Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Right. Every single failed business in the financial crash of 2008, with not a single exception, failed because the owners were not motivated. It had NOTHING to do with external conditions. Its timing in relation to the housing bubble was a PURE COINCIDENCE, despite the odds of such a coincidence being very low, we must resist our temptation to attribute ANY connection between the two.
/sarcasm off
What are you talking about? Are you even following the discussion? No one said anything about businesses failing during the crash or at any other time.
I know a lot of millennial who had kids with all of that. They all work multiple minimum wage jobs all around the clock. You still barely make any money, and forget about saving for a kids college fund. I think a lot of people have kids out of selfish reasons.
Yup. Did you mention that they are minimum wage workers? Of course. They are the ones having children in this country. I'm not surprised. I hope they have funds to feed their children.
You want to provide a better life for your kids than what you had yourself. Kids growing up in a poverty family face many disadvantages. Like I mentioned before, no college fund, most likely growing up in a poverty stricken rural or urban area, a lot of times the kids end up like the deadbeat parents continuing the cycle. Why anyone would want to bring up kids in a poverty lifestyle, in a lousy area with lousy schools is beyond me.
Is it really beyond you? Is it that complicated?
As long as we subsidize it, we are encouraging such behavior.
I am also amused by the suggestion that great wealth will make you successful. From a financial sense yes.... but some don't define success in terms of dollars alone.
But .. yeh... work smarter and then work harder at being smarter.
Wealth doesn't even make you monetarily successful. People iwho inherite great wealth sometimes loses because they don't know how to manage it. Lots of people gamble away their Social Security paychecks, because they can't manage their finances and they have never been taught financial concepts.
The truth is that hard work and great wealth don't necessarily make you successful. it's a culmination of many factors but hard work is very important for most ordinary people who do not have inherited wealth.
In short, free lunches are nice weather's going to buy your dads what it's going to buy your governments. But free lunches do not make a person learn how to actually get that lunch when it isn't free. Lunches that come too easily also do not make people feel grateful.
What are you talking about? Are you even following the discussion? No one said anything about businesses failing during the crash or at any other time.
I am talking about the laughably absurd idea of yours that everyone can (or even should) start their own business regardless of external circumstances, that it would thrive given the effort regardless of external circumstances, and that starting one's own business is somehow a solution to all microeconomic hardships, despite the fact that they would then have no one left to hire and might not have the customers they need either.
Even the "softer" version which states that this is only not so due to lack of motivation or effort, can be shown using basic principles of supply and demand to be flawed.
In an efficient market, you should expect to do just as well working and investing the difference as if you started a business. In some cases starting a business may be better, in others you come out ahead by working and investing the difference.
You'd have to run the numbers in each case to see for sure.
In a way it is like housing - in an efficient market, you should expect to do about the same buying as renting and investing the difference. This is because if one option was substantially better than the other, rational individuals would gravitate toward it, thus shifting supply and demand until they just about broke even.
Starting a business, on average, should only break even rather than putting you ahead, once you account for the individual's time, skill, and capital put at risk (and all associated opportunity costs).
I am talking about the laughably absurd idea of yours that everyone can (or even should) start their own business regardless of external circumstances, that it would thrive given the effort regardless of external circumstances, and that starting one's own business is somehow a solution to all microeconomic hardships, despite the fact that they would then have no one left to hire and might not have the customers they need either.
Even the "softer" version which states that this is only not so due to lack of motivation or effort, can be shown using basic principles of supply and demand to be flawed.
In an efficient market, you should expect to do just as well working and investing the difference as if you started a business. In some cases starting a business may be better, in others you come out ahead by working and investing the difference.
You'd have to run the numbers in each case to see for sure.
In a way it is like housing - in an efficient market, you should expect to do about the same buying as renting and investing the difference. This is because if one option was substantially better than the other, rational individuals would gravitate toward it, thus shifting supply and demand until they just about broke even.
Starting a business, on average, should only break even rather than putting you ahead, once you account for the individual's time, skill, and capital put at risk (and all associated opportunity costs).
I never said everyone. I said anyone. Big difference. Most people do not have the drive or the work ethic to start their own business because the have the peasant mentality that has been passed down from thousands of year of their peasant ancestors.
For anyone who does have the drive and the work ethic to do 20% more than the average peasant, the rewards are there for the taking.
Of course people do not want to hear that because they want an excuse for their lack of success, not a solution.
I never said everyone. I said anyone. Big difference. Most people do not have the drive or the work ethic to start their own business because the have the peasant mentality that has been passed down from thousands of year of their peasant ancestors.
For anyone who does have the drive and the work ethic to do 20% more than the average peasant, the rewards are there for the taking.
Of course people do not want to hear that because they want an excuse for their lack of success, not a solution.
This is exactly the point of contention. You have this idea that anyone with sufficient work ethic can succeed, no matter the external circumstances. It is this point that I am countering with:
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1
Right. Every single failed business in the financial crash of 2008, with not a single exception, failed because the owners were not motivated. It had NOTHING to do with external conditions. Its timing in relation to the housing bubble was a PURE COINCIDENCE, despite the odds of such a coincidence being very low, we must resist our temptation to attribute ANY connection between the two.
/sarcasm off
In other words, I am pointing out that external circumstances can lead to the downfall of a business venture (this is where my 2008 crash example is going.). If external circumstances can crash a business, then we have at least one counterexample case to your thesis that work ethic is sufficient to generate a successful venture.
And with this counterexample, your thesis is demonstrated to be false.
I'm a millennial, and no kids for me or any of my friends. We all have way too much student loan debt to be thinking about having kids, or really spending any money for that matter. Maybe if the price of college ever comes down to a reasonable amount millennials will be able to have kids and have money to spend. I do have an older friend who just had a kid and also has a bunch of student loan debt but she lives off the government to make ends meet. Food stamps and the whole nine yards.
I am talking about the laughably absurd idea of yours that everyone can (or even should) start their own business regardless of external circumstances, that it would thrive given the effort regardless of external circumstances, and that starting one's own business is somehow a solution to all microeconomic hardships, despite the fact that they would then have no one left to hire and might not have the customers they need either.
Even the "softer" version which states that this is only not so due to lack of motivation or effort, can be shown using basic principles of supply and demand to be flawed.
In an efficient market, you should expect to do just as well working and investing the difference as if you started a business. In some cases starting a business may be better, in others you come out ahead by working and investing the difference.
You'd have to run the numbers in each case to see for sure.
In a way it is like housing - in an efficient market, you should expect to do about the same buying as renting and investing the difference. This is because if one option was substantially better than the other, rational individuals would gravitate toward it, thus shifting supply and demand until they just about broke even.
Starting a business, on average, should only break even rather than putting you ahead, once you account for the individual's time, skill, and capital put at risk (and all associated opportunity costs).
I've argued with you in the past, but I have to agree with you here.
Well said.
I've been involved with quite a few startups in my career. A couple of them succeeded, most of them failed.
It takes a great deal of hard work, critical thinking, AND luck to succeed.
As a Christian, I look at it that it's impossible without God's help.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
