Tax The Rich?

[Vhayes]

another excuse.
With age comes contacts and a track record and experience.
Instead of getting hired, they should start their own enterprise.. maybe consulting.
Being hired is being submissive to anothers dreams. At that age the should find their own enterprise, rather than work for another...



There is your flaw..

Getting a job, is thinking inside the box.
They should rather think on how to make money over getting a job.
Maybe they should think on how to MAKE some jobs rather than get a job.
They can make more on their own, by learning some skill in demand and marketing them self.

If they do not .. and wait for some masta to hire them...then they they have a slave mentality and will live like a slave for the rest of their days.

How does a 55 year old female who has pressed the lever on a machine press in a factory for 25 years "consult"?

Not everyone has experience in the market place that give them sellable skills.

But if the owner of the factory decides the 55 year old is costing him too much, he'll let her go and hire a 20 year old.

You really think that's how things should be?

[tango]

How does a 55 year old female who has pressed the lever on a machine press in a factory for 25 years "consult"?

Not everyone has experience in the market place that give them sellable skills.

But if the owner of the factory decides the 55 year old is costing him too much, he'll let her go and hire a 20 year old.

You really think that's how things should be?

In fairness I think people should take responsibility for their futures rather than assuming they'll keep the same job for as long as they want it. That's the kind of change I'd like to see going forward.

Of course that doesn't help someone like your example, and it seems whatever we do there's a need for some form of support for those caught in limbo as systems change. For all I'd like to see a lot of government programs scaled back if not abolished it doesn't work to let someone pay into the system for years, then abolish the system and expect them to find the money they had been promised from elsewhere.

[adampjr]

Sure, and when one is giving of their own resources to help another it's nobody else's business whether that other person is homeless, hungry and naked or a multibillionaire - if you want to give then you get to give to whatever causes you see fit. If you want to step over the hungry person lying in the street to take pity on the guy who is washing his Ferrari with Veuve Cliquot because the stock market dipped and he thinks using Dom Perignon is a bit too ostentatious that's your call.

The problems arise when the government takes our money and hands it to whoever it sees fit, which inevitably results in waste, inefficiency and outright fraud.

The last sentence there is radically true.
I think your first bit is a little bit of hyperbole. From a legal standpoint, I don;t think it should be anybody's business. But you should be using a good portion of your resources to help others. And I don't think it fits in with Jesus' ways to be spending much energy investigating if they could actualy be working somehow. The point is open-handed charity, IMO.

[Vhayes]

In fairness I think people should take responsibility for their futures rather than assuming they'll keep the same job for as long as they want it. That's the kind of change I'd like to see going forward.

Of course that doesn't help someone like your example, and it seems whatever we do there's a need for some form of support for those caught in limbo as systems change. For all I'd like to see a lot of government programs scaled back if not abolished it doesn't work to let someone pay into the system for years, then abolish the system and expect them to find the money they had been promised from elsewhere.

I appreciate your words here, especially the last paragraph.

I miss the era where there was loyalty at both ends.

[Reynolds357]

How does a 55 year old female who has pressed the lever on a machine press in a factory for 25 years "consult"?


But if the owner of the factory decides the 55 year old is costing him too much, he'll let her go and hire a 20 year old.

You really think that's how things should be?

Given the fact that management is having to compete with a plant in Vietnam that is paying their employees $1 per day, no benefits, no workers comp insurance, no liability insurance; what do you want U.S. management to do? I personally favor an isolationist economic model, but I am in the small minority.

[Vhayes]

Given the fact that management is having to compete with a plant in Vietnam that is paying their employees $1 per day, no benefits, no workers comp insurance, no liability insurance; what do you want U.S. management to do? I personally favor an isolationist economic model, but I am in the small minority.

The global economic structure had certainly created its own headaches, no doubt about it.

[tango]

The last sentence there is radically true.
I think your first bit is a little bit of hyperbole. From a legal standpoint, I don;t think it should be anybody's business. But you should be using a good portion of your resources to help others. And I don't think it fits in with Jesus' ways to be spending much energy investigating if they could actualy be working somehow. The point is open-handed charity, IMO.

The first part is just saying that if you consider me worthy of charity then you give me money and it's nobody else's business. In other words it's your business as the giver, my business as the receiver, and if anyone else doesn't like it it's got nothing to do with them.

For the record I'm not talkng about employing a private detective to see if that hungry person really is hungry or trying to catch the disabled person doing something so we can point fingers and say they aren't really disabled. But if we become aware that someone isn't being honest then we may choose not to support them.

To give you a couple of examples - in the UK we have a magazine called The Big Issue which is intended as a way for the homeless to help themselves. The idea is they buy the magazine and then resell it from a dedicated patch, making a profit and learning something about business along the way. In theory the product is "a product people want to buy" although in practise most people I know who buy it do so as an act of charity. I always used to buy it from one of our local sellers, until I saw him drunk and aggressive and decided I wasn't going to effectively give him money so he could get drunk and abusive.

I also distinctly remember seeing a street beggar sitting in town with his cap out on the street for people to give him a coin or two. What he had in his cap was worth about 25 cents - 1p is worth about 1.6 cents and he had a few 1p and 2p coins and a couple of 10p coins. When someone gave him a larger coin he would wait until they had passed, then furtively look around, then he moved the coin to his pocket presumably when he thought nobody was looking.

[Vhayes]

From the other side of the coin, I worked for a man who owned a business. Whenever the subject of raises came up, he would say the company wasn't making enough of a profit to warrant anything beyond a 1 or 2% raise across the board. BUT - the "company" paid for his Jaguar, his wifes top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz, the house in Utah, his housekeeper who lived with the family and the gardener who took care of their lawn on a daily basis.

Shifting dollars. Scams on folks.

[tango]

The global economic structure had certainly created its own headaches, no doubt about it.

In fairness to a large extent the people have created the headaches.

When management is faced with the choice between paying someone in the US $10/hour with all the assorted costs, or paying someone in a Chinese sweatshop 25c/hour with none of the associated costs, it's easy to see why they choose the latter. But if the people refused to buy stuff made in a sweatshop they'd soon realise there wasn't a market for it.

Unfortunately it seems that in the early days people were glad to get their stuff so cheaply, and as the outsourcing accelerated it became a monster that transferred all the money eastwards. So the people who could be working a low-wage job in our western economies, earning money to support themselves and being a part of a functioning society sit at home unemployed while those earning more pay less for cheap imported products but end up paying welfare for those who would once have made those products. And along the way there's the human cost of unemployment for good measure.

From here it's hard to see how to recover much from the situation. Building sweatshops over here isn't going to produce the goods because for as long as welfare exists people will never compete with the Far East on price. If we abolish welfare so that people will take the jobs we have to consider what, if anything, they can afford in terms of a place to live. People who are financially squeezed every which way won't pay the higher prices that it would take to relocate production back to our western nations, and if import tariffs are introduced to push out the Chinese imports all it will do is reduce demand all around as people just stop buying if they can't afford it any more.

This is just part of the reason why I'm convinced we're going to see a total social and economic meltdown in the west.

[Vhayes]

In fairness to a large extent the people have created the headaches.

When management is faced with the choice between paying someone in the US $10/hour with all the assorted costs, or paying someone in a Chinese sweatshop 25c/hour with none of the associated costs, it's easy to see why they choose the latter. But if the people refused to buy stuff made in a sweatshop they'd soon realise there wasn't a market for it.

Unfortunately it seems that in the early days people were glad to get their stuff so cheaply, and as the outsourcing accelerated it became a monster that transferred all the money eastwards. So the people who could be working a low-wage job in our western economies, earning money to support themselves and being a part of a functioning society sit at home unemployed while those earning more pay less for cheap imported products but end up paying welfare for those who would once have made those products. And along the way there's the human cost of unemployment for good measure.

From here it's hard to see how to recover much from the situation. Building sweatshops over here isn't going to produce the goods because for as long as welfare exists people will never compete with the Far East on price. If we abolish welfare so that people will take the jobs we have to consider what, if anything, they can afford in terms of a place to live. People who are financially squeezed every which way won't pay the higher prices that it would take to relocate production back to our western nations, and if import tariffs are introduced to push out the Chinese imports all it will do is reduce demand all around as people just stop buying if they can't afford it any more.

This is just part of the reason why I'm convinced we're going to see a total social and economic meltdown in the west.

Yes, I agree with everything you have said here, including the melt-down.

This was all in place and active before Obama took office - even before George W. Bush took office, but my guess is Obama will take the blame for the melt-down when it comes.

[Reynolds357]

Yes, I agree with everything you have said here, including the melt-down.

This was all in place and active before Obama took office - even before George W. Bush took office, but my guess is Obama will take the blame for the melt-down when it comes.

Bush will take the blame for it. Everything in Bush's fault. The American civil war, the 1930's stock market crash, WWII, Vietnam, are all the fault of Bush. To date, nothing has been Obama's fault.

[Ceegen]

Greedy unions may have drove the price of labor up, but "free trade" agreements made it easy for cheap goods and service to flood our markets.

It was set up this way. They know what they're doing, and they are forcing us into a corner to get us to fight back. It is designed to make you angry, merely when you think about it.

[Vhayes]

Ever the amorphous "they". Who are "they"?

[Reynolds357]

From the other side of the coin, I worked for a man who owned a business. Whenever the subject of raises came up, he would say the company wasn't making enough of a profit to warrant anything beyond a 1 or 2% raise across the board. BUT - the "company" paid for his Jaguar, his wifes top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz, the house in Utah, his housekeeper who lived with the family and the gardener who took care of their lawn on a daily basis.

Shifting dollars. Scams on folks.

The wonderful thing about the U.S.A. is that if those employees wanted to assume the same commitment, risk, and level of stress that he carried; they could start their own company. If one wants to be able to work 40 and go home and leave the stress at work then they need not expect to make what the man who lives, sleeps, and breathes his job and its related responsibility makes.
Take law enforcement for example. I work my shift and I go home. If it happens after clocking out time, I dont want to hear about it. It is not my problem, it is someone else's. Now the chief, his phone rings 24 hours per day and EVERYTHING is ultimately his problem. He makes 3 times what I make and in my opinion, does 5 to 7 times what I do. Seems fair to me. There is no way in Heck I would trade jobs with him. I am not jealous of his pay because I do not want the headaches that come with earning his pay.

[Vhayes]

Bush will take the blame for it. Everything in Bush's fault. The American civil war, the 1930's stock market crash, WWII, Vietnam, are all the fault of Bush. To date, nothing has been Obama's fault.

Obama DID inherit a right mess. Bush's "fault"? Not necessarily and by no means completely. But the economy was about to melt down when Obama came into office.

Bush was in office when 9/11 occurred. You could say he was saddled with that. In my opinion, he handled it well with the exception of The Patriot Act.

I've always been one to acknowledge a problem and then try and find a solution. The blame game does not solve the problem, ever. After all is said and done and the problem is resolved, go back and see where it started to unravel to prevent it from happening again but "blame" is counter-productive to solutions.

Just my opinion, of course.