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Quote by Soroosh Shahrivar

“Amir is in his element. There are guys decked out in designer clothes, anything from crocodiles and polo players etched on shirts with collars to Versace, Balenciaga and D&G printed on their chests. Girls even more so. He fits right in with The Great Gatsby crowd.”

Quote by Soroosh Shahrivar

Book:Tajrish

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Tajrish

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Soroosh Shahrivar

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“Raimund, we must promise each other that if one of us leaves Mora it must be both. We must leave together.” She was not sure what had made her ask for this promise, but she was growing more aware of her femininity. She loved Raimund as a brother, but something told her that her feelings for him were more than those of a sibling. Raimund smiled and squeezed her hand. “Of course Aleana, I am after all your brother.”

“Productivity is Godly. Growth is Godly. And waste is Ungodly - both the waste of present resources and the waste of potential gains.”

“Once again, a single sentence would hold the key. I found it in The Economic Status of Black Women: An Exploratory Investigation, a 1990 staff report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: On average married black women contribute 40 percent to household income compared with only 29 percent for white women.° Simply put, all wives did not contribute to their households in the same way: Black women were likely to earn as much (or more) money as their husbands, while white women were likely to earn much less. This was certainly true in the case of my parents (whose income was more or less equal most years). But the joint tax return system, under which most married couples file their taxes together, offers the greatest benefits to households where one spouse contributes much less than the other to household income. That meant couples like my parents-my hardworking, home-owning, God-fearing parents, who wanted to earn a little bit more to enjoy their lives after raising two daughters-weren't getting those breaks. My parents' tax bill was so high because they were married to each other. Marriage-which many conservatives assure us is the road out of black poverty -is in fact making black couples poorer. And because the IRS does not publish statistics by race, we would never know. It's long been understood that blacks and whites live in separate and unequal worlds that shape whom we marry, where we buy a home, whom we have as neighbors, and how we build a future for our children. Race affects where we go to college and how we pay for it. Race influences where we work and how much we are paid. What my research showed was that all of this also determines how much we pay in taxes. Taxpayers bring their racial identities to their tax returns. As in so many parts of American life, being black is more likely to hurt and being white is more likely to help. The implications of this go far beyond the forms you file every April. In the long run, tax policy affects whether and how you'll be able to build wealth. If you're eligible for tax breaks, you either pay less in taxes throughout the year or receive a larger refund in the spring. If, like my parents, you're considered ineligible for a particular tax break, you never see that money. One missed tax break may not sound like much, but those dollars not given to Uncle Sam can be put into your bank account, invested in stocks or property, or used to build home equity through improvements or repairs every year. Think of that money as an annual pay raise – but if you do not get it, you cannot save it. Over time those dollars, or the lack of them, add up to increased or depleted wealth.”

“The problem for many of us is that it is easy to find rich role models. It’s harder to find wealthy ones because by definition their success is more hidden. There are, of course, wealthy people who also spend a lot of money on stuff. But even in those cases what we see is their richness, not their wealth. We see the cars they chose to buy and perhaps the school they choose to send their kids to. We don’t see the savings, retirement accounts, or investment portfolios. We see the homes they bought, not the homes they could have bought had they stretched themselves thin. The danger here is that I think most people, deep down, want to be wealthy. They want freedom and flexibility, which is what financial assets not yet spent can give you. But it is so ingrained in us that to have money is to spend money that we don’t get to see the restraint it takes to actually be wealthy. And since we can’t see it, it’s hard to learn about it. People are good at learning by imitation. But the hidden nature of wealth makes it hard to imitate others and learn from their ways.”