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Coot is a nice way of describing senior citizens...you kind hearted lib you.
A lot of people that age do like working, just for the sake of working.
Working disabled, disoriented 70 year-old coots till they die on the job earning minimum wage...and calling it 'letting them work', instead of 'making them work'...
Plan Would Let Seniors Work to Pay Taxes
Dec 25 01:38 PM US/Eastern
By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press Writer
GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) -LinkAudrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn't want to leave Greenburgh.
Greenburgh doesn't want her to leave, either.
The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.
"People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a place with less taxes, leave behind their family and friends," said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
He envisions retired doctors mentoring schoolchildren, retired accountants helping with the town's finances, retired lawyers offering their services for a discount. But there are plenty of less-skilled jobs that need doing, he said.
"It's not like we're going to see grandma running the snowplow," he said. "There are lots of things people can do for the town and it wouldn't cost us that much to pay them."
The proposal has caused a stir in Greenburgh, a town of 90,000 in Westchester County, which has the nation's third-highest homeowner property taxes. The plan would be unusual if not unique in New York, but similar programs are considered successes in Colorado, Massachusetts, South Carolina and elsewhere.
Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes—perhaps $2,000 to the town—and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.
Talking to Feiner last week at the town senior center, she said, "I would work as long as it was a job where I could sit."
"You could be a receptionist!" Feiner said. "You could greet people right here, when they come in."
"That I would love," Davison said.
If the old coots are healthy enough, and want to volunteer to work at their local schools or libraries, more power to them, but don't tell me your 'letting' them work off their tax debts by doing menial jobs for the government because you raised the taxes on their homes - that's indentured servitude..
Last edited by Nbadan; 12-27-2007 at 03:32 AM.
Coot is a nice way of describing senior citizens...you kind hearted lib you.
A lot of people that age do like working, just for the sake of working.
It's amusing how all of a sudden working to pay the tax man is some horrible concept. When it's withheld from your pay check it's your money. Really.
Anyways, I'm not too sure why seniors should get that big of a discount on their property taxes (yes, I know, limited income, etc). But their houses usually will stay in the family after they die. So the family essentially gets a nice discount until the old "coots" pass on. Meanwhile the younger members of the community's middle class get stuck with a larger part of the property tax burden.
Funny, with all the blather about family values, no one stops to ask themselves why elderly people in this country live alone, away from their families, instead of sharing a homestead with their kids and grandkids.
A lot of elderly live alone because they want to, not because their family neglects or shuns them. It's a matter of desiring independence and also not making themselves a burden on anyone else.
It speaks to the degredation of our culture that we would consider elderly people a "burden". Here's hoping we get over our fixation on the model family of the 50's, particularly now that both parents work because they have to.
The "burden" consideration comes from the elderly themselves, moreso than their families. That seems to be one of the main reasons the elderly individuals I've known don't take up offers from their families to move in with them.
People act as though the elderly are that different from you and me. Yes, they have different concerns, but they're still people. Do you want to be dependent on someone else again? Do you want to live with someone else calling the shots? In 40 or 50 years we're going to be in their shoes. I'm not sure about you, but I will want to be living on my own.
OK I'll be the asshole.
Reality is that they are a burden, but they are your family that you love and care for so you do things for them out of love and responsibility. They wiped your ass for 18 years or longer, so you should do the same. They still are functional members of society, but eventually they all become a burden in some way or another.
Absolutely true. Some people, especially the previous generations, have no interest in retirement. They liked to work, they wanted to work and probably still do.
where's the resident old-bag-of-bones, Xray, to tell us young punks what old people do?
My experience lead me to the opposite conclusion, that they would prefer to live with their kids and grandkids, but there may be a gender difference there (Grandma vs. Grandpa), most of the elderly people I've known being women.
That's fine. What happens when your age robs you of the ability to be independent? Off to the nursing home...wouldn't want to be a "burden", after all...
Home ownership is just a loan since we have to pay property tax until we die and if we don't we lose our homes.
Maybe so. Or home care.
I don't see this as a nation that neglects its elderly. Between social policies which redistribute plenty of funds their way and what I've seen personally with my own family and others, the welfare of the elderly is a significant concern. Whether or not the elderly actually live with younger members of their family is not a good measure, in and of itself, of their family's compassion.
I'm not questioning the political considerations for the elderly (they sure as make their concerns known at the ballot box), I'm questioning the myopic American cultural concept of "family values", which presupposes that the multi-generational household is abnormal.
I don't believe "family values" can be defined by an aversion to the "multi-generational household", nor does the lack of such a household indicate a lack of concern for elderly members of one's family.
I've always been in favor of reduced or eliminated property taxes for the retired and disabled, on a means tested basis. The retired should never lose their home or pay property taxes they cannot afford. That goes with those who are truely disabled also. Not just the lazy asses.
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