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life hard. want refund

Okay, distrubing moment of the weekend. Fell asleep at 7 PM. Woke up? 8 this morning.

*sad* I am getting old. I am only surprised

amireal didn't send a worried email. *g* She now worries if she does not see me for twenty-four hours, I am dying in the hosptial.

Okay, question. For SGA/SG1 people. Can Ancients bring people back from the dead?

Unrelated but relevant:

1.) Obsessively playing sudoku does not, in fact, making fic editing go by faster.

2.) I forgot how much I hate editing even when I love reading the betas beyond all words.

3.) I want a pony.

I have a meeting on Monday evening that is making me tense. It's kind of the reason I've been tense and jumpy all week. It *could* be really really good, or it could be really really bad; it's a toss up. It's education-relatedish and frustrating and gah. It's--kind of. Hmm.

I have a choice. One of them is to formally deny all my education post-high school and start fresh. That's losing somethign close to 100 hours (I'm three core classes (10-11 hours) and an additional 18 hours non-core off from graduation). The other is--uncomfortable and possibly impossible. Monday I'm trying to introduce an option three, which is expensive and kind of inconvenient but doable.

I can do inconvenient.

I'm tempted by the formal denial one if for no other reason than it'll simply things. And this time through I know which classes that no amount of studying will make me good at. But I'd lose my GPA, which is about 3.0 and I kind of like it.

Need *nap*. I really feel like this entire encouragement by manager to finish my degree? Was totally a mistake. He finishes his masters and suddenly he is all about getting me off my ass. Bastard.

To round this out.

1.) I will forever be amused by the people talking about the evils of illegal immigration who I have *seen* picking up day labor on a daily basis. Seriously. That's just funny.

2.) I am always deeply amused by people who whine about how welfare is destroying American while receiving Medicaid and CHIP cards.

3.) Double that for the people that cleverly move all their considerable assets into trusts (and I'm talking about people in the one million area) so they can get Medicaid for nursing home care.

4.) Anyone, anyone, who calls in to explain how all those evil people are getting food stamps and don't deserve it nearly as much as they do. And their taxes support it! (this is most fun with people where I'm reading their case history and noting they've only held jobs that keep them not only below the income tax limit but also manage to continue to receive benefits.)

Sometimes, my job is very strange.

ETA: Going garage saleing and Barnes-and-Nobling, hopefully will have Martha Wells' Entanglement so I have guaranteed good reading for the plane on Friday. THEY HAD BETTER.

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Re 1-4: I agree in as much as it's hypocritical to object to other people getting what you yourself are getting. On the other hand, I'm greatly in favor of playing the system if you have to, since I have filthy European attitudes about certain things, such as that both health care and education should be rights rather than privileges.

When I've analyzed acquaintances' finances in the past to determine ways to get them to a place where they will not struggle indefinitely, I have often recommended that they drop themselves below whatever income level is necessary to qualify for full benefits such as indigenous county health care, food stamps, BOG fee waivers, full financial aid, etc., in the short term, to allow them to get to a financially more stable place. Because I very much believe that the system should be available not only for fostering subsistence living, but also for allowing people to move to stability, and if that takes playing the system, then so be it.

I think if you live in a country committed to making health care and education rights and are taxed accordingly, there's not much to do but play the system, as it is most likely taking most of the money you need to get ahead.

I'm not sure what the US is committed to, but it's sure as hell not what I'd call universal health care or an education that makes a difference. It's like, "Okay, if you're starving, we'll feed you," with a highly elastic definition of starving, and "Okay, we'll make sure you can read, write and cypher," with an even more elastic definition of literacy, which usually does not appear to include math literacy, (else how would the federal government get some of these budget proposals through and continue getting re-elected?) or "Okay, we can't turn you away from the single most expensive form of health care (the emergency room) for lack of insurance," but people wanting to do better than buttered rice, getting a broken leg set or balancing their check book can freakin' whistle for it, because somehow they're paid just enough to pop for not starving, barely reading, not limping around on an unset leg, while being taxed to pay for ...all that.

I'm sure there's an iron law of wages or some other capitalist "ideal" in play here, but in the end? We have our own effed up system to work, and I can't really bring myself to judge anyone who does it.

Ah, I was speaking specifically of playing the system in the US, since the countries that have nationalized health care and education and are taxing accordingly, generally makes these things available with less effort (though sometimes you still need to do battle).

(Also, I think it's a bit of a misnomer to call it "taxed accordingly" because a) the delta in effective tax rates isn't that great, and b) your actual expenditures are the same, if not more, in the US, it's just that we don't call those extra expenditures "taxes". Give you a concrete example: my little sister lives and works in Germany, in a comparable position at a comparable company and gets paid about the same as I do. We're both single. My effective tax rate in the US is about 35%, hers in Germany is about 45%. That 10% difference is very easily nullified by the fact that she does not have copays or employee contributions to her health insurance, no prescription costs, better state disability coverage, better equivalent of Social Security, a fully vested company retirement plan, better vacation/sick benefits, union representation, 6 months termination notice, better state unemployment insurance if she does get terminated, and is currently pursuing a p/t MBA program at a public (free) university.)

But that aside, I think my point is that if you get a choice between earning min wage, which essentially means (here in Cali) you'd take home about $1050 a month (gross pay = $1240/month), and you have no benefits, it might make more sense for you to reduce your hours to where you hit the qualification line for benefits. For instance, if your net pay/month is 1050 you can't afford paying $200+ for health insurance. In Sacramento County, IIRC, you can qualify for free county health care (which is actually quite good since it's provided by the UC Davis Medical Center) if your gross pay is less than $1200/month. Food stamp benefits, subsidized housing benefits, free transportation passes (we have a decent(ish) light-rail/bus system), etc. all have very arbitrary income thresholds/calculation formulae as well. So in the end, you'd be making out far better if you earn just enough to stay below the thresholds that get you all those benefits than you would if you exceeded them by $40/month as in the hypothetical health care example above.

The ideal solution, of course, would be to fix the system and get rid of arbitrary thresholds and instead evaluate each person's real needs individually, but it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens, thus the playing the system part.

And, yes. It does make sense to reduce hours in those circumstances.

Evaluating case by case? Are you applying logic to this? Haven't you been warned about that? ;)

Also, where do we sign up to move to Germany?

*sigh* Yes the same logic I'm applying when I argue that the first step to stamping out a hell of a lot of social problems and poverty-driven crime would be to legalize, regulate and tax prostitution and drugs--I know it'll never happen because there are whole industries built around the illegality of them, but it's the only logical solution.

And I believe Germany is quite well-disposed toward immigration of educated, Westernized people these days--something to do with declining birth rates :)

Heh. You have shameless libertarian leanings, I see. Prohibition having worked [set SARCASM=ON] so very well, [set SARCASM=OFF] I can't argue with that, either. (Also, "licensed companions" are one of my favorite parts of Nora Roberts (writing as JD Robb)'s In Death series. Legalize, regulate, tax, and train them.

Unfortunately, I can't help Germany with their birthrate issues. Aside from the fact that aqui se habla espanol, I'm also generously allowing other women to have all of my children. The cats have refused to share my attentions, and I'm sure the other girls are much better at that motherhood thing.

*blinkblinkblink*

I always thought I was some weird socialist-existentialist-anarchist crossbreeding experiment gone awry when they added too many analytical functions :p

Well, yeah. But "libertarian" takes less time to say. Everything I know about it I learned from a book called "Libertarianism," but the one before that was "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do," which I think sums up the philosophy better.

Am v. drunk now on one and one half ounces of lemon rum and should stop (a) posting and (b) surfing the iTunes store. I'm going to be wondering where all of this music came from tomorrow...

night!

I also seemed to be signed in under my other personality.

orange852 is usually more reasonable and grown up than

justalurkr, but she also drinks a lot and spoils her cats.

That's of course assuming that the system has the money at the moment to allow you to play it.

My father recently separated from my step-mother, and now is living on his own on just his Social Security Disability. (Fortunately it was amicable and she's still keeping him on her medical insurance, because I doubt that he'd be able to manage on just Medicaid.) When we talked on the phone on Friday, he told me that everyone had told him to apply for housing assistance - they'd cover half of his rent, and right now he's just barely getting enough money to both pay his bills and eat for the month. Sure enough, he more than qualified. But then they told him that there's a two and a half year waiting list.

*bitter*

you're starving

I'm sorry but that terminology is not acceptable, the current politically correct term is "very low food security".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501621.html

After all, there couldn't possibly be any hungry people in America, right? Just as only guilty people get arrested, right????

I can't even imagine what I was thinking! [scribbles "very low food security" 100x on the chalkboard]

Thank you for the link, by the way. I would never otherwise have believed you weren't making that up. George Orwell missed a couple of nuances in 1984, clearly.

You're welcome - my jaw dropped when I heard about it awhile back, I could just see some Washington neocon thinking, "gee this hunger problem is a pita, I know! We'll call it something else and then we can say there is no hunger problem!"

gah.

...makes me think of Lucy Van Pelt in "Peanuts" holding out her hand for "five cents, please" to help people with with their insecurities.

Doesn't "very low food security" sound more like a personal problem than "hunger" or "starvation," or am I being unnecessarily cynical?

You silly girl, there is no such thing as unnecessarily cynical here in rosy Bush-land.

Lucy - LOL! Yes, right up her alley!

while being taxed to pay for ...all that.

I actually meant to say "all that, and invading people." Invading people is Very Important, you know.

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life hard. want refund

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Ah, I think I see

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oh, and...

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[facepalm]

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"very low food security"

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oops