My father actually took 8 years to graduate because he worked full time and had to put himself through school. He was determined to go into college and finish it so he persevered. Something i have NOT done.Originally Posted by .blank cd
I do agree with you higher education is getting a little rediculous. The cost is skyrocketing, the professors are getting more and more wacky, etc
Im single so yeah $250,000 a year, id be rich, id be set for a long time. But a family of 3 not so much money anymore. A family of 3 that lives in an area like Washington DC or New York, yeah , they will have a significantly lower standard of living that guys like us. So you have to also keep in mind that "250k" means different levels of wealth depending on where you live, family size, etc. Just because WE can do a lot with 250K as single males with no dependents, doesnt mean we are the standard. And if 250K is all a small business owner makes, we must take that into effect as he has to pay salaries, and other expenses.If I had 250k, I could definitely stretch it out for a few years, but if I had 250k a year, I definitely wouldnt be worried about money anymore.
Case in point i made XX,XXX while owning a small business. Friends were like OMG you are rich! What they didnt seew as that the money i made went towards:
$15000 in Ebay fees i paid that year
$14000 in rent i paid for my housing/office
$9000 in Ebay fees i paid (3% of every transaction)
thousands of dollars in FEDEX shipping fees
$275 for advertising on Honda-tech per month
So if i "made" $80000 in profit, it doesnt go as far as you would think.
Does it suck, yes, does it happen, yes. But lets look at both sides of the issue. WHY did he go to india? Why were costs so much cheaper in India than it was in the USA? And more importantly, if he DOESNT do it, his competition will, and then he will have to lay you guys off anyway because he wont be able to compete price wise. So all he did was what was best for his business, and sometimes that means layoffs.So lemme get this straight. Lets say since, out of high school, I can't scrounge up 50k bucks on my own, and my parents arent rich, I take advantage of a student loan. After 4 years of working my ass off in school, I graduate top of my class. Now, burdened with astronomical student loan and personal debt, since tuition rates are skyrocketing by the minute and more and more fees arent covered by the loans , I get a well paying job in my field (lets just Computer I.T.) and a home and a car. Things go well for the first few years and I manage to tackle 60k bucks worth of college. The next year, a wife, and a child comes into the picture, and things go well until year 5. Me and 5000 my teammates all get laid off because the president of the company learned that a firm in India will do the job at 75% the cost of what we could do it for.
More importantly we need to study the reasons WHY the jobs were shipped overseas. Corporate tax rates too high, cheaper labor overseas (largely because US labor is too high because of unions), cheaper materials overseas because of China, etc.
Put yourself in his shoes. If you had a business that made a XXXX per year, and then you find out that your competitors are going to india to save money , you have to compete, or go out of business. So you either lay off people here and hire in india, or you layoff here and slow production and , well, lay off workers anyway. What you hope he does do is he goes to india, makes MORE money and creates more jobs in the USA, but that rarely happens.
But even then who are we to tell him "you have to employ these people no matter what" because that is what you are arguing.
And there are tons of stories of out of work IT guys doing nothing. But that also is a reflection of the market as well. IT was very saturated for a long time, and honestly most people may have been getting paid too much for little skills, so it is also a form of correction. But what alternative do we have? Your alternative is to what? FOrce him to keep the people employed? Sounds a little Communist to me. Sometimes in business people get fired, laid off, thats just life. All we can hope is that the certain IT professional finds another company to work for that is USA based. But no one is guaranteed a job for life. We should at least agree on that.Now Im working in a bar waiting tables, defaulting on credit cards, balloon payments on the house hit, then I get foreclosed on. Same with my teammates. Why did he have to save so much money? To offset his income tax increase. This is all ok because it was smart business? Im just seeing if we're on the same page here because this example is what you just told me was smart business. This is why I focus on one part of your argument. Cause the rest of it sounded like utter garbage with zero facts, a bunch of rhetoric, and this. And I really dont think its you're fault either dude. I think some far right wing corporate millionaire convinced you that the left is trying to screw you over, that socialism is the same thing as Nazism and communism, and that the tooth fairy is real.
You must have been against the GM bailout as well i assume. GM failed to change with the times and made an outdated product and continued to pay rediculous salaries to part time factory workers. So why not have the same attitude and let them fail?Borders had a great idea, get into the book business, everyone reads. Instant billionaires. But then times changed and books can be bought and read on my phone now. Instead of changing with the times, what did they do? The CEO thought that since his pockets were starting to get a little shallower, lets inflate prices. When that didn't work and customers stopped coming in? Lets fire some workers and close a couple stores, that'll work. Nope. So lets file chapter 11 (pun intended: see the chapter 11 bookstore, who also folded) and pay out bonuses to the executives (some of which, havent even been with the company for a year) before Bank of America turns it into Books of America. So no, that wasn't smart business. The CEO could have taken his 3 million dollar salary, and that 9 million dollars from wherever he got it from, and changed with the times, or innovated. 6000 people would still be employed, Borders would still be open, the CEO would still be making money. Instead of just one person winning, everyone wins.
You are dangerously close to communism. What is the punishment for this CEO running his company into the ground? FAILURE. Sure he makes off with millions, but his company is bust. He wont make millions anymore, he gets bad press, etc. But also you cant sit here and say you should have the power to dictate to private companies what and when they should invest their money. Thats ludicrous. Then we will no longer have a capitalist society, why be an entrepenuer if the govt can at anytime tell you how to invest your money, where to invest your money, and you have to give your money away and do it this way because "everyone wins".
Surely you see what im getting at. You sound like a smart guy, who means well, and i think just sees one side of the argument, not the entire picture.
If this is the wrong way to do it, whats the alternative? I dont see anything better. Cause the same system we see millionaires drive companies into the ground, is the same system that gives rise to companies like Apple, GM, Verizon, AT&T , etc
you have to put up with some Bad versions of the system (borders) to get people like Apple. And there is far more good than bad.
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