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Like I said most families whose members are healthy and where the one working is of average intelligence can make at least a little more money than what it takes to merely exist.
This is complete bunk.
Dispite having, overall, a more educated and literate workforce, we are still making the money some of our grandfathers did back in 1968. The only thing that has happened is that we are working pretty much the same quality of jobs, we are just highly overtrained and overqualified for them. There has never been a point in history where underemployment has been such a problem, and it gets worse every single year.
We keep dumping out college grads in to a world where they are having to become retail clerks and burger flippers, while they wait for something in their field to open up. Meanwhile we tell them to get more training, more certifications blah blah blah, and the past generation, who is stuck between paying for their SUVs and paying for their 25 year old kids who cant find a job paying enough to move out, are working until their 70's, unlike their fathers who retired in their 40's and 50's, further clogging up the pipes.
Dispite having, overall, a more educated and literate workforce, we are still making the money some of our grandfathers did back in 1968. The only thing that has happened is that we are working pretty much the same quality of jobs, we are just highly overtrained and overqualified for them. There has never been a point in history where underemployment has been such a problem, and it gets worse every single year.
We keep dumping out college grads in to a world where they are having to become retail clerks and burger flippers, while they wait for something in their field to open up. Meanwhile we tell them to get more training, more certifications blah blah blah, and the past generation, who is stuck between paying for their SUVs and paying for their 25 year old kids who cant find a job paying enough to move out, are working until their 70's, unlike their fathers who retired in their 40's and 50's, further clogging up the pipes.
OMG, this is so true, and only going to get worse as the "get a college education" mantra continues on and on. College degrees are required now for things that are totally unnecessary. Some police and fire departments are requiring degrees. Call center customer service reps, secretarial jobs. I work in the archives area of the library department for my state, and we all pretty much do the same jobs. Two have master's degrees, two have bachelor degrees, one associates, and one only high school. Guess who the people are who have been hired more recently?
OMG, this is so true, and only going to get worse as the "get a college education" mantra continues on and on. College degrees are required now for things that are totally unnecessary. Some police and fire departments are requiring degrees. Call center customer service reps, secretarial jobs. I work in the archives area of the library department for my state, and we all pretty much do the same jobs. Two have master's degrees, two have bachelor degrees, one associates, and one only high school. Guess who the people are who have been hired more recently?
Funny thing is, they are probably all getting around the same wage, and even if the ones with Masters Degrees are any higher paid, its likely not close to enough to justify the cost incurred getting the Masters Degree.
So who wins? Well, the employer of course. There are so many people with degrees floating around, that now they can require insane education, experience, and licensure levels to fill a job that a high school grad could be trained to do, and for the same wage.
College is a terrible investment these days, and getting worse by the minute. The problem is, you hardly can find a job paying above $10 an hour that doesnt require it as a prerequisite.
In the not so distant future, it will be a requirement for all jobs to have a bachelors degree, which will force people to make the terrible investment of education, simply to work at all.
Right now, about 30% of the population has a bachelors degree, while less then 50% is employed (about 141 million are employed out of over 300 million population). That doesnt leave a huge gap for many jobs that do not have the ability tp require a bachelors degree for employment. Within the next generation, it will require a bachelors degree to pick fruit and flip burgers. I can promise you that. However, flipping burgers will still pay minimum wage.
College is a terrible investment these days, and getting worse by the minute. The problem is, you hardly can find a job paying above $10 an hour that doesnt require it as a prerequisite.
And now Masters Degrees are starting to show up as requirements.
Soon we'll all need PhD's in order to get a job as a garbage collector or burger flipper.
Wow 50 sales a day, of products that average about $5 each.
$250 gross sales a day! So, thats about $125 a day net before taxes assuming youre selling for twice what you make them for.
WOW $15.63 an hour (assuming a standard 8 hour average day) before getting hit with taxes, including full payroll taxes! Let me jump right on that!
When you make whatever assumptions you want, you can of course demonstrate anything you want. I also don't get your math, $125 * 30 / 160 hours = $23.4/per hour.
The gross profit is more like 70~80% of the gross revenue which is pretty standard for this sort of business (i.e., vertically integrated). I know for a fact that the materials being used here do not amount to 50% of the sale price.
I have no idea how much they work, I doubt it requires anything more than a 40/hour work week. But even with $23.4/hour that is $45k a year, but they are probably getting more like $55k/year. That is not a bad salary, but we are also only looking at their etsy sales.
Small business only pay payroll taxes if they have employees. The self-employed do have to pay the other half of the FICA taxes that is paid by your employer when you are a W-2 worker. But, its also deductible and amounts to around an extra 5~6.5% or so. Otherwise, they pay the same taxes everyone else does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomdude
The truth is, and one which you refuse to accept, the majority of "self employed" people are struggling
Demand at price point is completely immaterial. Even if you gave something away for free, there would be eventual limitation on demand. The only point in which demand would be unlimited...
No, demand at a price is not immaterial, its the only thing that you can speak meaningfully about. Also, c'mon the point is not that demand is unlimited, but rather that demand is not a fixed constant. Demand is a function of a number of other variables, yet you speak of it as a constant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomdude
Demand is ALWAYS limited, no matter how you want to twist it.
Your fixation on "limited vs unlimited" is just rather vacuous. Demand is a function of a variety of variables, one key variable being the price. Please open up an economics textbook.
College is a terrible investment these days, and getting worse by the minute.
I can't practice engineering without a college degree. Doctors and lawyers can't practice without professional degree...
What do you think are we supposed to do now? Reform the system so that everyone without degree can practice medicine, engineering and law?
College is definitely over marketed. When you have people with limited academic aptitude, ability, or motivation and they are being pushed to go to college over another post-secondary program that better meets their interests it leads to problems.
Our state is closing technical schools even though interest and enrollment for these schools has been increasing. When looked at from purely a per student cost these schools obviously cost more. However, when compared to other special education programs they are competitive or even cheaper. The costs that are not captured are the dropout costs when a student who would have benefited from a technical program leaves school because the programs offered do not provide the connection with their learning style, interest, or motivation.
Dropouts are much more likely to be incarcerated, substance abusers, dependent on social services, etc. Additionally, many of the programs in the technical schools provide skills and training that are in high demand. These jobs in HVAC, manufacturing, medical, etc., are more resistant to being outsourced to foreign countries.
I can't practice engineering without a college degree. Doctors and lawyers can't practice without professional degree...
What do you think are we supposed to do now? Reform the system so that everyone without degree can practice medicine, engineering and law?
C'mon no one said that. You don't need a bachelor's degree though to do secretarial and office work.That's what people are referring to and meant!
You don't need a bachelor's degree though to do secretarial and office work.That's what people are referring to and meant!
The problem is that its not an issue of what you "need", rather the nature of the job market. If you post a job for some secretarial position and you get 50 applicants 10 of which have degrees, wouldn't you favor the ones with degrees?
Regardless they were suggesting that degrees are "not worth it" anymore, which is just pretty silly. The median income for people with bachelors degrees is around $19k higher than high school graduates. Even if you borrowed $80k to go to school (which is unnecessary), you'd pay around $10k a year for 10 years to pay back the loans and still have an extra $9k a year while you're paying them back.
Last edited by user_id; 07-11-2009 at 03:22 PM..
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