1) Find someone who is broke.
2) Suggest a simple money making scheme: e.g., go buy a dozen bottles of water for $2 at Walmart and sell them for $1 each down by the seaside.
3) Listen to the long list of objections as to why it will never work, or they could never do that sort of thing.
My personal favorite excuse is government regulation. As if it’s a foregone conclusion that federal agents are going to sweep in and prevent you making $10 profit before lunch time.
You’re right, but many would say that’s doing it the hard way. They just stand in front of a convenience store and beg (they wouldn’t call it that and it doesn’t look like a Cecil B. Demille movie, but that’s what it is.) They make more money and don’t have to carry anything to the beach.
It’s worth noting that pollinating insects don’t have any problem participating in their economy with flowers. Even though honey bees are the primary pollinators in the global economy, there are many others who get by. Think about it. They don’t have degrees and going from flower to flower is definitely a low skill job. Yet it’s not going away any time soon.
I think this whole worry just doesn’t make sense. Even if your labor is of no value to the economic powers-that-be, it can be of value to other people in the same boat. So you can have an economy even if it isn’t in the desired coin of the realm.
There are problems when you can’t participate in the general economy. Such as being invisible or being treated something like humans treat insects. But it won’t be impossible to get what you need to survive.
Trent,
I don’t know you personally, so I’ll refrain from becoming personal.
But let me ask this, are you so blind to ow the economy works, that you actually believe that everyone who is out of a job, could or should follow your scheme?!
Are you actually suggesting that a guy who was making, let’s say, $75K to $80K in 2002 or 2003, and has been working making half or a third of that, or who can’t get hired at all, is ‘choosing’ to be in that situation?
Because the employment problems of the majority of people I know who have lost jobs over the last 5 or 6 years, is so far removed from your ‘scenario’, that your ‘fix’ is insulting to them.
You can’t take a construction supervisor, or a software engineer, or a machinist who was making very good money in 2003, who lost it all over the last 8 or 9 years and ‘fix’ their monetary shortages with a water bottle ‘route’. You can’t get their house back on water bottle sales at the beach! You can’t get their kids into Harvard instead of the Community College on effing water bottles.
Seriously? What the h3ll are you thinking?
So, your argument, if I am understanding it right, is that people are better off not finding the work they want than doing the work they can find.
I’m assuming you were talking mostly about able bodied young people. When I was such i never worried about a job because I could always find one that paid better than minimum wage.
Older technical folks can do something similar, but now it has to be a product or service they can provide that is more than a few dollars at the beach. Creating that product or service takes time, especially if they have to do it without funds.
No Trent,
my point was that many people can’t ‘find’ anything. Along with the obvious tirade over the water bottle solution being simplistic.
How many guys do you think actually made a living, selling apples on street corners during the Great Depression?
I know a number of people who couldn’t even get hired to deliver pizzas or to work at the mini-mart, because the hiring people in 2013 have the same mind set they had 25 years ago when I was out of work and I heard this line about a 1000 times.
“…you look like you’d be a good employee, but with your background, if a job in your field opens up, you’ll leave!”
So while there may be ‘work they can find’, that doesn’t translate to jobs they can GET.
How many guys do you think actually made a living, selling apples on street corners during the Great Depression?
The squeegee guys may not make what you or I would consider a living, but they’re doing something — and they must be making money at it or they’d stop. Some people have this irrational attachment to their personal dignity, which somehow is better preserved by doing something for something, than by doing nothing for something.
Wacko-bird bitter clingers, every one of them.
Today I live on 20% of what I used to make (and I wasn’t paid enough then.)
If you can’t make more money, you have to cut expenses to the bone. It’s demeaning and I hope it’s not forever (and only my working to change it will) but you can do amazing things when you have to.
“I’ve lived so long, doing so much, for so little; I’m now qualified to do anything forever with nothing.”
Mr. Waddington:
It’s not as simple as you suggest. My wife and I own an auto logistics business. Our employees, the drivers, move cars (both individual units and fleets) from place to place in exchange for money. Very simple. Very straightforward. No high-tech goofiness or environmental risk involved. It’s just driving cars.
Yet the amount of governmental interference we must negotiate in order to simply stay in business is staggering. The cost of dealing with government keeps our company small. We have more business than we can do, but we are forced to turn it away because the cost of hiring new drivers and buying new vehicles is prohibitive.
If the burden of government were lifted we could immediately double or triple our income — and our workforce.
And government is stifling our attempts to expand as well. Recently, we investigated the idea of opening up a taxicab company. I researched the applicable laws we’d need to comply with to do so. The Transportation Code of our city, under which taxicab companies among others are regulated, is a nightmarish jungle of permits, regulations, and rules that must be complied with or else you don’t get a cab certificate from City Hall. The code is a morass of rules, regs, and laws specifying in exhaustive detail the size, shape, motive power, acceptable paint colors, logo designs, and equipment of taxicabs operating in our city. There are rules about who you can pick up; who you can’t pick up; why you have to pick up certain people; who you must not pick up others; where you can pick up people; where you can drop them off; how much you can charge for each ride; and on and on. There are even grooming laws regulating the lengths of male cab drivers’ beards and the lengths of female cab drivers’ skirts. I mean, WTF?
Why must this be so hard? For God’s sake! All I want to do is give willing people rides in my cars in exchange for money! Why can’t I use my own vehicles in the way I wish? Why do I have to comply with some idiotic code?
I don’t know. But I do know this: that the cost of complying with every jot and tittle of the city Transportation Code is just too high. The government, and nothing but the government, is the only thing preventing me from using my resources to create wealth by means of lawful, moral, and honest enterprise.
And I didn’t even mention the applicable state and federal laws and regulations…
It’s easy to get away with making $10 before lunch time. Such small potatoes are beneath the notice of the bureaucracy. But try to make any real money at a business, try making a living l from it, and you will quickly find out just how hard it is to be a businessman in the USA.
Business-friendly America? My ass. The government at every level does its utmost to keep the entrepreneur from making a buck. And if you do turn a small profit, the IRS and and state Franchise Tax Board are circling overhead.
Government is strangling the middle class (i.e. the true bourgeoisie — small business owners, entrepreneurs, etc.) We as a society need to dump all but a small number of our laws and permit people to enjoy their property in any lawful and moral fashion they see fit.
Not letting the gov’t off the hook here, but it is highly likely that a large percentage of the regulations you cite here (and I do not think you are exaggerating, not one bit) came from…other businesses lobbying government to kill competition. This is the despicable crony capitalism that both Republicans and Democrats engage in at the drop of a hat. The only reason that Republicans tend to be ever-so-slightly better than Democrats with respect to small business is that the Republicans are slightly less likely to get a bug up their ass about “doing something” to protect “the consumer”, “the worker”, or “the government”. But both parties have been highly, highly accomodating over the years to the cries of campaign contributors who want government help in tilting the playing field. And the press, of course, with their self-selection bias, tends to be highly supportive of “the government” doing something.
Given the business you’re in, you’ve probably been following the saga of Uber; it’s been a never-ending source of bitter amusement how they’ve been getting a decent amount of favorable press in their battles with ridiculous regulations and government-granted monopolies because they’re providing a service that the bi-coastal elites like, even if said elites feel guilty about it afterwards.
I absolutely agree with you, but it doesn’t negate the point I was trying to make: there’s plenty of work for people who want to work and plenty of excuses for people who don’t.
There are plenty of jobs here in Texas, but most of them are minimum-wage positions, almost always filled by “immigrants”. The “good jobs” almost always require candidates to have specialized technical know-how (i.e. oil and gas production techniques, Java programming, jet engine repair), an advanced education (Masters or above) and/or extensive experience in the field.
The streets are full of educated, able people who simply cannot find work. How do I know? Because I hire them. Over the years the ex-cons, homeless shelter residents, and low-IQ types I used to hire for our low-wage work have been replaced by former assembly-line workers, railroad personnel, and lots and lots of former cubicle jockeys.
Want to work? You can, but you’ll need two or more jobs. Companies with living-wage jobs don’t want to risk hiring some unknown quantity off the streets. They tend to hire internally or cherry-pick skilled workers from the competition. To get a “good job”, (e.g., Lockheed) you’d better have a relative or good friend in management. Few of the positions available to the unconnected seeker offer wages enough to support a family. And even the lowest-level jobs typically require applicants to possess Bachelor degrees. Without a degree and/or connections it can take a typical job-seeker months or years to acquire employment at any level.For those who do not have specialized skills, advanced degrees, or an uncle in HR, the picture is bleak.
And this is before more of ObamaCare kicks in, in January.
Just because one once made lots of $ and had a nice house does not mean that they will always have a job that allows that standard of living… If someone once made 100K/yr and is now unemployed and complaining about not enough $ Trent is right go sell water on the beach. it won’t make 100K, but it will make something… what their really saying is I was once successful so now I’m too good to do something menial..
Thanks. I’m glad at least one person seemed to grasp the argument.
Trent, you’re argument is valid but it does not take everything into consideration. The big gorilla is if you’re single or supporting a family. I’m divorced without kids to take care of. I can survive, but a person with more responsibilities may not be able to. They may even have to leave their family so they can qualify for government relief (which I think is despicable of any government.)
He’s not trying to — he’s making the broad point. Niggling over the details may likewise be valid, but it also drifts quickly into the gray area between truth and excuses.
With corn at $5.40/bushel with 1,610 calories/lb and 58lbs per bushel, the cost per day of 2100 calories is $0.125. (2100 calories was the basis of the urban poverty line in India in 1974). Humans don’t have to outcompete machines very much to live and survive at the low end of the spectrum.
If machines do become able to do work that humans do twice as well as they do, the humans won’t starve. Instead they’ll learn to do what the rest are doing. E.g., if half of humans are making hot dogs and the other half buns and machines take over making buns, humans can focus on making hot dogs and machines and end up with 50% more hot dogs and buns. The world gets richer with new technology.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t losers in a technology transition. There definitely are. And giving the losers corn every day paid for from taxes on machines might not lead to the most meaningful lives.
Unemployment is a social phenomena.
People who want work, find work.
People who don’t want work, find excuses.
This phenomena is easily demonstrated:
1) Find someone who is broke.
2) Suggest a simple money making scheme: e.g., go buy a dozen bottles of water for $2 at Walmart and sell them for $1 each down by the seaside.
3) Listen to the long list of objections as to why it will never work, or they could never do that sort of thing.
My personal favorite excuse is government regulation. As if it’s a foregone conclusion that federal agents are going to sweep in and prevent you making $10 profit before lunch time.
You’re right, but many would say that’s doing it the hard way. They just stand in front of a convenience store and beg (they wouldn’t call it that and it doesn’t look like a Cecil B. Demille movie, but that’s what it is.) They make more money and don’t have to carry anything to the beach.
It’s worth noting that pollinating insects don’t have any problem participating in their economy with flowers. Even though honey bees are the primary pollinators in the global economy, there are many others who get by. Think about it. They don’t have degrees and going from flower to flower is definitely a low skill job. Yet it’s not going away any time soon.
I think this whole worry just doesn’t make sense. Even if your labor is of no value to the economic powers-that-be, it can be of value to other people in the same boat. So you can have an economy even if it isn’t in the desired coin of the realm.
There are problems when you can’t participate in the general economy. Such as being invisible or being treated something like humans treat insects. But it won’t be impossible to get what you need to survive.
Trent,
I don’t know you personally, so I’ll refrain from becoming personal.
But let me ask this, are you so blind to ow the economy works, that you actually believe that everyone who is out of a job, could or should follow your scheme?!
Are you actually suggesting that a guy who was making, let’s say, $75K to $80K in 2002 or 2003, and has been working making half or a third of that, or who can’t get hired at all, is ‘choosing’ to be in that situation?
Because the employment problems of the majority of people I know who have lost jobs over the last 5 or 6 years, is so far removed from your ‘scenario’, that your ‘fix’ is insulting to them.
You can’t take a construction supervisor, or a software engineer, or a machinist who was making very good money in 2003, who lost it all over the last 8 or 9 years and ‘fix’ their monetary shortages with a water bottle ‘route’. You can’t get their house back on water bottle sales at the beach! You can’t get their kids into Harvard instead of the Community College on effing water bottles.
Seriously? What the h3ll are you thinking?
So, your argument, if I am understanding it right, is that people are better off not finding the work they want than doing the work they can find.
I’m assuming you were talking mostly about able bodied young people. When I was such i never worried about a job because I could always find one that paid better than minimum wage.
Older technical folks can do something similar, but now it has to be a product or service they can provide that is more than a few dollars at the beach. Creating that product or service takes time, especially if they have to do it without funds.
No Trent,
my point was that many people can’t ‘find’ anything. Along with the obvious tirade over the water bottle solution being simplistic.
How many guys do you think actually made a living, selling apples on street corners during the Great Depression?
I know a number of people who couldn’t even get hired to deliver pizzas or to work at the mini-mart, because the hiring people in 2013 have the same mind set they had 25 years ago when I was out of work and I heard this line about a 1000 times.
“…you look like you’d be a good employee, but with your background, if a job in your field opens up, you’ll leave!”
So while there may be ‘work they can find’, that doesn’t translate to jobs they can GET.
The squeegee guys may not make what you or I would consider a living, but they’re doing something — and they must be making money at it or they’d stop. Some people have this irrational attachment to their personal dignity, which somehow is better preserved by doing something for something, than by doing nothing for something.
Wacko-bird bitter clingers, every one of them.
Today I live on 20% of what I used to make (and I wasn’t paid enough then.)
If you can’t make more money, you have to cut expenses to the bone. It’s demeaning and I hope it’s not forever (and only my working to change it will) but you can do amazing things when you have to.
“I’ve lived so long, doing so much, for so little; I’m now qualified to do anything forever with nothing.”
Mr. Waddington:
It’s not as simple as you suggest. My wife and I own an auto logistics business. Our employees, the drivers, move cars (both individual units and fleets) from place to place in exchange for money. Very simple. Very straightforward. No high-tech goofiness or environmental risk involved. It’s just driving cars.
Yet the amount of governmental interference we must negotiate in order to simply stay in business is staggering. The cost of dealing with government keeps our company small. We have more business than we can do, but we are forced to turn it away because the cost of hiring new drivers and buying new vehicles is prohibitive.
If the burden of government were lifted we could immediately double or triple our income — and our workforce.
And government is stifling our attempts to expand as well. Recently, we investigated the idea of opening up a taxicab company. I researched the applicable laws we’d need to comply with to do so. The Transportation Code of our city, under which taxicab companies among others are regulated, is a nightmarish jungle of permits, regulations, and rules that must be complied with or else you don’t get a cab certificate from City Hall. The code is a morass of rules, regs, and laws specifying in exhaustive detail the size, shape, motive power, acceptable paint colors, logo designs, and equipment of taxicabs operating in our city. There are rules about who you can pick up; who you can’t pick up; why you have to pick up certain people; who you must not pick up others; where you can pick up people; where you can drop them off; how much you can charge for each ride; and on and on. There are even grooming laws regulating the lengths of male cab drivers’ beards and the lengths of female cab drivers’ skirts. I mean, WTF?
Why must this be so hard? For God’s sake! All I want to do is give willing people rides in my cars in exchange for money! Why can’t I use my own vehicles in the way I wish? Why do I have to comply with some idiotic code?
I don’t know. But I do know this: that the cost of complying with every jot and tittle of the city Transportation Code is just too high. The government, and nothing but the government, is the only thing preventing me from using my resources to create wealth by means of lawful, moral, and honest enterprise.
And I didn’t even mention the applicable state and federal laws and regulations…
It’s easy to get away with making $10 before lunch time. Such small potatoes are beneath the notice of the bureaucracy. But try to make any real money at a business, try making a living l from it, and you will quickly find out just how hard it is to be a businessman in the USA.
Business-friendly America? My ass. The government at every level does its utmost to keep the entrepreneur from making a buck. And if you do turn a small profit, the IRS and and state Franchise Tax Board are circling overhead.
Government is strangling the middle class (i.e. the true bourgeoisie — small business owners, entrepreneurs, etc.) We as a society need to dump all but a small number of our laws and permit people to enjoy their property in any lawful and moral fashion they see fit.
Not letting the gov’t off the hook here, but it is highly likely that a large percentage of the regulations you cite here (and I do not think you are exaggerating, not one bit) came from…other businesses lobbying government to kill competition. This is the despicable crony capitalism that both Republicans and Democrats engage in at the drop of a hat. The only reason that Republicans tend to be ever-so-slightly better than Democrats with respect to small business is that the Republicans are slightly less likely to get a bug up their ass about “doing something” to protect “the consumer”, “the worker”, or “the government”. But both parties have been highly, highly accomodating over the years to the cries of campaign contributors who want government help in tilting the playing field. And the press, of course, with their self-selection bias, tends to be highly supportive of “the government” doing something.
Given the business you’re in, you’ve probably been following the saga of Uber; it’s been a never-ending source of bitter amusement how they’ve been getting a decent amount of favorable press in their battles with ridiculous regulations and government-granted monopolies because they’re providing a service that the bi-coastal elites like, even if said elites feel guilty about it afterwards.
I absolutely agree with you, but it doesn’t negate the point I was trying to make: there’s plenty of work for people who want to work and plenty of excuses for people who don’t.
There are plenty of jobs here in Texas, but most of them are minimum-wage positions, almost always filled by “immigrants”. The “good jobs” almost always require candidates to have specialized technical know-how (i.e. oil and gas production techniques, Java programming, jet engine repair), an advanced education (Masters or above) and/or extensive experience in the field.
The streets are full of educated, able people who simply cannot find work. How do I know? Because I hire them. Over the years the ex-cons, homeless shelter residents, and low-IQ types I used to hire for our low-wage work have been replaced by former assembly-line workers, railroad personnel, and lots and lots of former cubicle jockeys.
Want to work? You can, but you’ll need two or more jobs. Companies with living-wage jobs don’t want to risk hiring some unknown quantity off the streets. They tend to hire internally or cherry-pick skilled workers from the competition. To get a “good job”, (e.g., Lockheed) you’d better have a relative or good friend in management. Few of the positions available to the unconnected seeker offer wages enough to support a family. And even the lowest-level jobs typically require applicants to possess Bachelor degrees. Without a degree and/or connections it can take a typical job-seeker months or years to acquire employment at any level.For those who do not have specialized skills, advanced degrees, or an uncle in HR, the picture is bleak.
And this is before more of ObamaCare kicks in, in January.
Just because one once made lots of $ and had a nice house does not mean that they will always have a job that allows that standard of living… If someone once made 100K/yr and is now unemployed and complaining about not enough $ Trent is right go sell water on the beach. it won’t make 100K, but it will make something… what their really saying is I was once successful so now I’m too good to do something menial..
Thanks. I’m glad at least one person seemed to grasp the argument.
Trent, you’re argument is valid but it does not take everything into consideration. The big gorilla is if you’re single or supporting a family. I’m divorced without kids to take care of. I can survive, but a person with more responsibilities may not be able to. They may even have to leave their family so they can qualify for government relief (which I think is despicable of any government.)
He’s not trying to — he’s making the broad point. Niggling over the details may likewise be valid, but it also drifts quickly into the gray area between truth and excuses.
With corn at $5.40/bushel with 1,610 calories/lb and 58lbs per bushel, the cost per day of 2100 calories is $0.125. (2100 calories was the basis of the urban poverty line in India in 1974). Humans don’t have to outcompete machines very much to live and survive at the low end of the spectrum.
If machines do become able to do work that humans do twice as well as they do, the humans won’t starve. Instead they’ll learn to do what the rest are doing. E.g., if half of humans are making hot dogs and the other half buns and machines take over making buns, humans can focus on making hot dogs and machines and end up with 50% more hot dogs and buns. The world gets richer with new technology.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t losers in a technology transition. There definitely are. And giving the losers corn every day paid for from taxes on machines might not lead to the most meaningful lives.