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And who sets the "poverty level"? Government! I am below poverty level right now, according to the government, because of poor choices, and a move from California to Ohio that turned out to be (in some ways) a mistake. But we eat well, have two TV's, 3 computers, are self employed with the potential for a great life downstream (if we can make our skills work for us) I'm into Web designing, and have set up my own hosting business in the last 9 mos. and am also a ceramic tile contractor. Business right now is slow, but we have a good reputation, and most of our work is from referrals and repeat business. Until the last couple of years, we always had work stacked up (and that was before I started my Web design business). I'm not whining. I'm looking forward to a great future in a new field that utilizes my former art background. We can do it. Sometimes in life, there are rough spots. We get through them.
Small biz has definitely taken hits from government attempts to deal with large commerce. Enteprenuership vs private employer becomes a no brainer in light of diminished salaries, benefits, no job stability, and being at the mercy of a leader who's clueless regardless of your own work ethic or talent. The problem comes when you're a genius scientist too busy being a scientist to learn business skills. The skill set for business is very specific and our 80's culture has valued IT above all other skills. Predatory and exploitation of labor philosophies abound, but very few see the picture in terms of economic eco system. The golden goose was not the monopoly banker.
Too bad you're pointing your anger at the guy standing on the line with you. The guy you'll never meet did it to you both and he's laughing all the way to the bank.
Think twice about any regrets leaving cali-- you're far safer in Ohio even if wheelbarrows of money aren't going down the street daily. Homeless families are overwhelming shelters, food banks are stretched thin, and cali debt since enron is huge. Slow and steady wins the race. Good luck with your business ventures and keep faith that money can be made in any market because people never stop needing something. Make sure you've got that something.
Why don't "some" of you people come out and say you what you want a 1 world communist state?
It would seam the whole Obama team still believes in the system. Heck Obama is even slapping liberals in the face with talks of keeping the Bush tax cuts and slimming down the size of the government to try and compensate for us hemorrhaging money. He hasn't shown much of a different stance than Bush on Iraq and Afghanistan. And by the way it looks it would appear to be another 4 years of neoconservativism. I'm more happy with Obama by the day as all these economic advisers apparently have helped him to understand conservatism and the intel helped him understand the "neo" part.
Small biz has definitely taken hits from government attempts to deal with large commerce. Enteprenuership vs private employer becomes a no brainer in light of diminished salaries, benefits, no job stability, and being at the mercy of a leader who's clueless regardless of your own work ethic or talent. The problem comes when you're a genius scientist too busy being a scientist to learn business skills. The skill set for business is very specific and our 80's culture has valued IT above all other skills. Predatory and exploitation of labor philosophies abound, but very few see the picture in terms of economic eco system. The golden goose was not the monopoly banker.
Too bad you're pointing your anger at the guy standing on the line with you. The guy you'll never meet did it to you both and he's laughing all the way to the bank.
"Pointing my anger..."? I didn't think I sounded angry. I simply stated some facts about the way things are in employer/employee relationships.
Those relationships are timeless. They don't change from one President to another. The Bush administration has actually seen overall job growth. Yet some industries suffer.
This is largely because they have made bad choices, and I might add that the Unions, the very people who are complaining of job loss, loss of bennefits, and on and on, are largely to blame. They have been making unreasonable demands of the employers for many years. Eventually, like Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, that house of cards has to fall. You cannot continue to pay people more than they are worth forever, and cover your increased cost by raising product prices. Eventually the Market (the American consumer) says, "enough", and sales begin to decline, as the consumer makes other choices. Or a company buys it's raw materials from overseas. That is the way the world works, and it is unfortunate that the unions do not understand the rules. They want it their way, or no way. So their jobs are disappearing.
Unions once served a purpose, but the days of the "sweat shops" and child labor have been gone for many decades.
We had an eye opener a few years ago when one of the men who worked at the Lordstown, OH assembly plant arranged a tour for our 4-H club. I was amazed at the automation, and how quickly an automobile is assembled, and then driven off at the end of the line. The plant was clean, and well lighted. Overhead, the car bodys were moving around the plant, and eventually were lowered to a "robot" machine, that installed the side panels, and welded them. All with no human intervention, except for a few controlling the machinery and watching the operation.
At one station, the line would stop for a few short minutes while an attendent (more descriptive of what this person did) stepped forward and hooked up a few harnesses or hoses. Then the line moved again.
The point is that most of these people are button pushers. Yet they get paid (at least at the time) around $40/hr., plus benefits! And they are always demanding more.
This is why American products are not competitive.
Corporations are not evil. Business owners are just like everyone else. When I lived in San Diego, I had worked for small companies, two that were competitors in the same business (Oceanographic Instrumentation and remote controlled vehicles and underwater TV systems), and the other was a division of Scientific Atlanta. In all cases, those companies had been started by a couple of individuals working out of their garages, and grew to be companies employing around 250 people or so. I knew the top management personally, because the companies were so small. The GM of the one company liked to build radio controlled model airplanes in his spare time. Point is, they are real people just like you and me.
The OP here fails to see his true worth to an employer. He believes he should have a piece of the "pie" because it is his labor that goes into the product. He fails to understand that what he is paid to do his job is the only compensation he is entitled to, unless his company provides an employee stock purchase plan (many do) or other benefits (retirement plan, health, etc). But, he doesn't have a "right" to anything beyond his wage. It's not "his" company. If he doesn't like the relationship, he can leave. No one holds a gun to his head to force him to stay.
It's like paying a guy to mow your lawn. Should he share in the capital gain you receive for your home if you sell it, because you had the most beautiful lawn on the block? Of course not!
Quote:
Originally Posted by harborlady
Think twice about any regrets leaving cali-- you're far safer in Ohio even if wheelbarrows of money aren't going down the street daily. Homeless families are overwhelming shelters, food banks are stretched thin, and cali debt since enron is huge. Slow and steady wins the race. Good luck with your business ventures and keep faith that money can be made in any market because people never stop needing something. Make sure you've got that something.
I absolutely agree with that!
I assume your are in California? My wife is a native San Diegan. We were "hippies" when we got married, living at Windansea in La Jolla! Ah, those were the days! Not a care in the world.
When we bought our first home in Mira Mesa, all our beach friends thought we were nuts, and had gone off the deep end and "joined the establishment"!
I have to admit, at this point: We voted for George McGovern!!! OMG!!!
Then, as we "grew up" we learned a few things about how the world works, and came to our senses. She was the GM of two department stores in a couple of Southern CA department store chains (not at the same time, of course). Buffum's was one, and depending how old you might be, Walker Scott, a San Diego Chain.
Exactly. We're supposed to be fighting this War on Poverty, and have been for almost 50 years, with tons of wealth confiscation to fund it all.
It hasn't worked, and the stupid liberals STILL support open borders and amnesty to bring in more poverty. I swear, they only do it because they hate the White majority and are willing to bankrupt the country to achieve it.
No matter how many times socialism is tried, it always fails.
Yet there will always be more people to come along to try to convince us it works, force their faulty system down our throats, and then try to claim that the reason it doesn't work is because there isn't enough of it ("redistribution") going on.
The only thing you get with wealth confiscation (redistribution), is fewer jobs created, fewer products on the market (less entrepreneurship), less innovation (less incentive to achieve), and an overall slower economy.
Let people keep more of what is theirs, and they will produce more, employ more people, and pay higher wages too. Works every time.
Captilism is one thing but "predatory" capitalism has not worked out for us, has it?
I was not pleased with many things tha the Clinton Admnistration had done, but if Clinton deregulated, then The Bush Crime Family put it on steroids.
What is "pedatory capitalism"? Define it, please.
Please, the Bush "Crime" family?
George Bush is not the evil person most of you liberals think he is. Much of what you believe about Bush is untrue, and you get that stuff from the radical leftist Websites such as MoveOn.org, and others who contiually pump that garbage out so that gullible people will believe it. This then, serves their purpose.
The problem with Bush was, and this was his greatest failure, that he was unwilling to set a conservative agenda (except for tax cuts and a strong defense), and he believed that the Democrat Party liberals were reasonable people whom he could work with. He was unwilling to confront their lies and expose them, and he failed to rid his administration of every vestige of the Clinton administration, keeping many Clinton "holdovers" in place. These people undermined his authority at every opportunity.
Bush failed to understand that these people, the Democrats, do not compromise. It's their way, or no way. That is why as conservatives, we do not try to "work with them".
Republicans have "shared their leadership" (thank you, Trent Lott) when they didn't have to, and changed rules to be more accomodating of the Democrat minority (again, thank you Trent Lott). Democrats never do such favors for Republicans.
We just never seem to learn that liberals simply must be defeated. Period.
This is why someone recently said that McCain should now "cross the isle — and sit down"! We've (conservatives) had enough of this "crossing the isle" baloney.
How many Bush people will Obama keep? Probably none.
Workers actually do create wealth. Just not for themselves in the current scheme of things. They create the goods/ services that are marketable. Administrators create nothing. They facilitate workers, or they fail to facilitate workers. Not much else.
This is totally wrong, and very misleading. They do not create product, but they do produce. It is their responsibility to see that the product gets produced in the first place, and that it gets to market.
I have been an "administrator". Administators are necessary. You cannot run a company without the front end (the office) and the sales and marketing team. How would you sell your product? Who would handle your advertising? Who writes literature, and service and operation manuals? These are things that are all handled by "administrators".
As an "administrator" at one company I worked for, one of my responsibilities was "product forecasting" (totally boring stuff). I had to look at sales history of all our products (end products as well as spare parts), and try to come up with figures to give to the production manager who would then open the work orders to get these items built, and in the quantities that I said I thought we needed to have on hand.
The idea is that you don't want too much inventory sitting around not being sold; but you want to have enough to meet sales. You don't want your customers waiting (especially in that business — having a rig down in the gulf waiting for you to build a winch or cable or a camera was not going to do anything for future sales!)
The office administration is every bit as importand as the guy (or girl) plugging parts into a circuit board in the production department.
There is a saying that goes like this: "Nothing happens until a sale is made". The line workers don't make sales. They wouldn't even be there making a product without the people in the marketing department. The "front end" is the engine that drives the rest of the business. And believe me, it's not easy work. This idea that those in the office "don't do anything" is pure myth.
Further, once a product is built and ready to be shipped, someone has to do the invoicing and prepare the shipping documents. If it's going over seas, often a Letter of Credit is required, and the instructions contained in the LC must be followed to the letter, or you may not collect on your invoice for a long while.
A good book to read (if you are a reader) is "Iaccoca" It is Lee Iaccoca's book on how he saved Chrysler. Excellent book and interesting story. You'll get an idea of how important the administration is. It's a good read from the standpoint of finding out how an auto manufacturing bussiness is run, as well. Believe me, Chrysler was doing a lot wrong. Unfortunately, it seems that they didn't learn their lessons well enough the first time. After Iaccoca made Chrysler profitable again, they are once again in serious trouble.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harborlady
That was formerly untrue, but it's truthful in this current economic arrangement happening which I don't consider to be true capitalism. I'm a fan of true capitalism.
Bet you liked Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harborlady
Untrue. WV coal miners in the mines risk plenty more than an owner or shareholder. I'm thinking you're involved in small business and are less aware of the large scale corporation the others in this thread are criticizing. This has little to do with small business, but small biz is an equal casualty when markets are cornered in large scale commerce favoritism.
Right now, at Pratt/Whitney in CT, engineers w/ stunning resumes are treated like vagrant mexican workers. Private contractors pitted against one another for short term gains @ expense of quality. No joke.
Those in need of the lions share of education are those who consider themselves perfect, infallible, and continue to deny problems exist.
Separation of individual from collective responsibilities- decisions you make for yourself are on you, and bless you if you're paying your own way through life. My decisions cost me as well. Group decisions, like any family, have to take the whole family into consideration. Your plea for having the group subsidize your wealth if you've earned that wealth by questionable means??? I'm thinking you won't be getting the sympathy you seem to expect.
I have no idea to what you are refering in the above. Another poster? What sympathy am I expecting? You've confused me here.
this article sounds like it was written by a scared little 17 year old in mommy's basement.
Haha, true.
Should appeal to failed commies.
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