Quote:
Originally Posted by Pturner
Hi Taj,
I respect your perspective but agree with Gracie on this.
If your DIL's $5,000 would have been better spent on a poor family, wouldn't that be equally true for any of our other discretionary spending. Perhaps it would be more true of other discretionary spending. After all, your DIL spent the money on a loved one. If that's not justified, why would it be justified to spend $250,000 for a house when one could get the same sized house for half that? How could one justify paying $35,000 for a car when $5,000 of that could have gone to a poor child's education. What about jewelry?
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To be honest, I wrestle with my conscience over precisely those issues. I could afford a Porsche - I drive a smaller more environmentally friendly car. I"ve never been the type of person to be impressed by a lot of materialism, while I see a lot of people around here buying big homes, can't live without this luxury and that luxury. With all due respect, according to your logic, we are justified in spending every last penny on ourselves, and the heck with the unfortunate. I guess I feel there should be a line, a moral line, somewhere, on the spending and the giving, but its hard to tell where that line is. I know a lot of people do not give to charities or try in any way to help others. As far as the pets, of course we have an obligation to them for food, shelter, and health care, but what about some of the esoteric stuff that people spend money on - do we really need to spend $2000 on 17 year old fido's teeth? Designer dog clothes? etc, etc., etc. I mean a large percentage of the world lives on less than $2 a day. Think of all the good that money could do for human beings.