Mark Anderson <
m...@nospambradnylion.com> wrote:
>In article
j...@ripco.com says...
>> I was pinned in line at the grocery store, the lady ahead was using a link
>> card to pay and apparently had stuff she wasn't allowed to buy. Not sure if
>> it was the lady or the cashier, but ended up taking about 30 minutes for
>> them to check out. Sadly, I had already put about $180 on the belt so it
>> wasn't easy for me to move (besides, the store was mobbed and there was no
>> line to move to cleanly). I thought about asking what the holdup was and
>> paying the difference, but not sure if that would be embarassing for the
>> person ahead.
>It's funny hearing one welfare recipient complain about another. The
>tax subsidies you have received for your two dozen children would exceed
>all expectations of your more ambitious welfare queens.
Hardly... the lionshare on my property tax bill goes to CPS and only God knows
where my income tax goes (perhaps Michael Madigan knows too). The primarily
city service I use is getting my garbage picked up (although I did eventually
pester my aldercritter enough that they patched the hole in the park on the
running path where the land had collapsed into a nearby sewer, so I guess you
can say I use the park as well - although, running thru a park doesn't use
much in terms of city services and that hole was a hazard to navigation as it
was a deep open hole that would have eventually broken someones ankle.).
Now, you might claim having my kids attend public universities is a subsidy,
but that pays itself back quickly. There are several Nelson kids earning in
excess of 60k and paying taxes as single taxpayers with no deductions who
wouldn't be earning as much if they hadn't attended public colleges to earn
degrees. None of those kids got special admissions or state funds from public
officials, but instead got in via the combination of ACT and GPA's. Most don't
live in now Chicago, but they live in-state near where they work and pay
income, as well as sales and (one pays) RTA gas taxes so they can subsidize
bus and train riders.
State universities, just like highways, are one of those things that states
need in order to, if not thrive, at least survive. Without an educated
populace, where would we be?
>Now you want to just give them cash -- just like how the government
>gives your welfare in the form of free spendable cash.
Give "them" cash?
First, the government doesn't give me free spendable cash, unless your
claiming any tax refund received at the end of the year is a government gift,
which it isn't, it just means my charitable, tuition deductions and stock
losses helped move me down a little in taxes from what my employer deducted.
People on ilink cards are essentially given money, but apparently with big
brother watching to see what they spend it on. I would argue that these people
are adults, and should be treated as such. Maybe there should be a time limit
or some way to slowly wean people from the cards, but ahead of me in line was
this lady and there didn't seem to be anything objectionable that the
government should disapprove of (maybe she had a magazine or something, but
even if it's a tabloid or romance novel, is someone reading a bad thing?).
Every year we work on a food drive, and one year we were delivering food to
a house where the guy had a newer car in the driveway than mine (Escalade to
boot) and a much bigger TV mounted on the wall - in fact, as we were walking in
with the food boxes one of my kids whispered "Dad, look at that TV" cause it
was 40-50 inches at a time when one was really expensive and we still had 26
inch tube TV's, but we left the food just the same, you can't act as a nanny.
Acting as a nanny probably results in the state creating fifedoms of regulators
to regulate others, adding costs to the program.
As for subsidies, look to the busses and their riders. There is a reason why
they put bus pads all over the streets, the city paves it, and the busses
tear it because they have a higher weight per axle than a semi. Not sure why
daMayor had to jack up sticker rates for Cayennes and the like as they are no
where near the damage of a single rear axle bus... just to placate uneducated
bus riders I guess...
"... According to a series of experiments carried out in the late 1950s,
called the AASHO Road Test, it was empirically determined that the
effective damage done to the road is roughly proportional to the Fourth
power of axle weight.[30] A typical tractor-trailer weighing 80,000
pounds (36.287 t) with 8,000 pounds (3.629 t) on the steer axle and
36,000 pounds (16.329 t) on both of the tandem axle groups is expected
to do 7,800 times more damage than a passenger vehicle with 2,000 pounds
(0.907 t) on each axle. ..."
Seems to me many CTA and Pace busses don't have tandem rear axles and should
be paying more than 7800 times the cost my cars are being dinged with, but we
all know that won't happen, it's easier for them to spread the damage upon
those who don't cause it than those who do...