I feel so sad when I read stories like these ones... a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her.
To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.
To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.
It seems what you're saying is: you just wish every elderly person just had a wealthy enough family that could comfortably take care of them. But that's completely useless fantasy talk.
And the same could be said for a 18-year-old, living out on his or her own.
But in both cases, it is the result of a poor choice (inattentive driving) rather than a major flaw of society, and has nothing to do with being "too poor to retire and too young to die", as was the supposed focus of the article.
I have. That's why I don't speed.
$300 lost means that I have to find what to cut from a budget to support a family of four, while trying to pay off all my bills with a goal to become debt free before I become this woman's age. Unlike the woman in the article, we don't choose tours of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings over dental care.
I'd like to know how the woman in the article budgeted her money 34 years ago, when she was my age. Then we're closer to comparing apples with apples, even though according to the article she never had children to further strain her finances.
A lot of the discussion in this entire thread involving the traffic ticket focuses on how such a ticket is devastating to the poor and the weakest of wrist-slaps to the uber-rich. I see very little discussion of the potential impact on the majority of us in the middle class, or how personal responsibility factors into the mix.