Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Oh. And I think I can end the debate right here. We also drank powdered milk. Done. I win.
I drank powdered drank as a kid sometimes, too.
Key word: Sometimes. Replace that with "always" and you're in the ballpark.
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In fact much of what you've written about yourself in this thread (excluding the moranic pants bit) applied to me as well. We had a big garden to supplement what went on the table. We got second hand stuff like used bikes by mowing lawns and such. New was too expensive. We had a 12" 1972 Sony TV for over a decade because a new one was too much for my mom's budget. I got new clothes only occassionaly (or mom made them) because I had three older brothers who outgrew theirs and I normally got those. And guess what? That ain't poor.
Given that a hour ago you were insisting that this was lower middle class, forgive me if I just assume you don't know what you're talking about. How do you know you weren't poor? If you didn't have those things, and couldn't have them because you couldn't afford them, perhaps you were poor. But in your case, your parents lied to you and told you that they were middle class or something? I don't know.
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ALSO: About you dad's pay...just tell us what he did for a living and I think we can ballpark that one. I knew my parents pay when I was ten years old, how could you possibly not know yours?
He was an insurance investigator for Equifax. Not what you think though. I mean, he was the guy who would drive around to people's addresses and take pictures of them through their back fences not being as disabled as they claimed. The point is that this is irrelevant. We lived relatively well with my dad. He remarried and moved up north (and we lived with them for several years). My stepmom worked in the welfare department in Santa Cruz at the time. They were not "lower middle class", but comfortably working class. It was my mom who struggled financially. She was the single/divorced mom trying to make ends meet. I'm sure she received some amount of child support from my dad when we were there, but it was still quite a struggle.
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ALSO: ALSO: Your screed about your tax money going to buy someone pop sounds pretty selfish and hypocritical coming from a guy who gets a tax break on his mortgage. You didn't need that money, but you took it anyway.
There's a huge difference between paying less taxes out of the money you earned, and receiving money you didn't earn in the first place. You want to debate the mortgage tax deduction, by all means start a thread on that. But that has no bearing on whether or not I should be ok with my tax dollars paying for someone to buy things that are not necessities.
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Kinda irrelevant. though, seeing as you should be in prison for tax evasion.
Given that the IRS not only did not charge me with any crime, but instead paid me back for all the extra money I paid them, I don't think your opinion really counts.