If Illinois paid for the upkeep, stabling and vet costs for every unsuccessful T-Bred, how many more horses would be produced?

Now substitute humans for horses.

Then consider Mexican bred horses to be eligible 'restricted State bred' races.

Face it we're FUBAR'ed

But as long as a gay couple gets denied a gay wedding cake we have a squirrel to focus on.

god, that is so true.
so often i see or hear people talking about how they're just a few dollars above the limit, so no help for health issues, education/college, and the like.
you're not poor, but you're not where you can really afford some things, but there's no help because of total income. you go from assistance to nothing just like that.
my assistants good friend had a son with heart problems, ended up having to get a transplant heart...a few weeks later, he passed. they got no help at all with all of that, because he worked. so, they have bills like mad. quite often medical is what puts people in the poor house.

^^^^
THIS

Thisthisthis.

I shake my head when people grouse about the inheritance tax, which will not affect any but the very wealthy, completely ignoring the fact that the cost of health care in this country amounts to a 100 percent inheritance tax on the middle class, since the majority of people incur most of their health care costs in the last six months of life and it often eats up whatever they might have had left for their descendants.

My parents' health care costs are absolutely eating up everything my dad spent his life saving for retirement. A relative who just passed away was paying $700 a month for her health insurance premium. She was regularly down to $20 in her checking account a day or so before the next SS payment came in.

'this' what?

another issue that has yet to be tackled....
we are living longer and longer--who's going to pick up the tab for end of life care? right now, you spend down til you're indigent and then medicaid pays-medicare doesn't after 90 days. so after 3 months, if you have to stay-you have to dig really deep. if you're married, spouse can stay in home-and keep one car. the rest have to be sold. life insurance with cash value? you have to either cash it in and give the money to the nursing home, or sign it over to the funeral home.
the average nursing home is over $6k a month for a semi-private room. that's just to stay, that doesn't include any medical care, etc. average length of stay, 2 years.

Meet my neighbors, the Pearce's. Because of where their farmland is located it's probably worth in the neighborhood of $30 million, probably another 5 million in structures and equipment. But yea, let's make his heirs pay $10 million in inheritance taxes and be forced to sell off a third of the land for development because Bob and the 5 generations before him worked too hard! :wf

http://www.pearcefarms.com/about.htm

And now they are saying babies born today could live to 120 or longer. Does anyone ever think about the unintended consequences of this? There isn't enough resources, food, water, jobs to support the current inhabitants of this rock we live on. Think how bad it will be if people start living longer and longer? As I told my friend , the way things are I'm happy that I am mid-way into the far turn

I'm just hoping it's a 6 furlong race and I don't have to go around again.

yeah, i know of life insurance policies that don't mature til age 120-used to be 100. more and more are living past age 100.
thankfully we are having less kids here, and hopefully eventually less all over (hey, catholic church, quit with the preaching against birth control-be fruitful and multiply can only go so far).
current population growth was .7% when i last looked-without immigration, we'd have negative growth.

but yeah, we don't have infinite resources. last i heard we still just have the one planet.


The population of the world is 7.28 billion people as of January 2015.
•During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.
•In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.
•Because of declining growth rates, it will now take over 200 years to double again.


it better not double again. a study i read about not long ago said the max capacity for earth is 10 billion.

was excellent.

The above has been your daily installment of "people who don't understand how the estate tax works." Here's a link to set your mind at rest, Dell, regarding your neighbors and the hypothetical value of their farm:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=2655

:tro:


a lot of wealthier people buy 'second to die' life insurance policies. that way, when both parts of the married couple pass, the benefits are paid, tax free of course, to the person inheriting in order to pay estate taxes.

That is very interesting; I didn't know that. I know someone who works in trusts and estates at a law firm, and he said most of what the law firm does is help ultra wealthy folks figure out how to avoid their estates paying out any taxes at all when they die. Lotta money and valuables held "in trust," which means that an individual doesn't technically own it, a trust, which never dies, owns it.

Of course, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has estate tax on everything a person owns, and if you aren't a direct descendant of the person, the tax will be 15 percent (it's 4.5 percent on direct descendants). So probably the best legal advice there is not to die as a resident of Pennsylvania. ;)

Ask him about it, its a very clever way to handle those taxes. Then on trusts, you have revocable and irrevocable...the latter is probably what wealthier folks do..I know when we talked to the guy handling our trust, I asked if revocable would protect against what I said above about nursing homes, it doesn't. There are rules tho to protect one spouse if other has to get care..Not sure about irrevocable...fits for some but I didn't ask about it. But some folks are uncomfortable with the irrevocable part! Also,, wealthy folks can afford a nursing home or home health..or they have long term care insurance. I recommend everyone look into that!
You can make the trust the beneficiary of life insurance....but you can also place someone else as the policy owner to protect it in case of a nursing home issue, just has to be at least five years before. Right now its a five year look back for assets, but they're talking about changing it to seven...


Oh, and if anyone is buying CDs to have money to leave their kids...take at least a third of that money and buy a life policy.
A 5000 CD gets you five k, and then interest right now is beyond awful
. take that five k to your life agent, let him/her show you what it will do.

A life policy with a beneficiary is also a way to circumnavigate estate tax if your state imposes it. Unless, of course, you list "Estate of" as your beneficiary!

No kidding about CDs having crappy interest rates. Inflation is still talked about like the big bugaboo, but the US policy on keeping it low has led to savings accounts and CDs being worthless as places to grow your income. I remember opening an IRA when I was 25, and then at some point a few years later looking at the calculations of how much I'd have at retirement if I kept it in a basic savings IRA.

I went out the next day and bought "Mutual Funds for Dummies." ;)

And in the D'oh! Department:

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/02/sh...fy-aca-raising

Had a lady in my office the other day...Hubby's a truck driver, they had no health insurance. She had to have open heart surgery, they are struggling to pay over 200k in bills from that. She'd had testing done, the doc called her and said go to the er immediately. Had they not done that testing, we wouldn't have ever had that conversation, because she would be dead.
Also, luckily, they now have insurance because she can no longer be denied due to preexisting issues.

Jesus- $200k! I saw that Arizona sheriff had something like $22,000 raised so far for his and his wife's health bills. I wonder how much of them that will cover.

I hate to think the bills the parents of the little boy that ended up with a heart transplant. And hed lived in children's for months before the transplant. I'll never forget how excited everyone was when he got his heart...and for the first time in forever, actually had color in his face. God, that poor baby. His name was Jude....and that's the name of the patron saint of lost causes.