I Want My Earned Income Credit

The Internal Revenue Service is bombarded daily by callers seeking what they refer to as THEIR earned income credit. Many of these societal dregs and rejects believe themselves entitled to this free government giveaway, the reward for having worked at a fast food place for three months.

The earned income credit is a refundable credit for low income taxpayers that has become increasingly more popular since its inception in 1975. Unfortunately any positive use of gaining such a credit has been lost in the wave of fraudulent tax returns and an angry, growing sense of entitlement from the poor, uneducated public.

'Where my money?, Where my money at?, Y'all keeping my earned income credit?' and 'Why they reviewin' my return when I can't pay my rent?' comprise a large percentage of the calls received by IRS customer 'servants', may God BLESS 'em! Many of these clueless customers actually believe that the earned income credit, affectionately called eic, is really and truly theirs; that they deserve it for having worked at Wendy's or McDonald's as vice president in charge of fries. Still others believe that, because they have children and lots of them, that the government should reward them. Oh I'm sorry, I thought having children WAS the reward.

I don't know what happened to the concepts of PLANNING one's life through religious and academic education, and PLANNING children within the confines of, dare I say it?: marriage. (Or a least a long-term relationship). When I attended Sunday School as a child, if a school-aged child couldn't read, one teacher in particular would call that child, boy or girl, a Dumb Dora. You see, it was the 1960's. My people were in the throes of the Civil Rights struggle. There was no acceptable excuse for not knowing how to read. Period.

So to all the Dumb Doras out there --- and I have no fear that they will ever read this or anything else that is written --- govern yourselves accordingly. In other words, read something besides magazines and comic books, and plan the life you have been blessed with.

Who should get this government entitlement, you ask? If we could vote on this as an issue, I would vote to give it to senior citizens, handicapped people and their caretakers and college students, in that order. Old folk have already paid their dues, and many still have nothing to show for it. I consider the Economic Stimulus Payments issued last year as a special boon for seniors, but just the tip of the iceberg as to what they should or could get. Many people who care for handicapped individuals (children and adults) have to quit their jobs or work part-time. They deserve an exta boost, too.

My daughter is a college student who, under the legal age for collecting eic without children of her own, is struggling along with me to meet those huge college expenses. When a potential eic recipient, obviously a foreigner, tells me that she deserves the eic, because her daughter is a college student, I cringe. People who earn less than $10,000 can get eic just because they 'support' a child in college!

What do I get? I get the honor and priviledge of being crunched to death as a member of the middle class. We bear the weight of supporting the proud, self-proclaimed, self-indulgent poor while simultaneously enlarging the wealth of those we strive to become. Or as Leo Tolstoy said in the 19th century:

'....Capital oppresses the laborer. Our laborers, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed tha, however much they work, they can't escape from their position of beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which the might improve their position and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And society's so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end.' (Anna Karenina)

Today's American middle class certainly has more ambition collectively than can be obtained from supporting groups other than themselves.

We say the same thing that people say about AIG. Either administer the earned income credit or get rid of it altogether. The effects of holding onto it have only served to cripple society's Dumb Doras even more, and have tied up the already overextended resources of the Internal Revenue Service, an agency whose time might be better spent processing legitimate returns, collecting the correct tax or issuing legitimate refunds.