec is taxed at half and VADC is tax exempt. I’m a careful shopper, I use coupons a lot, I always look at the sale papers, and I have always bought stuff in bulk and on sale because it saves money. I’m doing okay.
The minimum wage worker at McD’s gets $8.25/hr. That’s $17160 per year, less than my fixed income. He loses $4,852 of that to taxes, never mind what he has to cough up for health insurance, resulting in a take home check of $12,308. Whether or not this employee is head of household, he’s not even barely getting by, depending on where he lives.
Hondo, you may look down your nose at fast food jobs, but while they were originally meant for teens after school to earn money and get work experience, they now are frequently the ONLY source of full-time work for adults who may not otherwise be able to find work, and that includes retirees whose retirement income went south in 2009, as well as immigrants (legal or not). And these people are having to use food pantries and SNAP cards, or whatever it is, to supplement their income because they can’t afford to buy food otherwise.
This is a problem that isn’t going away any time soon. I’m sure there is abuse of the food pantries, just as there was a rush of shelf-clearing when those cards were SNAFU’d, but don’t blame people for trying to simply survive in an expensive world, where a jar of baby food used to cost $.25 and is now $1.50.
I don’t see how the dumpstercrats can expect people who earn a decent wage to put up with being taxed to death. What they’re saying is ‘Yeah, you work hard but you don’t have a right to keep what you earn.’
Hondo, you are very right bout that phrasing. What I was thinking was that a person working full time for an employer should be able to provide their needs with the income. When twenty to thirty percent of a companies employes are qualifying for means tested aid, something is wrong. Worse when the employer is giving you information about these programs because it lowers their costs.
I have always felt that minimum wage is for part time workers, not full time. I know these days minimum wage is all people can get, but it was not ment to be a living wage. When skilled workers, police, fire, paramedics, LPN’s, Ford assembly workers, UPS loaders, DuPont injection molders, are qualifying for aid, the economy is messed up.
If not for the Reserve Health Insurance, I would be on Medicaid. And that is on a 48 hour week at $16 an hour to save lives. (About what Ford and DuPont pay new hires these days here in KY.)
I don’t have an answer, but skilled people working full time should not be qualifying for aid, they should be able to afford their needs.
Why is it that less than 1/3rd of ALL Americans are working (full time)? Part of that is in fact on the decisions of Individual Americans, who have decided it is better for them personally to buy cheap Chinese trinkets, rather than goods made in the US. Guess what, not everybody is college or management material, nor right for a service job. If things made here aren’t bought here, those jobs go away. If YOU made the choice to buy the cheap Chinese trinket, instead of a quality US made product, YOU contributed to the financial necessity of factories moving to where that cheap labor is. (And yes, the strangling aspect of unions also plays a part.) Yes, we do have Senior Citizen burger flippers, and middle aged fry cooks. The age of that worker does not mean they should be paid more. The lack of factory worker positions does mean they have to move down the scale. But you know what? The value of the job and the work, not the work that the worker should be doing elsewhere, determines what pay should be paid. Fast food jobs are designed to be entry level, HS jobs, not a career. The career path for them is moving to management, without the cost of a degree, and making management pay, or moving on out to a career job. No, it is not the corporations fault that they choose to stay on as a fry cook, producing less GDP than the poverty line, nor should consumers of the product be forced to pay more to change that choice. What is the government’s role in all this? The government has made endless regulations that strangle business. They have increased taxes and types of taxes and forms that it takes to be in business. They have made it clear that union jobs are their preference. They have failed to prevent unfair competition from illegal aliens. They have failed to defend the border and failed to deport the illegals they find. Unions and Government regulations are strangling jobs and factories in this country, and that… Read more »
And for the record PH, I’d be happy to buy your book, but I don’t know which books you’ve written.
I’m 29 and I’m working full time at a tech support job earning around $15.50/hr… and everyone in my family calls me the successful one.
I’m barely getting by. I don’t feel all that successful until I hear the stories about my cousins:
One of my cousins got a pregnancy during high school (and turned her mother into a grandmother during her thirties). That was 12 years ago. The now 12 year old son is almost a drop out, and his younger brother is autistic due to the fact that my cousin was probably doing drugs during that particular pregnancy.
Another one of my cousins actually got a degree: a masters no less… and still can’t find a decent job. I pity her more because she actually put forth the effort to finish her degree and is still shafted.
Another cousin works as an assistant to an anesthesiologist. It doesn’t pay well enough to cover her expenses though.
And now something like this goes down the pipe. I worry and pray for the rest of my other extended family members.
“Yeah, you work hard but you don’t have a right to keep what you earn.” Ex, you hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what the left thinks, and sometimes says.
I wouldn’t consider myself “rich”, although I do pretty well. That being said, filing Single-0 I find that some level of government (federal, state, local) gets about 40 percent of my income/compensation, either by direct deduction (SS, Medicare, Federal withholding, state withholding) or after I’ve received my check (property taxes, sales taxes, vehicle taxes, etc.)
Think about that–40 percent. And that might even be a lowball figure.
The liberals claim that taxes are the price we pay for a society, but what happens when that society is crumbling around us and the moochers are still standing around with their outstretched hands?
I look at it this way–if taxes are an investment in our nation, who here would invest in the United States, knowing what a shitty return we’re getting on our investment (taxes) and that it was only getting worse?
Hauser’s law (Google it) says that tax receipts have been around 19% of GDP since WWII, so we could start by restricting government spending to that, but then that would restrict the ability of the political class to pick winners and losers and we can’t have that.
@29 TN – You can click on my name and that will take you to my blog, which has my two books (so far) listed with links to buy either print or Kindle (digital) versions, or check one per month out of the Kindle Lending Library for free.
I’ll make it easier. http://wolfmoonpressblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/why-you-dont-need-a-class-in-writing/
Go to ‘New Releases’ for the most recent one, and here for my first one: http://wolfmoonpressblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/psychic-who-me/
And if you wait a couple of days I will have a short story up on Kindle, also, one that I just finished.
Thank you!
Sparky, 40% would be a 25% Fed rate in a no income tax state, if don’t include FUTA
FICA is more than 15% (employer and employee)
FUTA is 5-6%
Gas is .30+/gallon
Alcohol prices are generally more than half tax.
Hotels get taxed extra.
Your phone bill is taxed extra.
And those deductions? Yeah, you get those for doing what the government wants you to do.
Remember, what the Employer pays the government is what he cannot/does not pay the Employee. Just because the tax is not listed on your stub does not mean that it isn’t there.
I have mixed feelings about this whole ‘welfare’ thing, which started back during the Johnson administration. I think it breeds laziness. It’s been going on for almost 50 years and I see nothing beneficial coming out of it for anyone. We were taught about the so-called ‘robber barons’ of the 19th century, people like J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Most of those people started from the ground up and built massive businesses that employed a lot of people.
Yes, poverty was a serious issue but it didn’t prevent anyone from working his way up from nothing. There is no drive without a goal, and handouts take away that goal.
FWIW, the Swiss people will be voting before too long to give every adult a basic income of $2800 USD per month, to ‘even out’ income levels, and CEOs will only be allowed pay equal to what the lowest paid secretary gets.
This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard, because it fails to take into account that the people who start and build large companies don’t have dollars and cents dancing in their heads. They are only thinking about what they want to accomplish. If it were only about money, Steve Jobs couldn’t possibly have restored Apple to what it is today, and Bill Gates would never have developed the MS-DOS system that got all of this desktop PC world going in the first place.
This is why the welfare idea is a failure, and capitalism and private enterprise work.
I have to get back to work now.
So, you have 2 books PH? Or are there more in the middle?
Don’t forget that the number of full-time workers *includes* those who are employed by government, i.e., those whose means are entirely provided by taxpayers.
TN, right now (just starting out) I have two books in print and on Kindle, and am working on more. I just finished a long story or novella (short novel), which I will upload next month.
I have a large backlog of stuff that I put together over a long period of time in the form of notes, outlines, what if’s, all aimed at having work to do in retirement. I have quite a bit in the pipeline, and am working on it all.
With all the complaining about this group of people, that must mean there are 108 million fulltime, well paying jobs with good benefits available?
@40- maybe they could take that fucking cashier job at Stewart’s that has been open near me for months. Maybe that job flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Maybe both of them. Jobs are out there for those who want them, but if they get paid good money to sit on their ass, why would they bother?
Why do the jobs they get have to be “well paying, full time”? While they are sitting on their ass, they are losing motivation. No company offering a “well paying, full time” job wants to fill that spot with a slug, they want a motivated worker. If that “well paying, full time job” opens up and they have a chance to hire a welfare slug or someone who’s been busting their ass to feed their family, guess who is going to win out, every time?
Absolutely–flipping burgers, washing cars, etc., is a stepping stone. Teddy can tell you all about those fun-filled midwatches in the middle of nowhere, or scrubbing a bilge filled with God-knows-what for the righteous sum of what we figured out to be LESS than minimum wage.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, maybe I’m still thinking of a late father who would come back to kick the shit out of me if I sat on my ass with my hand out instead of providing for me and mine while I’m still able.
Good to hear PH. You’ll have to keep the TAH faithful up to date as you come out with new volumes!
Yeah, I don’t want to hear “well paying”, “full time” or “good benefits”, you take or create whatever job is available because you have enough self regard not to be dependent. It’s true enough that a bad job might be a stepping stone to a better one, but there are also millions of Americans who have gone out there and created their own work by finding a niche in the market and exploiting it whether that’s mowing lawns or collecting junk for resale or whatever. They don’t ask “where are my benefits” or “is this full-time” (whatever that means, the people I describe may work much longer hours than “full time” for less than minimum wage) they just know that they have to earn a living and go out and do it.
And I’m still not clear on why those who make good decisions, whether that’s saving or recognizing an opportunity or just not wasting whatever advantage they were handed should be required to subsidize those who fail to make good decisions. Actually, I’m almost certain that the opposite is true-if you shield people from the consequences of their actions they fail to learn anything from their actions. I know the pathological left operates almost entirely on the idea that no action should ever result in a consequence, but I also know that they have an almost perfectly inverted understanding of human nature and that their ideas usually end up causing more suffering and unhappiness than actually helping.
68W58, you got that right.
TN, I will, and I do.
Ex-PH2: I don’t “look down my nose” at minimum-wage jobs, lady. But as was noted above, they’re NOT intended to support families.
If a job’s work is inherently not worth more than $7.25 an hour (the Federal minimum wage for most jobs), then it’s simply not worth paying someone more than $7.25 an hour to do the job. Employers won’t do that. They’re in business to make money, not to serve as an employment agency. If forced to pay more, they’ll find other ways to cut costs – such as cutting bennies, pensions, hours – or they’ll go broke.
A minimum wage job may be a choice some people get stuck with due to poor skills or temporary job shortages, plant closures, etc . . . . But you don’t really want to stay in that type of employment for long. It’s virtually impossible to support a family with anything approaching a reasonable lifestyle on that kind of income alone. Even then, it’s preferable to not working at all.
At least it used to be. Unfortunately, we’ve made it all too easy for people in this country to sit at home and do nothing instead of taking such “menial” jobs if they lose their primary employment or can’t immediately find a job to their liking. There used to be consequences for doing stuff like that – e.g., lose house, lose car, go broke, go hungry. Now, in many cases the government sends people a check and EBT card so they can sit at home and eat Cheetos while they watch their big-screen TV and bitch about not being able to find a job – when the firm down the street is looking for a receptionist or janitor.
@42- absolutely. In fact, I was chosen to be the BOWS technician as soon as I entered the workcenter. BOWS (Bilge Oil/Water Separator) was where all of the plant’s bilges were pumped to. Ultrasonic vibrators would separate the oil from the water/ paint chips/ simple green/ urine/ whatever and store it until reaching port, where it would be pumped off and reclaimed. That fucker always broke down because it wasn’t meant to be fed a steady diet of semi-solid waste, so I would routinely be racked out to go back aft and repair that fucker.
The BOWS wrench time was some of the most valuable experience I earned in the navy though. You had to get good with wrenches and creative with duct tape if you wanted to get sleep.
Hondo, I grew up with parents who thought anything like that kind of work was beneath them, even though my father had a before-tax pay of $100 per week as the head of his department (theater) at a private university.
They both had very false ideas about what kind of work people should be doing. Neither of them liked being reminded that those menial jobs frequently paid better wages than their pseudo-intellectual notions of employment.
In fact, my starting pay at my first permanent** civilian job after I left the Navy was better than what the two of them ever earned combined, but neither of them considered the job I had taken to be acceptable because it clashed with their notions. You have no idea what crap I had to listen to from those two; ditto, my sister – what my mother said to her about her 18-month temp teaching job at Columbia-NY in front of me was unconscionable, and I went off like a blowtorch at her.
**permanent does not include the 6 weeks I spent at a textile mill in New Jersey in 1974 working for an hourly rate of $2.50. It lasted 6 weeks, because the company was sold and my shift was locked out with no warning.
Ex-PH2: yeah, ivory-tower academic snobs are IMO among the worst. From what I’ve seen they often look down on everyone else, and many don’t have the common sense to pour the result of micturation out of a knee-high piece of hard-soled leather footwear without laces.
Until, of course, the toilet clogs up or the sink springs a leak, or the car breaks down. Then most of them are happy as hell to see a “menial laborer”. (smile)
By the way: if you were making $2.50 an hour in 1974 and working full-time, that wasn’t all that bad a job. Minimum wage then was $1.90.
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@49 Hondo, those six weeks in ‘the mill’ gave me some serious respect for the coal miner’s daughter’s father.