Let's hear it for the small businesses of America.

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: Starbuck1975

Then why aren't we having people who are freeloading on welfare doing those jobs? Why do we need illegals to do those jobs? This is a golden opportunity for the Repubs to further reform welfare and to do something about the illegal alien problem.

Largely because of incentives...why bust your ass doing a blue collar job when the government will provide everything you need to survive...illegals take these jobs mostly because they do not otherwise have access to such benefits.

Like I said... a golden opportunity for the Repubs.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Agrooreo
Pretty much the same thing is always happening around where I live in omaha, ne. For instance theres a bbq shop a few blocks from where I live that has been giving a guy i know free lunches for almost 2 weeks now. He recently got a job 8 blocks up the street and came in on his lunch break one day to get an order of fries since thats all he could afford, and instead of just giving him fries the owner of the store started talking to him about why he didn't have any $ and the guy explained that he had been unemployed for over a yr due to a extremely bad sickness in his family with his mother that he has had to take care of everyday and that he finally had been able to get a job and couldn't afford a real lunch until he got his first paycheck. So the owner told him he can have free lunches for a month to get on his feet and he doesn't want anything in return. This isn't the first time that this has happened at this store either. Thats one of the reasons why me and my friends all eat there at least twice a week to help the store stay open and so they can keep contributing to our commmunity.

The owner of that store sounds like a great guy. :thumbsup:

Bet Zendari thinks he's a communist.

:roll:

Calling out another member in a thread in which that member has not participated, usually calls for a vacation.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Agrooreo
Pretty much the same thing is always happening around where I live in omaha, ne. For instance theres a bbq shop a few blocks from where I live that has been giving a guy i know free lunches for almost 2 weeks now. He recently got a job 8 blocks up the street and came in on his lunch break one day to get an order of fries since thats all he could afford, and instead of just giving him fries the owner of the store started talking to him about why he didn't have any $ and the guy explained that he had been unemployed for over a yr due to a extremely bad sickness in his family with his mother that he has had to take care of everyday and that he finally had been able to get a job and couldn't afford a real lunch until he got his first paycheck. So the owner told him he can have free lunches for a month to get on his feet and he doesn't want anything in return. This isn't the first time that this has happened at this store either. Thats one of the reasons why me and my friends all eat there at least twice a week to help the store stay open and so they can keep contributing to our commmunity.

The owner of that store sounds like a great guy. :thumbsup:

Bet Zendari thinks he's a communist.

:roll:

Calling out another member in a thread in which that member has not participated, usually calls for a vacation.

Eh, he'll be around soon enough.

 

[Zebo]

You guys realise SBA has been cut by a whopping 60% since Bush took office? Good luck even getting an SBA at this point in time. Even with a sound Business plan and plenty of capital yourself. The competition is huge.

Bush represents not the small biz man or even mid to large 500 employee firms - but mega corps.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: Starbuck1975

I wouldnt say they are all rich, but most are greedy as hell.

Without the drive of ambition, there would be no America...with hard work and career success comes financial well being, one of the motivating factors of our economy...to dismiss those who have achieved such success as simply being greedy tends to be an indicator of jealousy. Is it wrong for people to expect and receive compensation for their hard work?

Been working regularly since i was 13 years old. How many vacation days has DumbYa taken thus far? Yup, thats workin' alright, "hard workin'."

The world doesn't revolve around Dubya...I know several senior executives who haven't taken vacation in years, and spend the majority of their days, evenings and weekends either working or on travel.

Heck yes. American workers work more days and hours than in any european country. We have far less holidays and vacation days.
I don't know how it is in Japan.
But the real question is should that be our goal or should we Americans learn to work less hours but work better and harder. I think the reason we see posts about kids clubbing homeless people may be because Americans don't spend enough time with their families.

The real problem is profiteering and hypercompetitiveness now with globalization, the desire to keep competitive with other countries and their cheap workers is sucking the life out of a lot of people. There are limitations to what humans can do, when I look back on my life I don't want to see all of my entire life at work, it's ridiculous to want to work insane hours. People have limitations and economies sooner or later have to acknowledge that or it ends up biting you in the ass elsewhere (healthcare costs, mental illness, overworked, etc).

I work to live, I don't live to work.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: EatSpam

You say that like its no big deal. How many people do you know that aren't going to become educated anytime soon? There are millions of Americans who need blue collar jobs....like most Americans who are on welfare.

...and we also have millions of underemployed Americans with college educations, some even with science Ph.D.'s. Heck, there are people with a combination of two advanced degrees who end up unemployed or underemployed. We also have people with advanced degrees and years of experience who suffer age discrimination, such as accomplished, laid-off MBAs in their mid-fifties. Shortage of college-educated Americans? ROFL if the truth weren't so sad. If anything, we have a large oversupply.

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: Gannon
I work to live, I don't live to work.

What are you son? A commie librul European terrarrist? Us true 'mericans live to work, doing' gawd's will! What are you but your job, slavin' for your CEO?

Git back to werk, serf!

 

[EatSpam]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: EatSpam

You say that like its no big deal. How many people do you know that aren't going to become educated anytime soon? There are millions of Americans who need blue collar jobs....like most Americans who are on welfare.

...and we also have millions of underemployed Americans with college educations, some even with science Ph.D.'s. Heck, there are people with a combination of two advanced degrees who end up unemployed or underemployed. We also have people with advanced degrees and years of experience who suffer age discrimination, such as accomplished, laid-off MBAs in their mid-fifties. Shortage of college-educated Americans? ROFL if the truth weren't so sad. If anything, we have a large oversupply.

Education is the opiate of the masses.

 

[MadRat]

Originally posted by: Agrooreo
Pretty much the same thing is always happening around where I live in omaha, ne. For instance theres a bbq shop a few blocks from where I live that has been giving a guy i know free lunches for almost 2 weeks now. He recently got a job 8 blocks up the street and came in on his lunch break one day to get an order of fries since thats all he could afford, and instead of just giving him fries the owner of the store started talking to him about why he didn't have any $ and the guy explained that he had been unemployed for over a yr due to a extremely bad sickness in his family with his mother that he has had to take care of everyday and that he finally had been able to get a job and couldn't afford a real lunch until he got his first paycheck. So the owner told him he can have free lunches for a month to get on his feet and he doesn't want anything in return. This isn't the first time that this has happened at this store either. Thats one of the reasons why me and my friends all eat there at least twice a week to help the store stay open and so they can keep contributing to our commmunity.

Sounds like Harkert's. Yeah, nay? You can PM me the answer if you don't want to say it here.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Genx87

Yeah, we're create about creating wealth...for the already wealthy. They're the only ones who see a "higher return"...the rest of us just see higher property taxes and gas prices.

Do you think the middle and upper middles classes were created by the govt?

LOL... the middle classes and upper middle classes were created after WWII, before Reagannomics, before offshoring, before our suicidal trade policies. Those classes were created by businesses who offered solid middle class wages for honest work. Those businesses don't do that anymore, replacing their American middle class workers with cheap foreign labor. Americans are left to work at Wally-world.

Ahh your mean an open market?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
So why do you think an open market worked then and is a disaster now?

Because the "open market" then contained mostly Americans, same cost of living, similar wages, etc. The "open market" now includes the entire world with totally different standards of living, wages, environmental laws, etc. The nature of some of these countries gives them an absolute advantage not a comparative advantage in most things. China is on such country. Name one job that doesn't require a physical presence that can't be done cheaper in China?

Please do you think our nation created all of its wealth simply by trading internally?

Big business takes advantage of this by making product in China for next to nothing then selling it here at a tremendous markup. Americans no longer make the product, but get to buy the product in Wal-mart on Wallyworld wages. Great times for execs, not so great for most of us.

This is a strawman argument and not based in reality at all. Free markets will raise the standard of living for anybody within the market. Just because we are now importing more doesnt all of a sudden mean our economy is going to collapse.

The bottom line is the only difference between then and now is we are becoming so efficient in our internal economy we outsource production of the less efficient items, shredding costs, and returning higher margins that will help fuel higher paying jobs and higher return on investments.

Throwing up walls and becoming self contained didnt work for the Soviets, what makes you think it will work for us?

Two systems, one succeded, one failed miserably. Yet we are supposed to pick the system that failed?

Free markets will raise the standard of living for anybody within the market.
I couldn't let this pass. That's absurd.

Trust me after reading your response, what I said isnt even remotely as absurd as that.

If you take a country where workers are rich and integrate the labor pools with a country that is poor everyone will end up at the same level, in a free market and all other things being equal.

Oh?!?!?!?!?

Please do provide examples.

What you are arguing for is a striking loss of income for American workers.

A loss for unskilled labor

Your argument only makes sense AFTER the workers wages has been equalized and ASSUMES there are inefficiencies that can be corrected by the larger workforce with different strenghts and weaknesses.

Wrong, it makes sense because we shed the jobs that are least efficient within our internal economy and import goods at a lower cost because of it.

As to the creation of the middle class it was a result of four things:
The Great Depression
Communism and Socialism
FDR and his policies.
WW2

This is sad you can even say that with a straight face.
Communism and Socialism have never created a middle class.
FDR's policies werent very effective at combating the true problem of the 1930s, high unemployment. It was only down 5% by 1940 and he almost lost because of it.
WW2 was a wakeup call to, um, open our markets up to the world and not be so protectionist?????

What really changed to create the middle class out of the depression was a shift of the proportion of wealth towards the working class. This was prompted by worker discontent during the Depression where workers looked for a system that would benefit them more and were enticed by Communism and Socialism. Then FDR moved to give workers more power in dealing with the ownership class by using things like labor unions. When WW2 ended the greater worker power was able to get a decent share of the fruits of their labor by the artificially skewed great wealth that America acquired as a result of the war and the unnatural lack of manpower in the only functioning industrialized country.

I am in amazement somebody really believes that.

What is going on now is that Communism and Socialism have been discredited. The great wealth of America is draining. There are dozens of thriving industrialized countries. Trade barriers are being lowered. The pool of labor is now world wide so the power of the American worker to get a share of the fruits of their labor is diminished.

Communism and Socialism have been discredited by their very examples. The Soviet Union crushed itself through its own weight. Eastern Europe without the mother tit to suck on keeled over. N.Korea is in shambles, Cuba hasnt got out of the 1950s, and the last major bastion of Communism, China, is moving towards a free market and more open political system.

Socialist programs like SS and Medicare look to bankrupt our own country. Socialist programs for the past 40 years have failed to provide any of the benefit they were created for.

What you fail to realize is with a world economy it opens up markets that werent there 40 years ago. These markets will create jobs here at home.

Anybody who thinks building a wall and denying reality needs to purchase a clue, you being one of them.

 

[Agrooreo]

Originally posted by: MadRat

Originally posted by: Agrooreo
Pretty much the same thing is always happening around where I live in omaha, ne. For instance theres a bbq shop a few blocks from where I live that has been giving a guy i know free lunches for almost 2 weeks now. He recently got a job 8 blocks up the street and came in on his lunch break one day to get an order of fries since thats all he could afford, and instead of just giving him fries the owner of the store started talking to him about why he didn't have any $ and the guy explained that he had been unemployed for over a yr due to a extremely bad sickness in his family with his mother that he has had to take care of everyday and that he finally had been able to get a job and couldn't afford a real lunch until he got his first paycheck. So the owner told him he can have free lunches for a month to get on his feet and he doesn't want anything in return. This isn't the first time that this has happened at this store either. Thats one of the reasons why me and my friends all eat there at least twice a week to help the store stay open and so they can keep contributing to our commmunity.

Sounds like Harkert's. Yeah, nay? You can PM me the answer if you don't want to say it here.

Nay. Actually its Big Jims BBQ on 37th and Ames. Family business thats been handed done from father to son and the son is actually keeping up with the traditions of his father and not too worried about making as much as possible imagine that. If you like in Omaha wheres the resturant your talking about? Ill check it out since I feel like bbq today anyways....

 

[MadRat]

Harkert's is on 50th and center, across from a school and in the same plaza as a nasty looking video rental store. I'm not sure he's open on weekends since I've always done it on weekdays. Its one of those little walkin BBQ's where they give you plastic plates and silverware and a hot rag with your dinner, nothing real fancy - just good meat.

 

[Starbuck1975]

There are limitations to what humans can do, when I look back on my life I don't want to see all of my entire life at work, it's ridiculous to want to work insane hours. People have limitations and economies sooner or later have to acknowledge that or it ends up biting you in the ass elsewhere (healthcare costs, mental illness, overworked, etc). I work to live, I don't live to work.

This attitude is not necessarily compatible with the American cultural attitude towards work...we often pride ourselves as being a hard working society, and our economic strength is attributed partly to this attitude.

Think about your own workplace for a moment...I would imagine that your supervisors, like most, attribute hard work to advancement and promotion...the worker willing to sacrifice nights and weekends to improve the bottom line...it doesn't matter if this work is particularly effective or productive, as the hours dedicated often hold more weight then the quality of the outcome...blue collar workers tend to complain about such abuses, but middle management bears the weight of this culture...to get ahead as a middle manager tends to require making work the center of your life.

Granted there has been a shift...the tech and dot.com surge certainly changed certain attitudes and ways of doing business...more flexible work hours, working remotely from home, a more lenient dress code, etc. Yet there has been a backlash against the cultural shift of the late 90s, particularly after the dot.com bubble burst, such that many American companies are reverting back to almost a 1980s mentality...stringent work hours, a more professional dress code, etc.

It all comes down to work/life balance...if your private life is more important then your career, then you have to expect that you will have to make some sacrifices career wise, particularly when competing against those who make work more of a priority.

I know plenty of white collar workers who have hit a comfortable salary cap, but who are not willing to put in the hours to hit that next level of senior management/executive...there is nothing wrong with that, and it really comes down to what you want out of life...most of the senior executives I know do not have a strong quality of life, have bitter marriages or are already divorced, and are slaves to their job...but if that is what they are willing to sacrifice in order to afford a 6 series BMW and a McMansion, it is their choice.

 

[zendari]

Minimum wage increases are going to be a problem for many small businesses.

 

[Meuge]

Originally posted by: zendari
Minimum wage increases are going to be a problem for many small businesses.

Would you like me to site a few of your own posts where you claim that no one gets paid minimum wage anymore?

If no one gets paid minimum wage, then increasing it will not affect the business owners much at all.

You're slipping, my dear troll.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: zendari
Minimum wage increases are going to be a problem for many small businesses.

How can that be?

You and the rest of Republicans swear up and down that everything is great, best it's been in 60 years.

Why would a little more crumbs to the working poor hurt many small businesses???

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: EatSpam

Originally posted by: Genx87

Yeah, we're create about creating wealth...for the already wealthy. They're the only ones who see a "higher return"...the rest of us just see higher property taxes and gas prices.

Do you think the middle and upper middles classes were created by the govt?

LOL... the middle classes and upper middle classes were created after WWII, before Reagannomics, before offshoring, before our suicidal trade policies. Those classes were created by businesses who offered solid middle class wages for honest work. Those businesses don't do that anymore, replacing their American middle class workers with cheap foreign labor. Americans are left to work at Wally-world.

Ahh your mean an open market?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
So why do you think an open market worked then and is a disaster now?

Because the "open market" then contained mostly Americans, same cost of living, similar wages, etc. The "open market" now includes the entire world with totally different standards of living, wages, environmental laws, etc. The nature of some of these countries gives them an absolute advantage not a comparative advantage in most things. China is on such country. Name one job that doesn't require a physical presence that can't be done cheaper in China?

Please do you think our nation created all of its wealth simply by trading internally?

Big business takes advantage of this by making product in China for next to nothing then selling it here at a tremendous markup. Americans no longer make the product, but get to buy the product in Wal-mart on Wallyworld wages. Great times for execs, not so great for most of us.

This is a strawman argument and not based in reality at all. Free markets will raise the standard of living for anybody within the market. Just because we are now importing more doesnt all of a sudden mean our economy is going to collapse.

The bottom line is the only difference between then and now is we are becoming so efficient in our internal economy we outsource production of the less efficient items, shredding costs, and returning higher margins that will help fuel higher paying jobs and higher return on investments.

Throwing up walls and becoming self contained didnt work for the Soviets, what makes you think it will work for us?

Two systems, one succeded, one failed miserably. Yet we are supposed to pick the system that failed?

Free markets will raise the standard of living for anybody within the market.
I couldn't let this pass. That's absurd.

Trust me after reading your response, what I said isnt even remotely as absurd as that.

If you take a country where workers are rich and integrate the labor pools with a country that is poor everyone will end up at the same level, in a free market and all other things being equal.

Oh?!?!?!?!?

Please do provide examples.

What you are arguing for is a striking loss of income for American workers.

A loss for unskilled labor

Your argument only makes sense AFTER the workers wages has been equalized and ASSUMES there are inefficiencies that can be corrected by the larger workforce with different strenghts and weaknesses.

Wrong, it makes sense because we shed the jobs that are least efficient within our internal economy and import goods at a lower cost because of it.

As to the creation of the middle class it was a result of four things:
The Great Depression
Communism and Socialism
FDR and his policies.
WW2

This is sad you can even say that with a straight face.
Communism and Socialism have never created a middle class.
FDR's policies werent very effective at combating the true problem of the 1930s, high unemployment. It was only down 5% by 1940 and he almost lost because of it.
WW2 was a wakeup call to, um, open our markets up to the world and not be so protectionist?????

What really changed to create the middle class out of the depression was a shift of the proportion of wealth towards the working class. This was prompted by worker discontent during the Depression where workers looked for a system that would benefit them more and were enticed by Communism and Socialism. Then FDR moved to give workers more power in dealing with the ownership class by using things like labor unions. When WW2 ended the greater worker power was able to get a decent share of the fruits of their labor by the artificially skewed great wealth that America acquired as a result of the war and the unnatural lack of manpower in the only functioning industrialized country.

I am in amazement somebody really believes that.

What is going on now is that Communism and Socialism have been discredited. The great wealth of America is draining. There are dozens of thriving industrialized countries. Trade barriers are being lowered. The pool of labor is now world wide so the power of the American worker to get a share of the fruits of their labor is diminished.

Communism and Socialism have been discredited by their very examples. The Soviet Union crushed itself through its own weight. Eastern Europe without the mother tit to suck on keeled over. N.Korea is in shambles, Cuba hasnt got out of the 1950s, and the last major bastion of Communism, China, is moving towards a free market and more open political system.

Socialist programs like SS and Medicare look to bankrupt our own country. Socialist programs for the past 40 years have failed to provide any of the benefit they were created for.

What you fail to realize is with a world economy it opens up markets that werent there 40 years ago. These markets will create jobs here at home.

Anybody who thinks building a wall and denying reality needs to purchase a clue, you being one of them.

I am not going to take the time to go in and deal with all the interspersed quotes and responses.
I will just point out your basic contention that the following statement by mine could possibly be wrong:
"If you take a country where workers are rich and integrate the labor pools with a country that is poor everyone will end up at the same level, in a free market and all other things being equal'
and your response:
Oh?!?!?!?!?

Please do provide examples

My answer:
How can you possibly be such a gung ho capitalist and not know the law of supply and demand? Have you even studied economics? Haven't you picked up a paper and seen how American companies are lowering their salaries to compete with lower paid foreign workers?
Thats how it works. I can't debate this when it is the FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF CAPITALISM AS ESPOUSED BY ADAM SMITH.
Dude, pick up a book and read a newspaper.
Start with "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: Meuge

Originally posted by: zendari
Minimum wage increases are going to be a problem for many small businesses.

Would you like me to site a few of your own posts where you claim that no one gets paid minimum wage anymore?

If no one gets paid minimum wage, then increasing it will not affect the business owners much at all.

You're slipping, my dear troll.

There are individuals who are paid more than minimum wage but less than the new proposed minimum wage.