You don't need that: Average American spends almost $18,000 a year on nonessentials

If I am being honest with myself I was relentlessly happy when I was single.
And more money/more problems was never so accurate.

 

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination in 2020, this should be the party platform all the way through Election Day. Pound this message home every day and get the middle class to unite and reclaim the economic power it deserves.

Many of today’s baby boomers grew up in households that made good incomes in conditions that have vanished. Unions protected middle class lifestyles for their laboring members. Middle-management jobs paid good salaries and offered pensions.

Those families were able to afford two cars, regular nights out for mom and dad, vacations and college educations for their kids who built today’s economy. But the rewards have been denied them. Labor’s share of national income is two-thirds of what it was in the 1950s, while shareholders’ share has soared.

That’s why today’s workers find it harder to make ends meet — not because they’re wasting money on “nonessentials,” but because their just deserts have been snarfed up by corporations and the wealthy.

 

Your tax dollars fund unemployment insurance. Nobody should feel shame for using that benefit after a job loss.

 

RTExpress doesn't use unemployment. Therefore, no one should have it. He only gives a fuck about himself; he's made that very clear on many occasions.

 

My tax dollars fund a lot of things I will do everything I can NEVER to use.

 

How about a federal jobs program, then? Use it for the infrastructure repairs we keep putting off.

 

I'll go ahead and guess BTE has not reproduced.
It tends to explain a lot the avarice and self-centeredness you see in those of his ilk.
I always laugh when some ass says he's watching his 401K while I say I'm doing the same for a different set of reasons.

 

I'll never get married again. Now at two years single and in need of a new Laz-E-Boy.

I'm best as a "solo act", I've discovered.

 

State and federal unemployment insurance is paid by employers - who are presumably subtracting roughly the same amount from your paycheck to do so.

Where Do Unemployment Benefit Funds Come From?

 

No offense, but that's kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I imagine you're mainly talking about unemployment and things that people need when it really gets hairy. But taxes pay for everything from public school teachers to roads. Cherry picking what tax benefits you're willing to accept is mainly about pride, it seems. I get that, but I also know I've needed unemployment at times and I've gladly taken it. Why? Because I fucking paid into it for years.

 

I've been working the past 11 years in a dying industry with perhaps 42 months remaining until I can retire. Last year was the first year in my 36 years in the work force where my house's "second income" exceeded $1oK (it was $18K!).

What you call "avarice" I call "security."

 

This is very true in many cases.

Corporate/shareholders, not the rank-and-file employees, come first, by a mile, in most big companies. And very few big changes that are made to company policies, benefits and perks in recent years have been for employees' good. Worse, many former perks are being lessened, minimized or eliminated completely in the name of corporate profit/greed.