I love stories of extreme personal finance. In the past I’ve written about a guy who was homeless by choice, how to pay off your mortgage in three years, and about the most fuel-efficient driver in the world. Regular readers know of my fondness for these stories and sometimes e-mail other examples.
None, however, compares to the story Dave recently sent to me: In Albuquerque, New Mexico, there’s a guy who lives on less than $10 per day. Don Schrader, a Bible major and former pastor, survives on just a few thousand dollars per year. He lives in 151 square feet of space, which he notes is just 1 square foot more than Thoreau’s cabin by Walden Pond.
A recent Albuquerque Tribune feature on Schrader included the following sidebar summarizing his personal finances:
Don Schrader lives more than halfway below the threshold for taxable income for an adult younger than 65 (which is $8,750). In 2005 his expenses were $3,885. His 2006 tally of $3,635 was his second lowest ever.
“I’m in severe poverty, and I live well. Really well,” he says. “I wouldn’t trade places with any millionaire, any billionaire on the planet.”
Schrader turns 62 on Nov. 20, and that will make him eligible to collect Social Security. (His main job over the years was as an $8-an-hour nude art model at UNM.) His monthly benefit is expected to be $357, which is about $50 more than he usually lives on, including his rent, which is $210. (His food budget is about $2 a day.) … He has bank statements that listed his balance at a local credit union at about $14,000.
Schrader doesn’t own a stove, a fridge, a television, a shower, or a sink. According to the New Mexico Daily Lobo, he hasn’t owned a car since 1979, and hasn’t ridden in one since 07 April 2001.
He’s healthy, happy, and fit.
Why does Schrader live this way? Why does he voluntarily submit to poverty? He’s an anti-war protester, and has been since 1969. In his hand-written Wikipedia entry [PDF], Schrader argues:
Nothing in life is more important than refusing to pay federal income tax for war — no matter who is president. The best way to refuse to pay federal income tax for war, with no fines and no threats from the IRS, is to live simply — below the federal income taxable level.
Schrader’s choices are too extreme for me. I could not make the sacrifices he makes. Much about his lifestyle makes me uncomfortable. If this is what it takes to live on $4,000 a year in the U.S., I’m not willing to do it.
Here are the articles I drew on for this story. But beware — Schrader’s lifestyle and philosophy will be extremely distasteful for some readers. (I’m not joking.)
- The Albuquerque Tribune: Don Schrader reveals the inner layers of his life
- New Mexico Daily Lobo: Don Schrader openly expresses life’s convictions
- Wikipedia: Don Schrader’s hand-written article
What about you? Could you live on less than $4,000 a year? What values are you compromising to maintain your current lifestyle? How wrong is it that we all make these sorts of concessions? How do we decide which principles are worth standing up for and which we’re willing to let go for a few bucks? For a few thousand?
Photograph by Kit_Z.
This article is about Frugality, Funny Money, News
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Yikes, I’d be geeked to be getting by on $4000 a Month. Can’t comprehend such a life.
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this is about the range i live in. i have chosen a lifestyle of poverty, and my monthly expenses are about $400. there are some sacrifices, but also many benefits, like liesure time – who some may call a measure of wealth. i can’t live on a dollar a day, like half the planet, but i can do my part by getting as close as possible, maybe $12/day, avg for the year. it takes a conscious choice.
i am also a tax resistor, and do so not by evasion, but like in the story, by staying below the federal poverty line so as never to owe any tax.
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I couldn’t live the life he’s living either. Even if he ate more conventionally. I certainly admire his persistence in living out his convictions.
I wonder why people are so against him. Different isn’t necessarily wrong.
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From the Alberquerque Tribute article:
1. Later, after describing his urine therapy (he bathes in it and says he drinks it while he exercises every morning), he adds: “Of course, I grew up on a farm . . .”
2. …his only meal of the day, every day. It’s an uncooked “soup” that consists of wheat kernels, sunflower seeds, flaxseed, garlic, red pepper, apricot kernels, ginger root, carrot and wild greens from the neighborhood or his garden, all soaked in purified water for 24 to 48 hours and then blended into a puree. He drinks 5 to 11 pints of this concoction a day.”
He seems like a really interesting guy, and I admire the way he seems so emotionally open. But… bathing in urine?
Bathing in urine?!?
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How can you be a tax resistor and reconcile the fact that you derive many benefits from taxes other people pay?
Sounds a bit hypocritical to me. I would feel like I was getting a handout.
Ah well, to each his own I suppose.
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I’m reminded that “Better is always different, but different isn’t always better.”
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He seems like a really interesting guy, and I admire the way he seems so emotionally open. But… bathing in urine?
I know. I know. One of the articles — not sure if it’s one that I linked to or not — describes the smell in his home as overpowering. One can only imagine.
As I say, I admire him on some levels, but could never lead his lifestyle. Also, my warning still applies: this guy’s lifestyle will drive many people insane on multiple levels.
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His personal habits clearly indicate that he is a mentally disturbed individual. Perhaps one day he will get the help he needs.
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I would agree, he is definitely deranged and needs help. He is still seeking approval from his deceased mother and father. Who do you think pays for all those boxes that he rips off from the USPS?? Defense is one of the major programs that our tax dollars go to and I am all for it.
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I looked but couldn’t figure out how much he spends on rent. That must be a big part of his expenses.
Dan Price lives in a hobbit hole near Joseph, OR that says he lives on about $5000 a year. Price lives a much more normal lifestyle than Schrader.
I bet if I lived in an off-grid shack on my paid for property and biked everywhere I could live on $4000.
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Schrader is a local celebrity, though I’ve never met him. He supposedly hangs out not far from where I live, though.
I’m pretty sure I could never live as frugally as he does, though. He often writes letters to the local alternative newspaper talking about his lifestyle, and I think I’m too attached to my clean water and variety of foods to live like that.
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Like Ernesto, I would find it hard pressed for my wife and I to live on $4,000/month let alone per year. Due to the expensive location of the Washington DC region, I would probably opt for buying a solar panel and moving to a Developing Nation and get more bang for my $10 a day.
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@Neil – the sidebar notes in the Albuquerque Tribune article provide insight into his expenses: “His monthly benefit is expected to be $357, which is about $50 more than he usually lives on, including his rent, which is $210. (His food budget is about $2 a day.)”
More power to him for living the way he wants to. This is what freedom is all about. This is not a lifestyle that I could emulate (or want to).
His sense of hygiene in particular is very challenging to me – bathing in his own urine? Pity the poor art students who sit in class with him as a model… Oh dear.
What is wrong with using water and soap to clean oneself?
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Wow, Way to much for me
I understand how he would want to live under the poverty line for paying taxes, but then does he use the library or any city parks?
There are good things to paying even a little in taxes… the point is to pay from the paycheck and no more… no refund, nothing due
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@seawallrunner – Glad to see that someone can spell Albuquerque. It was misspelled four times on this page before you showed us the light.
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I live on about $1000 a month now but I don’t think I could get down to his level. Without work related expenses though I could probably live pretty comfortably at the $8750 threshold.
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Aiigh! This guy lives in my neighborhood (not a terribly cheap one, BTW), and I see him walking around all the time. It’s hard to get his bromades on the benefits of urine out of your mind when you see him. He also writes many letters to the editor about lowering the age of consent, as well.
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Yeah, he is a little kooky, but I don’t think actually deranged. As to seeking approval from his parents, I think that’s a perfectly normal thing for adults to do, no matter their age; at least he seems aware of that.
This story resonates deeply with me, primarily in the matters of religion and sexuality. I understand how jarring those questions can be, but I admire that he’s chosen to live simply. I seem to keep trying to re-establish some stability in my life by going the opposite way, towards deeper materialism.
I think this guy is living a life that would be awesome to aspire to (minus the urine).
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To say the least, that is a little extreme. I couldn’t make it 2 months on less than $4k.
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I lived on $525 a month Canadian from 1993 to about 1997. I was a self-supporting student who was not eligible for student loans. This amount didn’t include my tuition.
However, living on $6300 a year was pretty exhausting, stressful, unhealthy and often unsafe. My rent took up around $350/mo of the $525, leaving me with $175 for $65 in groceries, a $54 bus pass and $15 for social activities, with a bit of money left over. I often couldn’t afford the bus pass, so I would use one transfer to go both ways and hope that no one looked too hard.
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Re: not paying taxes. The guy isn’t evading taxes; he’s simply lowered his income enough so that he legitimately doesn’t owe them. I don’t think I’d want a system where you have to make enough money to pay taxes before you can use the library.
Anyway, it’s nice to talk about libraries and parks, but the fact is that the current proposed national budget allocates fully 67% of the budget to military/defense spending. If you are strongly anti-war, it has to sting to work hard only to have, let’s say, 15% (.25 tax rate times .67) of your income go towards military spending. I admire what this guy’s doing.
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For an example of a more normal lifestyle while using voluntary simplicity as a means of tax resistance, check out http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/. He works for three to four months out of the year and earns around $30k, about half of which goes into various tax sheltered retirement accounts. That gives him about $15k a year to live on and a pretty secure future as well.
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Hey! Don Schrader made it on GRS!
I’ve seen him around town quite a bit, mostly hanging out in front of the University holding anti-war/pro-gay-sex protest signs while wearing as little as the cops will let him. He is a colorful addition to the city.
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Good for him. I have way more admiration for people like this who “protest” taxes by living below the taxable income line than those tax protesters who rake in $150K, drive hummers and suddenly have an epiphany involving Ayn Rand.
I have no desire to sit on the bus next to a guy who reeks of urine, but neither do I have a desire to site next to a guy blasting music out of his iPod, some idiot yapping loudly on their cell phone, or someone who has bathed in perfume–and those affect me much more frequently.
I agree completely with Anne.
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One: bathing in and drinking urine isn’t an automatically crazy thing. Plenty of ascetics do it, including some Buddhist monks in China. Also, his urine won’t have much if any urea in it because he eats no animal products, so it’s pretty much safe for drinking.
Two: I lived on about 350 a month while in college. Tuition was paid for with scholarships/loans, but I rented the garage of some friends. My rent with utilities was 250. I owned a car, though rarely drove. I was fine with my lifestyle for the time. It helped trim distractions while I was in school.
Afterwards I made about 700 a month and rented a room for 365 including utilities. I managed to pay down a bunch of school debt and still buy myself comics, games, books etc… Today I’m debt free. My husband and I live off around 1800 a month, even though we bring home around 3k monthly. It isn’t that hard: we eat out, we buy things we want, we own two cars and rent a 1500 sq ft house. Sometimes it makes me wonder what people mean when they say they couldn’t live off less than 4k a month (do you have 5 kids? Massive medical or consumer debt?). I imagine if they had to, they could. And that it would be easier than they think.
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Local services like libraries and parks are usually funded through local property taxes. Since he’s paying rent, we can assume that property taxes are embedded in his rent, unless the property is exempt or somewthing (like if he lived in a church).
It’s really hard to find living spaces as small and as cheap as he has. My place is twice as large and more than twice as pricey, and I’m pretty much at bottom of market.
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For two years during college (1996-1998), I lived in an apartment even smaller than this. The rent was $188, including utilities. It was less than 100 square feet (about 13 ft x 7 ft), and had kitchenette with 2 burners, fridge, no oven (or microwave). During one month I paid a total of about $30 for food, and of course, I didn’t own a car. That was some seriously cheap living.
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For the record, most of the libraries and parks in Albuquerque are supported by property taxes — which are paid only by property owners. So, whether Schrader pays income taxes or not, his rent is going to a land owner who, in turn, is paying those taxes.
Schrader lives in one of the densest parts of the city, just a block away from the only major university. His rent is unusually low, and I would guess that he’s living in a converted garage.
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I like clean and I’m not sure how not being so to that degree saves money (particularly).
However he achieves it, it is Frugality at its best: using the “lack of” money towards an end.
I wish I were brave enough to live below the taxable level for no other reason than the one quoted from the Wikipedia article.
I wish we could sort our taxes into general “risk” categories like we can our investments. I want a Pacifist set of derivatives. Not a pacifist? Fine, I’ll pay for the hungry children; you pay for the bombs if you must have them.
Now, I can’t talk smack because you don’t see me giving up this computer to go live on $3k a year in spite of my so-called principles…guess that’s why preachers get so much millage out of that ol’ camel and eye-of-the-needle.
But, if all of us who had a [non-extreme] choice otherwise, subtracted our 15% of income from the War Machine’s coffers–there’d be a lot less war.
I wonder what other societal impact, local communities specially, frugal thinking could have applying the “lack of money” theory?
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Like AB, I’m intrigued by the commenters who say they couldn’t live on $4000 a month. I agree, if you had to, you could. I currently make $2200 a month, am saving 40% of that,and I don’t feel deprived in any way. I also live in the 2nd most expensive city in Canada. I’m not particularly unusual amongst my friends either.
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I won’t comment on anything outside this post because the only thing I have read related to this guy is the post.
But why is it that we have such a desire to find fault in someone who is different.
As to hypocrisy all human beings are hypocrites.
I am not saying everthing about this guy’s life is admirable but he certainly has great willpower, is willing to sacrifice for some beliefs, and looks to be in quite good shape for his age.
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>> 4k a month (do you have 5 kids? Massive
>> medical or consumer debt?)
You must live somewhere cheap. If I ran the numbers here in Vancouver for a 30-something couple with a 2BR condo, I’d end up with:
Mortgage & strata fees $2,500
Property tax $200
Home insurance $25
Life insurance $120
2 bus passes $150
Phone $50
Hydro $75
Groceries $400
total $3,520
This doesn’t allow for a house, kids, living more than one fare zone from work, long distance calls, etc. I also forgot to throw in medical insurance, which would probably be another $50 x 2 people = $100 or so a month.
Now if you wanted to live in a 2 bedroom suite in a damp basement an hour from downtown, you could cut this cost by about $1500 a month. But then you’d need to increase the transit cost.
So $4k a month for DC? That’s not hard at all. A normal middle class family would be hard pressed to live anything resembling a normal life (and I’m talking a far-flung suburban condo or townhome) here in Vancouver if they took home less than that.
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I would guess that Schrader and I couldn’t differ more in terms of our priorities and values, but I have to admire someone who is willing to make sacrifices based on principle. I also think he’s partly nuts, but I admire him nonetheless – especially if he doesn’t try to change the way I live, except through his example. And no, there is no way I could live the way he does!
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I lived on about this much in college (including booze, not including tuition), so it can certainly be done.
The problem I have with this man (besides bathing in urine… ick) is that he acts as though his opinions and lifestyle should be something that everyone aspires to. I work in defense (not missiles), so I don’t mind paying taxes that are being paid back to me. He is so smug, and to me it almost seems as though he’s doing it not for his ideals but so he can judge others based on it.
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I don’t think I could ever live in less than $4000 per year. It’s amazing how passionate this guy is about NOT paying taxes. I’d rather pay taxed so I could have stuff. Water is good. Very good.
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I’ve got a few comments to add:
1. I aspire to be wealthy. I feel no guilt in in holding as a core value the drive to financial success.
2. This man fails to recognize that there are regimes and cultures all over the world that would not permit him to express his views. If we did not have a military to prevent it, be sure that communists, fascists, and extremists would be happy to put him in jail or kill him for his views. The taxes others pay keep him safe.
3. @ Anne – Military spending for the FY 2009 budget is $515.4 billion out of a 3.1 trillion dollar budget (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48860). Even using the $700 billion dollar figure presented by Fred Kaplan at Slate.com, defense is between 16.6% (or $515/3100) and 22.5% (or $700/3100) of federal spending (NOT 67% as you state). Furthermore, this puts defense spending at between 4% and 5% of gross domestic product, which IS NOT an unreasonable amount given the security this provides.
4. Military spending is recycled through the economy through salaries and purchases from private companies. The money paid to contractors returns to shareholders and provides employment. Taxes are collected back from all of this spending. Money is also used for research and development of new technologies and products that benefit civilian and military alike (DARPA funded the early internet for example). In other words, only a fraction of defense spending is actually spent on bullets and bombs that are used to make war.
5. The guy in this story is misguided. He needs to start making a positive contribution to the world beyond being the local loon. If he is mentally ill he needs to seek treatment. If he wants to further peace causes he needs to use his actions to oppose extremism rather than embody it.
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Here’s a YouTube video of Schrader talking about the benefits of piss drinking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnSJY111yk
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I think that the more you earn, the more you think you cannot live on less than you earn. People’s tolerance for minimum level of comfort rises slowly over time, and ‘wants’ become ‘needs’.
Coming from a third world country originally, where some people still don’t have electricity and running water, you learn to live with what you have and you never imagine you need any more than you have. Until you get it. Then you can’t live without it.
Without trying to live like a primitive, you really don’t need the cable tv, the snacks, the fifteen-minute showers, the movie rentals, or the super-sized soda. You can live without and be just as happy, if not moreso.
-Rich.
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Amen to Andrea and Adfecto – excellent points. People take for granted that we live in a free , safe society. We do need to pay for this, it does not come free. Most of the posters recall their college years. Yes even I was very poor along with EVERYONE else that went to college. Now I have a wife and 3 kids to feed, a little different story. This guy is not a college student.
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Its a fine line between clever and stupid
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I’m going to have to disagree with Andrea a bit, Vancouver is where I live, in a very central location (not a damp apartment) and although I rent, like I said earlier I get by easily on much less than that. My point of course is that if you had to, you could. So you would rent rather than buy (a much cheaper option in Vancouver). There are much cheaper cell phone packages ($10/month) and VOIP is best for long distance calls.
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VOIP means you need to pay for Internet. Cell phones may be cheaper than regular phones, but then you have no landline. (My sister works for a cell company and tells me that there are tons of places, including apartments, where there is no coverage.)
My housing example was for owning a condo. If you want to rent, you could get by with less. I think I noted that you could cut $1500 from the above.
This is, of course, for basics and doesn’t allow for mere survival.
(BTW, whoever thought I was poor along with everyone else in college should take a look at the fact that I was living on much less than even a person on student loan got and that even loans students are allowed to hold a part time job, which means they reasonably lived on 50%-100% more than I did.)
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I understand the temptation to express contempt against taxes and the military. The mechanics of life are easy to ignore. We drive our cars and forget about the engine, until it breaks down. People enjoy their peace, freedoms, and societal amenities, while forgetting about the taxes and sacrifices which allow them. People don’t remember until there is a breakdown.
A war being fought in another land is like being stuck in traffic behind a car that won’t start. It’s not my problem, it just annoys the hell out of me. When MY car breaks down, i.e. when the war is at home, suddenly it’s an emergency worthy of my care and support.
War, as an academic topic, is bad. It’s a tragedy, and a horrific shame. However, sometimes it is neccessary.
“War is not the answer! Diplomacy!”, they say. Diplomacy didn’t work for the colonists, and almost 100 years of diplomacy did not end slavery in America. War did that. War stopped the Nazi holocaust. Diplomacy? Great! Whenever possible, for sure. However, we had better be ready for when it isn’t possible. With any luck, today’s war may even bring about lasting freedom to a people long denied.
I know when people bemoan taxes and the military, they don’t always mean it. I vent, too. But, we all know that reality isn’t as simple as we’d like.
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Andrea- I live in the same city as JD.
We rent, as I said. We share a 5bed/4bath house with two friends close in to Portland, OR. We aren’t planning on buying a house for at least 2-3 more years because we want to put a big enough down payment that we’ll be paying less than 1k a month in mortgage and so we can avoid mortgage insurance.
Our monthly breakdown looks like:
Rent + bills (including electric, water/sewer/trash, cable tv/internet)= 1021
Climbing gym membership: 42
Car Insurance: 87
Gas: 90
Food:
Lunch- 120
Food out- 100
Groceries-200
Cell phone- 42
Entertainment: 100
Total: 1802
The bills are listed here at the highest they get, which is always in Jan because we run the heat and the water/sewer/trash quarterly comes then too. So 1021 is the max my husband and I have paid for the last two years anyway in this house.
As for health insurance: we each get it free through our jobs. My husband pays around 60 a month for me for dental (since I don’t get that through my job), but it comes out of his check before taxes and thus I don’t count it into our take home since we never see that money. Same with the 6.5% he contributes to his 403b. We also get a free bus pass, but we pretty much drive anyway, especially in winter.
There are areas we could cut down. My husband eats out every day, though he keeps it simple with a cheap sandwich or bento bowl type lunch. I don’t have to spend so much on books or video games (where that entertainment budget goes pretty much every month). We could quit eating out, quit driving everywhere etc…
But we don’t. Because we like our quality of life. And we’re not spending anywhere near 4k a month to enjoy it.
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More power to him. A little strange, sure, but he’s doing it his way, which is more than most people can say. Interesting piece, J.D.
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The closest I’ve ever done to this is to live out of a car for a month…and I can’t tell you how amazing it was to get back home to utilities. Anyone who can make that a permanent lifestyle is more principled that I could be.
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I think that its admirable that he found a legal way to stand by his convictions.
I could see myself doing an extreme personal finance thing once I had a reason. I already live fairly poorly in order to get rid of my debt. But I wouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing. [and i would never want to drink urine, thats a little messed up]
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@Anne said: “Anyway, it’s nice to talk about libraries and parks, but the fact is that the current proposed national budget allocates fully 67% of the budget to military/defense spending.”
Where’d you get those numbers? I can’t find anything that gets anywhere near them. The OMB says the estimated ’08 military budget is about $450 billion dollars, out of a total budget of $2.7 trillion (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf) I calculate that to be about 17%. Even the wikipedia disagrees with you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States), saying that 2007 costs were about $626 billion or about 3.7% of GDP. Compare this to Saudi Arabia’s 10% of GDP, or North Korea’s 22% of GDP or China’s 4%.
Sorry, as much as I’d like to see some of that funding redirected to other areas, you aren’t helping your case by providing such misleading and incorrect numbers.
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icup Says:
>>a tax resistor . . . I would feel like I was getting a handout.
living in poverty as getting a handout?? that’s Rich.
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Dave – you quoted the 2005 numbers:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf
Bush’s budget request was $481.4 billion for FY 2008, and is also seeking an additional $141.7 billion in supplemental funding for 2008 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just that total alone is $622 billion dollars on defense. That totals 21% of the entire 2008 federal budget!
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