[markolas]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

But, you are ignoring my point that many of the people you sometimes are faulting and then sometimes are not are the very ones who give enormous amounts to charity.

I'm not ignoring your point. It's nice to give enormous amounts to charity, but that doesn't, by itself, necessarily impress me.

Interestingly, your point that you could live on $700 a month implies everyone could or should which sort of makes you look as if you are acting like you are the only one on the planet in that everyone should adhere to your standards

I think that's a stretch. I don't think everyone should live on $700 a month. I do think that most people have very bloated ideas of what "comfortable living" is.

I mean everyone is different in their needs and in America, unless you change the law, your tax dollars go to support the welfare state and what you give over that is kindness and the stats indicate many American's are very, very kind, which you seem like you are loathe to admit

I'm not touching the welfare state comment. Hmm...maybe you'd like my ex-boyfriend, too. There's more to being kind than giving money to charities, and I'm not convinced that giving money to charities is necessarily always done out of kindness.

Many Americans are also not very kind. Like my psychotic ex-roommate (may he roast in hell for a thousand years) who once took some stuff to Goodwill thinking they were going to *pay* him for it. And he didn't think that because he was stupid. He thought that because he literally could not wrap his brain around the idea of giving something to somebody without expecting to get something back. It was beyond his ability to comprehend. Truly. I didn't think people like that existed, but they really do.

In the end, I say live your life the way you want to live and be as nice as you can to your fellow planet mate and things will hopefully be fine.

tone - friendly as always

Anybody can do whatever the hell they want. I'm not trying to make everybody bow down to me. I just have a couple of "deal-breaker" issues when it comes to having anything more than a casual acquaintance-type relationship with people, and this is one of them.