Texas Insider

4:29 pm CST - July 26, 2010

Posted under Opinion

Staying Home & Holding Out

By Ruben Navarrette

SAN DIEGO — A few years ago, before the current recession took hold, I was speaking to a group of high school students and wound up being given a pop quiz. I assured my audience that by setting high goals, working hard, making sacrifices and never giving up, they could be successful.

One student quickly raised his hand and asked for my definition of success. I told him it went beyond material wealth to doing something you love and find fulfilling, but still gives you enough economic sustenance to prevent you from abandoning ship and moving on to something else. The student smiled and gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

I think about that encounter whenever I interview an academic who has studied the work habits and job preferences of so-called Millennials, ages 18 to 29. Or when I read about surveys of young people who put job satisfaction before concerns about salary or security. And I wonder if my answer did more harm than good.

In the context of the immigration debate, I’ve written a lot about Millennials not having much of a work ethic — especially for the hard jobs their parents and grandparents did a generation or two ago. And it’s not just the worst jobs that some young people are avoiding. It’s almost any job.

The unemployment rate for young Americans hovers at about 14 percent, compared to the national rate of 9.5 percent. Another 23 percent of young people are not even looking for a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But there’s another side to this coin. For those young people who do want to work, and those who went to college and perhaps even graduate school with the expectation that acquiring more education would automatically lead to a good job, many don’t believe in the concept of paying their dues. They tell reporters and survey-takers that they want to be assured they won’t spin their wheels in a dead-end job.

Life offers no such assurances. And besides, dues-paying worked pretty well for earlier generations, who seemed to have more respect for the concept of work in general. You took a job even if it wasn’t your ideal job with the hopes that other opportunities would open up and you’d move on. For the young worker of the 20th century, any kind of job was considered valuable, if nothing else because it provided a way of becoming self-sufficient and moving out of your parents’ home.

Today, with many Millennials not willing to work their way up and holding out for their dream job, even if it means turning down what earlier generations would have considered good offers of other employment, it’s no wonder that more and more 20-somethings are still living with mom and dad. The Pew Research Center found that in 2008, when the recession began, the percentage of the population that lived in households where at least two generations were present inched upward to 16 percent. In good times, that figure might be as low as 12 percent.

The stay-at-home youths include 24-year-old Scott Nicholson, who was the subject of a recent article in The New York Times. The unemployed college graduate lives with his parents in Grafton, Mass., while searching websites for corporate job openings and sending out resumes for those he finds acceptable. After a host of interviews, he was recently offered a job as an associate claims adjuster for an insurance company. The position paid $40,000 a year, more than enough to get him out on his own. Nicholson turned the job down, preferring to hold out for the corporate position he really wanted — one that would give him an opportunity for career advancement.

It’s difficult to feel sorry for someone who, just out of college, turns down a starting job that pays $40,000 a year to wait around for something better. And I wonder how many other young Americans out there are making similar choices.

Now that the Congress has approved a bill to extend unemployment benefits, the mainstream media are churning out stories intended to make unemployed Americans look helpless and sympathetic. Some of them are both. But some are neither

3 Comments

CWJensen
7:35 pm CST
July 26, 2010

The Unemployed may be the only ones that benefit from these DIRTY ROTTEN THIEVES:
Tax Hikes
Take a look at this
In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on
January 1, 2011:
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher
marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28% – The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The
“marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The
standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6
percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax”
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax”
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs)
of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs
and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last
year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was
created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This
will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011,
all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to
deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is
curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

PDF Version Read more: http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171##ixzz0sY8waPq1

Now your insurance is INCOME on your W2’s……
One of the surprises we’ll find comes next year, this is what follows – - a little “surprise” that 99% of us had no idea was included in the “new and improved” healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!

Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever
health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that’s a private concern or governmental body of some sort. If you’re retired? So what; your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That’s what you’ll pay next year. For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it’s even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don’t have insurance and it’s only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries…..

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE
PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 “requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income.”

Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.

Why am I sending you this? The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book. WE CAN PUT ENOUGH CONSERVATIVES BACK IN OFFICE THEY CAN DE-FUND ALL THIS CRAP AND GET IT OFF OUR BACKS. REMEMBER THAT OBAMA IS THE MOST TALENTED LIAR EVER TO DARKEN THE WHITE HOUSE DOORS— People have the right to know the truth because an election is coming-IN ——————NOVEMBER——————VOTE————– CONSERVATIVE !!!!

SJK
9:30 pm CST
July 26, 2010

God hel[ us get these dirty slime balls out starting November! EVERYBODY get out and talk to your neighblors and educate them on what these lowlifes are doing to the American people and this country! It is imperative that everybody knows what is coming if Hussein and his cohorts stay in office! EVERYBODY and your nieghbor, friend, and faily get out and vote CONSERVATIVE in November! If ever your life depended on your vote…NOW is the time that it REALLY does!

Thanks CW for the information! I am sending it to everyone in my address book!

alicia
12:30 pm CST
July 26, 2010

Why on earth don’t the parents throw their educated offspring OUT?!

I’ve known for some time the extent of the crushing tax burden that will soon be imposed on us. One…….only one……reason I’m so frantic to get out our vote in November.