In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.
Now I hope this doesn't come off as too harsh, but...
"The very children they (the fiscal conservatives) hold so dear"?
It's their own. Their own children and grands. Charity begins at home. We try to help beyond our own, and many of us give privately to support such charities.
(Why do the upper-class liberals always seem to put the bill for their own charitable impulses on the rest of the taxpayers? Can't they put
their own money where their mouths are?)
But we recognize -- now! -- that the taxpayer-financed Ponzi scheme is simply unsustainable at the current growth rate. We need to tackle the problem today.
We're concerned about the fiscal futures of our own families, first and foremost. If you've been in a grocery store lately, or had to fill the tank on your own dime -- not comped on an expense account, you see the beginnings of fiscal austerity/continuing belt tightening.
We simply cannot afford to continue to incentivize the breeding and support of other people's children, who for whatever reason, cannot afford to care for their own, yet continue to demand ...
more, more, more from the already overtaxed.
Yes, I know it sounds harsh. But there's a reason they tell parents to affix their own oxygen masks, say, before reaching out to help their children as the plane begins to go down... (A: You can't much take care of
others, if you're wiped out yourself.)
Think about it? If we're willing to sacrifice the financial futures of the
providers, the do-ers, the ones who keep the system working, then who will be around to fund the charity programs for all those who need special taxpayer help from birth on?
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ADDED: I'd also like a breakdown -- from Mr. Krugman, the numbers guy -- of how many of the impoverished (by American standards) children and those not graduating from high school
are American citizens. I think that's fair to distinguish, no?
Perhaps instead of feeling sorry for these Texas children, their standards of life and current educational attainment rate, might indeed be higher than what their parents left back home, in Mexico and Central America? *
Again, how can you report on declining standards in Texas without addressing the illegal immigration problem that conservatives have been warning about for years?
Don't fudge the numbers -- instead, tell us how the Texas children of American citizens are faring in the state these days?
* For the record,
I don't blame, nor have any animosity toward these poor people, who chose to break laws to come here. They're simply doing what they think best -- for their own.
I blame the corporate business interests, that found it cheaper to import such illegal labor, essentially pushing the very needed social costs of their new employees onto the legal American citizen taxpayers. Who called that back then? That such "cheap" labor helping the law-breaking businesses to grow -- the motels/restaurants, the corporate farms, the factories, the daycare domestics -- would end up costing all of us? Who benefitted -- staying in those beds, eating that food, enjoying low-cost consumer trinkets, having their children watched by a woman at home? I'm guessing ... plenty of libs, like perhaps Mr. Krugman.
FROM THE COMMENTS SECTIONS:
Ken Freed
Georgetown, Texas
February 28th, 2011
12:36 am
As someone who grew up in New Jersey, has had all 3 kids go through the Texas school system, and has a wife who is a 7th grade language arts teacher here in Texas - you are dead wrong when you claim that the situation of Texas school children is "dire". We share a long common border with Mexico where public education only goes up to the the 5th grade. Our schools have to play "catchup" with these students. If there's one area Texas can be faulted - it's a lack of good high school vocational programs. Here everyone is supposed to go to college - whether they are college material or not. Subtract out kids who should not be on a college track and kids who barely speak english and haven't been to school in years - and I guarentee you, the stats from Texas will look a LOT better.
