Are American workers just too downright lazy?

That quite obviously is not what they’re planning.

If you think Cisco’s planning on moving everything to China, tell you what; I will bet you one thousand dollars than in five years the majority of Cisco’s employees won’t be in China. It certainly makes you wonder why they’re still expanding in India, which, you might not be aware, is not the same country as China.

Businesses are easy to START.

If you’re some sort of Amway salesman, get back to us when you’ve started a real business, as opposed to just participating in a Ponzi scheme.

  1. Lobby your Congressmen for a Basic Income Guarantee.

  2. Buy a lottery ticket.

  3. Buy a small plot of land in the wilderness of Montana and live off the land, Unabomber style.

I kid about number 2, but your plan for us to all sell Amway products is only slightly less laughable. There simply isn’t enough demand for us to all knock door to door selling vitamin pills. Even if everyone joined the HRoark43 school of thought, the vast majority of your followers will be either no better off or worse off than they were before.

Only an idiot would lobby Congress for some basic income guarantee. Why don’t you just move to Alaska instead? :rolleyes:

It seems the only entrepreneurial idea you can think of is Amway. If that’s all you can come up with then perhaps you’re not competent enough to be your own boss. But that is a problem shared by a lot of Americans: lack of creativity.

It may be a fools gesture in the current political climate, but lots of good ideas have been laughed at when they were first suggested.

Or North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is 3.8%. But if too many people pack up and move there (like the “Okies” moving to California during the Great Depression) that it isn’t going to be the land of bountiful employment anymore.

Is it just Americans that lack this creativity? Can you name any other country where there’s a far greater rate of business ownership?

Even if Americans are uncreative and dullwitted, I think even stupid people deserve to eat and have a roof over their heads and basic medical care. Creativity is a product of inborn talent. You can’t just summon creativity on a whim. You either have it, or you don’t. Unfortunately, the muses haven’t whispered anything in my ear yet.

Let’s see if we can test this statement, and then decide…

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re an employ of what ever bullshit Melaleuca you are pushing. And the reason why Melaleuca can hire so many people is because they trick them into also being their customer.

If you are selling something that someone else made, you are not self employed. You are working for them. I don’t care if you set your own hours (which means making cold-calls at dinner time) or wearing pajamas (also at dinner time). You are nothing more than a salesmen working on commission, that has the added bonus of having to buy $30 a month and pimp your friends for sales.

Well, I’m sure you’re very good at this, so you’ve convinced 10 people to also sign up to become “independent salesmen” so you get to be a “director.”

But all of that aside, the point that we’ve been trying to tell you is that sales are down right now, because of a recession. That is why businesses aren’t hiring (that and they’re scared of Obama’s sudden tax hikes). It is also why all the people rushing out to sell Melaleuca are going to learn the same lesson that all the other retails learned two years ago.

What a joke.

So first it was laziness. Then it was defeatism. And now it’s a lack of creativity?

The three are related.

You have two choices - starve until someone gives you a job or find a way to make your own living.

In the animal kingdom what do you think the smart animals do?

Apparently they know better how to survive than you do.

Would you agree that humans are the most successful members of the animal kingdom? What is the nature of humanity that distinguishes us from them? Why should we emulate species that are less successful, when we have a model that has worked better for us for millions of years?

A lack of creativity is not the same as being lazy and you damn well know it.

I know I’m not very creative but I have never been lazy.
I’ll bet you have never done truly hard work.

Don’t be silly; he’s too smart for that.

Wait for someone else to kill something. Scare them off and take the fresh and delicious food. Works for lions and wolves. You can see dogs doing it all the time. Does this make it the right thing for humans to do?

And I live in a van! Down by the RIVER!

In the animal kingdom, are humans considered the smart animals? If so, I think they’d set up a society that has members pay a small amount of income tax that provides for a social safety net.

Or is there a smarter animal we should base our economic decisions on? I heard dolphins have a system of tariffs to protect jobs, and those things are crazy smart, wanna give that a try?

I saw an octopus open a jar once. I asked it what we should do to solve our dependence on foreign oil, it just left hid under a rock.

I don’t know if anybody has pointed this out yet, OP, but in this thread you refer to America as “us” and “we”. In your “people on welfare or unemployment benefits are crushing America by being just plain born lazy and should be cut lose” thread, you refer to America as “them” and “they”.

Not that it really affects anything else, but I find this confusing. Would you mind telling me, as a personal favor that I by no means am entitled to, which one of the nations of the world you currently call home? If not, could you perhaps find it in your hard to stick to one of the pronouns you commonly use?

I’m sure **HRoark43’s **singleminded lack of comprehension serves him well in a sales role.

No, but I’ve done smart work. Obviously you wouldn’t imagine that as being all that hard.

This economy is moving towards creativity and innovation. Who would deny that? If you want just hard work then that’s what machines are for.

Laziness and a lack of creativity are strongly related. Creativity requires working your noodle. The feeblemindedness that hobbles someone from being able to come up with innovative ideas is not innate, it is primarily ingrained by upbringing. Creativity requires a simple amount of curiosity about the world around you.

In staying on-topic with the thread, if 16 million Americans cannot start their own businesses then perhaps the economy is saying they simply are not needed anymore. Growth is projected at 3-4% this next year - that is definitely saying we can get along without these people.

And you’ll get triple starvation wages - which over here are still starvation wages.

And that’s only if you’re just as obedient to management as the Third World worker. And work the same hours.

If you want to beat the Third World at their own game, you need to adopt Third World values. Management’s done it. How long can thr workforce hold out?

Need I quote Margaret Thatcher here?

That’s what you get when you move to a new place and bring with you the inability to create wealth.

Nope, not just America. But they are the strongest economy in the world for a reason: because they are the most innovative.

America is losing its edge now precisely because we are intellectually lazy… as in, the people are no longer as creative.

And this only causes stupid people to propagate. As a result you now have a Straight Dope message board that’s been “fighting ignorance since 1973”… and losing.

Back in the day nature itself weeded out the stupid ones.

Everyone has some creativity. Some more than others. A lot of the problem is parents don’t foster this in their kids.

Should I quote Albert Einstein’s comments on the relationship between creativity and intelligence?

So, uh, gas them? Or wait for them to leave?

If I were older I’d make a Logan’s Run reference here.

Beating the third world at their own game is useless. Most of their work is vulnerable to automation.