Posted by Dinah on November 27, 2005, at 1:27:38
In reply to Re: just one more... » Dinah, posted by alexandra_k on November 26, 2005, at 20:11:54
> What is 401K?
A 401K is a retirement plan where you can put pretax income aside for your retirement, and your company will match up to a certain percent of your salary. A lot of the old pension plans have been supplanted by 401K's. Admittedly this is because it is cheaper for employers to make matching contributions, because there are those employees who will choose not to participate.
> > The retirement of just about everyone who has a retirement plan rests on hte health of "big business".
>
> How many people in the US have a retirement plan?Most middle class families have at least some retirement funds. In my house, it's my husband because I'm a spendthrift. I don't know where we fall in the percentage of income scale, but we're middle class. And we would consider a significant long term drop in the stock market to be not such a good thing.
> > The underground economy is booming, thank you very much.
>
> Yeah. I wonder why.
> Hmm.
> Minimum wage vs crime...
> I wonder what I would choose ;-)I don't really consider it all that funny. It puts two different people making the same amount of money in two different positions based on whether the money is earned above or below the table. That doesn't seem fair to me. Especially when I personalize it among the people I know.
I'm not blaming the *people* around here for the lack of an education. The system could use a lot of improvement. I'm just saying that's the long term key to this problem.
You make it sound as if we throw the poor to the wolves in our country, and that's just not true. Medicaid pays for health care, although admittedly there is a lot of problems with that system. Which is why I propose that the government pay for the health insurance rather than pay for the medical care directly. Kids get free lunches, and for the most part free breakfasts as well, if they need it, during the school year at least. Two of my close friends were able to make use of WIC (don't ask me, something about food for women with young children), even though they qualified as working poor rather than unemployed. And I'm pretty sure they qualified for Medicaid as well, so they and their kids were able to go to the same doctors that I and my kids went to. The big problem was scheduling time off to take their kids to the doctors. Especially difficult since they used public transportation. I have the luxury of telling my employers that I have to go to the doctors and I'll finish my work on my off hours. Not everyone has that luxury, and that sort of thing was the biggest obstacle to health care. This was a few years back, and I'm not sure if policies have changed substantially. But at that time there was a safety net for the working poor. Both my friends used it wisely and responsibly. Which is not to say it was easy for them. It wasn't.
> I was starting to think politics. I don't really want to do economics. There is math in economics :-(
Isn't it kind of hard to do politics without a good grasp of economics? Even if you aren't actually running for an office yourself, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of politicians, isn't a good grasp of the facts and a knowledge of economics vital?
You know, Alexandra, most people endorse the same vision of the future. It's the how to get there that has the politicians at odds.
poster:Dinah
thread:578654
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20051121/msgs/582627.html