
My Parents Give Me $28k a Year - jeffreyrogers
https://www.ejroller.com/2018/10/25/my-parents-give-me-28000-a-year/
======
DoreenMichele
Plus, the parents apparently paid at least $250k in college tuition for her.
So she has world class education, zero debt from it, and then this stipend _on
top of that_. The stipend wouldn't go anywhere near as far if she were saddled
with crushing student loans.

I come from a more privileged background than I realized and that included
better educational opportunities. I was in gifted programs as early as second
grade and had several college-equivalent math classes through my high school
by the time I graduated high school. I took more math in high school for free
than a lot of people with (non STEM) bachelor's degrees take.

As a homemaker in my twenties, I kept running tallies in my head for every
single item that went into my shopping cart. I never bothered to carry a
calculator. I could run the numbers in my head faster than other people could
punch it into a calculator.

So much knowledge and training makes sparse material resources stretch a lot
further than people stumbling their way forward with limited finances and less
education, fewer solid mental models to inform their decisions, etc.

I mean, I appreciate that she wrote the article and she's not wrong, but I
think the issue runs so much deeper than she's indicating. Just because I had
smart parents who knew a lot, I had a leg up before I ever started school at
age five. And the gulf between me and most of my age mates only grew the older
I got.

~~~
merpnderp
And yet if you even dare to open up the argument that government should try to
encourage the types of families and behavior that show the best results for
this type of childhood, you'll immediately be drowned out in ad hominem
attacks. Even Obama took a lot of heat for saying dad's should help raise
their kids. Never mind more seriously statically relevant approaches like
waiting until after high school and marriage to have kids.

~~~
sidlls
Most of the arguments you refer to are actually thinly veiled racism ("black
dads don't care about their kids") and that is the source of antagonism
against them. There is more than a little classism behind Obama's remarks,
though: he wasn't exactly raised impoverished or by family who were constantly
running afoul of a racist, classist "justice" system.

~~~
Johnny555
Isn't it also racist to hear someone say "fathers need to be parents too" and
jump to the conclusion that the speaker is singling out about black men? There
are plenty of fathers of all racists who are skipping out on being parents.

~~~
forapurpose
> Isn't it also racist to hear someone say "fathers need to be parents too"
> and jump to the conclusion that the speaker is singling out about black men?

If that were the issue, it's not racist. The response isn't based on the
speaker's race but on the content. But it arguably could be 'jumping to a
conclusion'.

But I don't think it's that either. The comment said that such statements are
often thinly-veiled racism, which is true. Racism is infrequently expressed
literally; there is a lot of 'dog whistle' communication and policies. For
example, there's a semi-famous interview with a Republican strategist who said
that, during the Reagan years, they realized they could no longer make
outright racist statements, so they adopted school busing as an issue and
expected that everyone would get the message - they couldn't outright say,
'you don't want your kids going to school with black kids, and we're the party
that will stop that kind of thing', but they could talk about busing.

Today, when Republican state governments take away voting locations in
minority areas, and create ID and registration requirements that
disproportionately affect minorities, it's pretty thinly veiled. In fact,
those are some of the same tactics were used before the Voting Rights Act (the
tactics returned immediately after Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court
invalidated parts of the Act). Some Republicans openly say that it's to
prevent Democrats from voting.

------
drblast
The value of this gift is much greater than then nominal sum.

My parents gave me $3000 for the down-payment on my first house, which cost
$100k. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy a house. But I
bought instead of renting and ended up selling it for $200k years later. That
was a big financial win early on and meant I was never in debt again.

My financial situation at the time was barely-making-ends-meet, so I had to
sell the house to recover the equity to buy a car and move across the country
when I was transferred.

Had my parents given me $30k as a one-time gift, I wouldn't have had to sell
that house at all and would have rented it out in perpetuity. That would have
been about $1000k a month of income for me, in addition to keeping the equity
in the house.

I've resisted spending money on a lot of things like, say, home renovations,
new cars, etc. until I felt like I was paying for it solely from interest
earned on investments or the purchase was an absolute necessity. The only
reason I was able to start investing at a young age, on a very small income,
was the sale of that house. Those savings have compounded, but more
importantly I've always had enough cash to cover incidental expenses and
that's enabled me to continue investing.

Even small gifts can lift you out of a cycle of poverty. $3000 at the right
time made a dramatic difference in my financial situation and will for the
rest of my life. But $30k at the right time would ultimately have been worth
about an extra $500k to me twenty years later.

$30k a year like in the article would have just ensured I was as rich as my
parents. That would have all gone to investments.

~~~
rigged-system
I sometimes think about debt the same way. In college I scraped by on ramen
noodles and avoided doing anything that cost money. For example I wanted to go
camping but didn't have say, $100 for a tent. If I had just put the $100 on my
credit card, I'd probably have happy memories with friends, but now I can't
get that experience back for any price.

~~~
rorykoehler
When I was in college I was broke one summer and not keen on working as I was
heavily invested in producing music (which wasn't paying at the time). I took
a £500 credit card and then immediately blew it on a weekend at the Edinburgh
fringe festival. I spent 3 weeks eating plain white rice afterwards until I
started working because I had to as that was all I had left at home. Though
I'm now interested in FIRE and have a family and this behaviour is the
opposite of what is required I'm still happy I did it. One of the best
memories I have. I should note that I definitely did this from a position of
privilege and if shit really hit the fan I could have always swallowed my
pride and asked for a family bail out. Not sure if I would feel the same way
had this not been the case.

~~~
enjeyw
> I should note that I definitely did this from a position of privilege and if
> shit really hit the fan I could have always swallowed my pride and asked for
> a family bail out.

I think this is really insightful. The difference between being truly poor and
just being a broke college student is that while a broke student may not have
any money on their pocket, they can always call it quits if things just too
hard.* Makes me think more carefully when people claim "hey I know what it's
like to be poor too - I had no money at college!"

*assuming they're not also truly poor.

------
mobileexpert
A refrain that is very true in NYC.

It is a bit off-putting (and just wrong) to read the author talk about white
male privilege being a comparable head start to her half a million dollars of
family money she’s received. (And 28,000/yr still coming!) For an essay
centered on owning up to personal privilege it still has some serious short
comings in recognizing how extreme her wealth privilege is versus almost all
intrinsic characteristic in society privileges.

~~~
crooked-v
Consider that even well-known black movie stars occasionally get the "shopping
while black" treatment. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest-
whitaker-fa...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest-whitaker-
falsely-accused-shoplifting-frisked-new-york-deli_n_2719712.html) Having even
absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
And yet I bet that 95%+ of American white males would easily, easily, easily
make the trade between 'shopping while black' and $28,000/year. I actually
wonder if you took the poorest 50% of white males and asked them what poor
treatment they would suffer for $28,000/year tax-free - how much would they
willing endure? I dare to say quite a lot.

>Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

And having white skin and a penis doesn't make inequality go away either.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Intersectionality
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality))
is an interesting subject. Privilege has many axes and can vary with
circumstances; it's dangerous to reduce to a one-dimensional less-
than/greater-than scale. A black woman from a wealthy family may have more
privilege and more opportunities than a white man from a dirt-poor family, and
that must be taken into consideration if we want to make a better world. But
at the same time, it remains true that the average black woman has less
privilege (in most circumstances) than the average white man.

~~~
njarboe
It almost like one should judge people individually and not by the groups they
are a part of.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content
of their character."

~~~
robotrout
It is politically useful to pick at partially healed wounds to make them bleed
again, rather than allow them to heal completely. I hope that MLK would have
fought against the current trend of re-opening those wounds and undoing any
healing that had already begun.

~~~
forapurpose
> I hope that MLK would have ...

I once said similar things. Then I learned that MLK was told similar things
then - he was constantly told that he was creating trouble by inflaming
things. I strongly encourage you to read his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"
to see not only that the same things have always been said, but his response -
it transformed my understanding of these issues.

> partially healed wounds ...

> re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

I think we should question the assumptions that the wounds were as healed as
perhaps is widely thought by people who aren't in minorities. What makes you
say they are healed to the extent you think? When I ask people who have those
experiences personally and directly, they almost always have a starkly
different view of the amount of 'healing'.

Part of MLK's response is that, unless compelled to address it, people don't
take them seriously and they linger. Racism has lingered in the U.S. for
centuries. IME, people who aren't directly affected by problems tend to
project their experiences onto them - they unconsciously infer that 'I don't
see bad things' means 'it's not bad'.

Finally, a bit of a tangent: MLK is often adopted by white Americans because
his message, misunderstood, makes them feel comfortable. MLK was very much
about making people uncomfortable, and he believed (again, see the Letter)
that that was the only way to foster change. (And IIRC, even after the Voting
Rights Act, surveys showed that MLK had more people in the U.S. who thought
negatively about him than positively.)

------
dumbfoundded
Relevant John Adams quote:

I could fill volumes with descriptions of temples and palaces, paintings,
sculptures, tapestry, porcelain, etc., etc., etc.—if I could have time. But I
could not do this without neglecting my duty. The science of government it is
my duty to study, more than all other sciences: the art of legislation and
administration and negotiation, ought to take place, indeed to exclude in a
manner all other arts. I must study politics and war that my sons may have
liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study
mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture,
navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right
to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and
porcelain.

~~~
zxcvvcxz
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create
weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Why should we aim to have future generations of artists and leisure
enthusiasts, only so the cycle can begin anew?

~~~
DoreenMichele
Yes, obviously, we should strive to not improve anything. Having the
occasional bright spot punctuating the gloom of history is such a waste of
time.

/s

~~~
zxcvvcxz
How about maintaining some sense of balance, responsibility, and austerity in
our societies, instead of forever marching towards a fictional leisure-filled
utopia?

~~~
happytoexplain
What leisure-filled society are you referring to in the post you originally
responded to, and where are you getting the notion that somebody here thinks
such a thing would be a utopia? All I saw in that quote was the ideal of
achieving a world where we have the right to work hard at whatever passions we
have, which sounds like a hacker's utopia to me.

~~~
jdmichal
I think the charitable interpretation would be [0]: Conflation of economic
value with non-leisure classification. That is, if it had economic value, then
they should be able to make a living doing it. And doing an activity for a
living could certainly be seen as an operating definition for "non-leisure
activity".

So, by such definition, if everyone is free to run around and do whatever
activity they want, then either every activity is economically valued and
thereby non-leisure... Or everyone can somehow take part in leisurely
activities without regard to making a living. Which could certainly be seen as
an operation definition for "leisure-filled utopia".

[0] Not GP. This is me possibly putting words into GP's mouth, while also
asserting that these are not my words.

------
ntumlin
Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the
rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using
it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad
wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's
already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the
same way about inheritance taxes, although those are high enough I'm not too
concerned about it.

I hope this doesn't start any arguments, but that's just my take on it and I'm
open to hearing why it's a bad idea.

Edit: I appreciate the responses, they've cleared up some misconceptions I had
and moved my viewpoint a bit.

~~~
secabeen
The gift tax exists largely to prevent people from avoiding estate tax by
gifting large sums of money just before death. That's why they're linked. If
there was an estate tax and no gift tax, people would just give all their
money away in the years leading up to death.

The gift tax exemption is co-mingled with the estate tax exemption, so you can
just think of the gift tax as pre-death estate taxes.

As for why we have an estate tax, the general idea is that oligarcies and
plutocracies are bad; that while you should be able to give your kids (and
grandkids, and even great-grandkids) every leg up in the world, they should
have to work and contribute to society; that the pernicious effects of wealth
snowball as generations pass; etc. Add to that the fact that an estate tax has
the least negative impact on the taxpayer (and their spouse), given that the
taxpayer is dead, it's a pretty good tax. Especially now that the exemption is
so high, I feel like the value proposition is pretty good.

~~~
jws
At the generational time frame, the estate tax serves to capture otherwise
untaxed asset appreciation…

Consider Grandpa buys an asset; as company, land, a football team, whatever.
50 years later Grandpa dies and his will transfers it to you. If Grandpa had
sold it the day before he died and given you the stack of money, he would have
been taxed on the appreciation of the investment. If there were no estate tax,
then that appreciation would never be exposed to taxation as long as families
pass their assets down to heirs.

The estate tax isn't so much about controlling plutocracy as it is leveling
the taxation field between people who buy and sell assets and people with so
many assets that they don't need to sell them.

~~~
bradleyjg
I’d argue that we should eliminate the step up basis at death despite having
an estate tax. The estate tax after all only starts at $11 million dollars.
Why should an estate with $10 million worth of appreciated assets pay no
capital gains and no estate tax?

~~~
RhysU
Why should an estate with $100K worth of appreciated assets pay no capital
gains and no estate tax?

~~~
bradleyjg
Right. I don't see why we need a step up basis at death. If you want to put it
at $10,000 or something just to avoid a lot of paperwork for a de minimis tax
loss, that'd be fine. But otherwise the tax basis of an asset should be
whatever it was bought for, by whoever bought it.

~~~
jws
The problem here is that the buyer is dead and knowledge of the basis may be
lost. It could be written down in a safe place, but not known to estate's
executor.

~~~
secabeen
That was the historic reason, and it certainly had value. In the information
age, I think we could consider requiring the recording of cost basic for
assets purchased after some date. (The SEC started requiring brokerage firms
to record cost basis a few years back, so we're on the way)

------
maerF0x0
> With the arts, a student may be accepted to an arts program without a
> scholarship and find herself $200,000 in debt before realizing she isn’t
> going to be able to get a real paycheck with her arts degree—at least in the
> next decade.

We need the government to stop backing these bad loans. Any bank that makes
enough bad loans will eventually fail, so they try and avoid it. I'd rather
see someone say "Well, you can borrow $50k for an arts degree because that's
all it's worth" ... Then we'll start to see the market fulfill college options
at reasonable prices for artists.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Theoretically college is not supposed to be a purely business transaction.

~~~
monochromatic
College isn’t. Loans are.

------
soared
Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel
against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their
advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

~~~
noonespecial
I have none of those advantages either but I am fantastically lucky to be
basically perfectly healthy.

I can only imagine what someone in chronic lifelong pain must feel about me.

I can just jump up and _run_ whenever, wherever I feel like and my
prescription drug bill each month is _zero_. Talk about an unfair advantage in
life!

~~~
013a
This is it right here.

My teeth are horrible. A combination of genetics and an adolescence/pre-
college diet of soda, I'd imagine. We're talking trips to the dentist every
month or two for fillings, replacing fillings, the odd root canal here and
there.

This year was the first year I've ever "used up" all of my dental insurance.
Let's count my blessings, first of all: Holy shit am I lucky to have a world
class dentist a few blocks away. Holy shit am I lucky to even have dental
insurance at all, provided by my employer.

I recently scheduled a root canal for a tooth that's been causing tremendous
pain. Crippling, anything touches the tooth and I black out for a couple
seconds, creeping into a constant stabbing headache, barely kept under control
by OTC pain meds, kind of pain. Without dental insurance, it'll be $600. Can I
afford to do this every month? Heck no, this will be the last time I go to the
dentist until insurance comes back in 2019.

But how fortunate am I that I can afford to pay for this once? Imagine being
told it would cost even a few hundred at a cheaper dentist, you don't have
insurance, and you're already counting dollars to make ends meet. Imagine
being born in a third world country and you've got this problem; at best you'd
just pull the tooth, which is going to create more problems, hopefully better
problems.

During one dental procedure in the past I was prescribed Vicodin, 30 pills. I
went to the pharmacist; that'll be $3 with insurance. What?!

Pain is a universal human feeling that, if you take a moment, offers an
amazing moment of reflection and humility about how lucky most of us are that
it's temporary. If you have chronic migraines, or joint pain, or diabetes, or
anything like that: it affects _everything_ you can do in life. You can't
think clearly. You can't work as hard as your potential. This impacts all the
future earnings you'll ever earn.

If you're generally healthy, generally pain free, and have access to
healthcare when you're not, you're literally among the luckiest people on the
planet.

------
mberning
First off - I really dislike it when people deal with blocks of people as if
they are a monolith. As if all white people have some innate starting
advantage, all black people have some disadvantage, etc. It’s a brutally
racist mentality that is very common.

Secondly, poverty is not a lack of money or material wealth. That is part of
it and is definitely a symptom. But actual poverty is a culture and a set of
habits that easily pass from one generation to the next. The idea that just
injecting money at the lowest levels of society will fix this is absurd. This
is a multi generational problem that will not be fixed with money. I don’t
know a better answer, but I think about it a lot.

~~~
thex10
> I really dislike it when people deal with blocks of people as if they are a
> monolith. As if all white people have some innate starting advantage, all
> black people have some disadvantage, etc. It’s a brutally racist mentality
> that is very common.

Dislike it all you want, but observing realities that are often shared within
blocks of people (as opposed to randomly distributed across every slice of
every group of population) and daring to discuss them (out loud!) in a
moderately visible venue should not be seen as problematic, and certainly not
as "a brutally racist mentality".

~~~
mberning
It’s not discussed. It’s casually accepted by many even though there is no
evidence for it and evidence against it is ignored or hand waved away.

------
underpand
I disagree with her premise that the government should fund people to have
fulfilling creative careers. That's not how the world works. Creative outputs
generally do not have 'efficienciecy' increases like other fields. Creative
outputs are zero sum: people only have a constant amount of time to use to
consume creative outputs and consumption time has already been saturated.

Efficiency upgrades for entertainment are tied to technology advancement
(think the invention of TV, electronic audio devices, VR, video games), not
creative output.

~~~
rtkwe
I disagree heavily with this. There's been a lot of improvement in the quality
and variety of entertainment too over the years not just the technology used
to deliver them. If restricted to media from say mid century America post TV
most people would be bored stiff by the material available.

It's REALLY easy to wind up with a dismissive attitude towards the arts
growing up and working in tech but never forget how much there's a feedback
loop between artistic exploration and technological advances and how even a
modern 'clean' design encodes a lot of artistic choice behind the scenes.

~~~
kazen44
Also, art does not only have a function in terms of entertainment. Art is
vital to human expression, and a very powerful tool to propose an idea or
"mood".

cities would be terrible without public art for example, they would be dull,
gray concrete silos of empty existance.

~~~
rtkwe
Oh yeah there was a lot more I'd love to say about how arts quietly improve
everyone's millieu even without active conscious consumption. But I figured
I'd better edit myself and not go off on a long rambling rant about the
pervasive dismissal of art and the siloing of society into useful and non
useful work based principally on what value can be captured, commoditized and
quantified in the US in particular.

------
intopieces
My guess is this is of interest to us because it sounds an awful lot like UBI.
But, I think the key difference is that the money is connected to parents, who
presumably have a standard for how it's spent. If E.J. ended up spending it on
drugs or other perceived vices, there's a chance the money might be cut off.
The point of UBI is that it is 100% no-strings-attached, which has a different
dynamic. That dynamic is one that concerns the anti-UBI people.

~~~
coliveira
People treat drug users as if this was something that they chose to do. In
fact, most drug addicts are in this situation because they suffer from a
tendency to drug abuse. Many of them had good jobs and lost them because of
this condition. Holding up on the UBI program for everyone else because of the
behavior of a few that need treatment is absurd.

~~~
vorpalhex
Nobody is compelled to take methamphetamines or heroin, especially not the
first time. Yes, physical addiction is a beastly problem beyond simply
quitting cold turkey - but you sort of put yourself in that boat to begin
with.

It's a bit like not knowing how to swim, and deciding to jump into the ocean.
If you don't know how to swim, don't jump in the ocean.

~~~
clint
Since we're using bad analogies I would argue its more like being offered a
piece of delicious candy and its great and you continue to eat the candy and
its fine.

Eventually you wake up one day and decide you've been gaining too much weight
and you try to stop eating the candy but to your surprise, over the past
several months or years your brain chemistry has been subtly changed and now
your physical well-being and mental state is literally tied to you continuing
to eat the candy.

You can't stop and if you do you're in horrible pain and can't go to work, if
you don't go to work you lose your job and if you want to keep working and not
be homeless you keep eating the candy.

~~~
vorpalhex
Except most people know that heroin isn't like candy. The side effects and
consequences of snorting a few lines of cocaine isn't some secret.

~~~
LitFan
Most people _think_ heroin isn't like candy.

The physical dependence is the same, and there are 4 times as many deaths that
can be linked to sugar as drugs per year in the US.

The only difference is that heroin is illegal and costs a lot more than candy.

~~~
kazinator
Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Secondly, sugar use is extremely widespread. Much more so than use of heroin.
Few people avoid ingesting some sugar.

Even if there were 4 times as many deaths confirmed to be squarely caused by
sugar, that alone shows sugar to be far safer, since it has far more than 4
times the users.

But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info. For sugar,
that is supposedly something like 30 g/kg. The LD50 for heroin (intravenous)
is something like 20 mg/kg: more than a thousand times less.

Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in
hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

~~~
LitFan
> Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Correct - the same goes for "Linked to drugs" and "squarely caused by drugs".

> that alone shows sugar to be far safer

Sugar is safer than cocaine, but that does not make it safe. I shouldn't have
said the _only_ difference - sorry.

> But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info

This is too narrowly focused - the LD50 only refers to the immediate effects
of a substance, not the long lasting effects. I'd argue that long lasting
effects are more dangerous as they're less apparent.

> Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in
> hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

Yes, our bodies need sugar and create it from the food we eat. I was talking
about the food we call sugar ("Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting,
soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food.)

I should use "added sugar" or "refined sugar".

------
ydnaclementine
Boy, does reading this make me a bit frustrated/jealous. Some people are just
incredibly lucky (at no fault of their own!). I would write more, but it would
be more therapeutic for me than entertaining to read for you. I also found the
author referencing gender/race distracting(?), this situation could happen to
anyone.

If you do find this type of stuff about what the wealthy do with their wealth
interesting, I highly recommend a book called `Millionaire Next Door`

~~~
soared
I am consistently frustrated/annoyed/jealous by most of my friends whose
parents paid tuition, rent, etc. I am more annoyed that I hold that opinion
though; its something I wish I could let go and forget but I can't seem to do
it.

~~~
ydnaclementine
I guess it’s to look on the positive side. Like for me, I luckily went to
college, making good career progression, and will have my loans paid off in
the next 5 years with aggressive paying and money management. Many people
don’t even make it to whatever step 0 is of that progression list.

------
Breadmaker
> _That’s a $22.4 million of unearned income for the children of the rich,
> whereas the working class get taxed on their first dollar earned. A person
> could at least argue that my parents earned the capital they live off of.
> But me? I didn’t actually earn it._

~~~
gowld
Nitpick, but this is not quite true. There is the Earned Income Credit, as
well as various welfare payments that working class are entitled to.

~~~
inscionent
For a single adult with no children EIC goes away at $15,000; that is a full
time job at less than $6/hr. The 'working' class shouldn't need be dependent
on welfare and assistance programs.

------
rnotaro
Archive url: [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

------
subpixel
Small sample size, but I happen to know multiple people in their thirties and
forties whose parents continue to fund their 'creative' lives. I can assure
you they are not as happy as you think free money might make you.

~~~
thex10
Wow.

I'd love to hear a perspective from a parent funding their middle aged
children's creative lives. Do they feel like they've failed to make their
children self sufficient?

~~~
ido
Probably just an ideological difference to you. If you're rich enough to
support them throughout your life (& after death), why is it important that
your kids are self sufficient?

Maybe they think being able to practice their creativity/art/passion would
have a bigger effect on their kids' happiness than knowledge that they are
self sufficient.

------
kevin_thibedeau
> I get an annual gift of $28,000, distributed, in my case, in monthly checks
> mailed to my house for $2000 and $334 (to make it easier to deposit
> remotely), completely tax free.

Why would this be necessary? The IRS knows this money is being distributed.
What difference does it make if it comes as an annual lump sum?

~~~
intopieces
I'm not sure, but I think $2000 is the maximum amount she can deposit as a
check using her bank's app. In this case, "remotely" meaning she doesn't have
to go to an ATM or bank teller. As for not giving it all in $28k, I don't
think this is an IRS issue, but a personal preference of the benefactors.

~~~
isostatic
I don't understand why they don't just set up a standing order.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one with a twich about having a $2000 cheque and
a $334 check, rather than 2 cheques of $1167

------
eatbitseveryday
> Still, when my parents told me they were going to give me about $2,000 a
> month, [...] I took it, spent part of it helping my then-boyfriend pay off
> his student loans and put the rest in the bank.

> When my boyfriend suddenly left me (as men in New York are occasionally
> known to do), I had to pay $1,450 a month for rent on my own ($17,400 a
> year) on the lease we had just started, not including utilities. I quickly
> drained my own savings and found myself completely dependent on the gift
> money from my parents.

Why spend your money on another when they can just leave you later? They won't
give you that money back. What did he do to earn your money (parents') to pay
his student loans off?

~~~
ZeroFries
Even marriage doesn't guarantee safety from a break-up, yet most marriages
split finances. Suppose you thought with all sincerity you would get married,
then helping your partner makes rational sense, especially if your partner is
paying interest on a loan. That's your future joint account being drained.

~~~
toasterlovin
To be fair, the level of commitment in a marriage is much higher.

------
chermanowicz
[https://archive.fo/gBd5I](https://archive.fo/gBd5I)

------
darawk
I agree with a lot of this article, but the answer here is definitely not to
enable more people to go into the arts on the public dime. If you want free
college, let's have it be free for everything _except_ the arts. If you want
to get an MBA, or learn mechanical engineering, i'm happy to subsidize that.
But I have no interest whatsoever in subsidizing your creative writing degree.

~~~
mpolichette
Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value _other people_
getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

I really enjoy going to the theater and seeing performances of all kind, just
as I like tech/business advances. I want people to enhance the arts as well as
the sciences.

I acknowledge the idea of focusing on marketability and "ROI" for someone
choosing their own path... However, when providing "access" to education, why
encourage someone who could write the next show I want to see to instead
consider crunching hard maths that they don't care about?

~~~
darawk
> Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people
> getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

Because they increase GDP, and thereby pay back their education in the form of
income taxes, and increase the available wealth for everyone.

~~~
InitialLastName
Alternatively, GDP Or no, I value their artistic output over your ability to
target ads on a CRUD app.

~~~
darawk
I guess you don't care about the millions of people living in poverty, then?

------
backspace_
Previous posts of this same article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324359)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18316647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18316647)

------
thex10
Internal server error (HN hug of death?). Anyone got an alternate link in the
meantime?

~~~
rnotaro
Here you go: [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

------
tomp
> while I agree that society is, often, skewed to favor those SWGs (bless
> their hearts), it’s amazing how little time we spend discussing the largest,
> most obvious barrier to new voices in the arts: money.

This is IMO the most important achievement of feminism: convincing people that
sex, sexuality or race are more important in life than class or money. As they
say, first you divide, and then you conquer.

------
ninju
Why so many reposts of the __same article __in such a short period of time

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ejroller.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ejroller.com)

~~~
soared
Somebody semi-important in the tech industry probably tweeted about it
recently.

------
maerF0x0
site is 500ing --> [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

------
randyrand
The ability to get your children ahead in life is what gives many parents
purpose in life.

Don’t go so far that you take that away.

------
forapurpose
Asking where the money will come from is buying into the way the GOP frames
the issue: It assumes there is a shortage of money.

The U.S. is the wealthiest, highest earning country in the history of the
world, with no real peer. #2 is the U.S. last year. When the U.S. was much
poorer, it provided quality, inexpensive college education. Other countries
that are not as wealthy do it. There is no shortage of money.

------
TonnyGaric
I am getting HTTP 500 when I try to open the link. Anyone else also?

------
endomatrix1
In all honesty, I would dislike this author much less if they received a
single one-time lump sum of $500K rather than a lifetime stipend of $28k.

As it stands, this entire piece feels like fingernails dragging down a
chalkboard screeching “I’m So virtuous and privileged but I announce my
privilege so that gives me the right to express my opinions and tell you how
to run capitalism better!!!”

There is something about the open-ended lifetime of life support that really
turns me off. This is a weak person with low personal responsibility,
childlike even. I personally would have declined this offer from my parents, I
am not a child, I am an adult. It would insult me to be in this arrangement
past the age of 20.

I received around $120K from my parents when I was 23. Through investing, I
have turned it into $500K and never spent any of it on myself (vacations,
food, rent etc). I paid for all my base needs, including my wedding，out of my
salary.

From the time I received the money, I taught myself to be a software engineer
and worked my way up from $55K to (now) $350K / year. It was very difficult to
do that. I even tried to start several startups, which was a brutal amount of
work and worked several jobs at once.

I decided I would not spend the money that was left to me, I felt that would
represent a weakness in my personal character to do that. I don’t intend to
ever spend it, in fact my plan is to triple it in coming years trading stock
options into the coming recession.

Seeing this author go off on tangents about universal basic income and
providing free money to struggling artists sets me off. This is someone who
has no personal accountability to themselves or to society.

I love art, but it isn’t valued in the marketplace. I wanted money so I
learned a valuable skill.

Don’t take free money from your parents as a grown adult and turn around and
give us all a lecture on how to structure society!

------
fmajid
In other words, parasite tries to bite the hand that fed her. Nice.

