Prostitution is illegal in most of the United States.
This was my first response. Americans work like crazy. In fact, underemployment is an enormous problem right now, and reduction in staff has many people lucky enough to have kept their jobs doing the work that two or more people did previously.
Further evidence of the premise of this thread - such as it is - being nonsense is that the OPs entire point of it seems to have been to give the OP to berate the unemployed for not having instantly adapted to the country’s economic collapse. Darn us lazy Americans. Why, we could all be starting the next Google instead of lazily remaining unemployed. Goodness knows that everybody has the skills necessary to start and run his own business, all new business are instantly successful, and banks are handing out startup capital in big cloth bags with dollar signs on them.
If you were trying to portray yourself as utterly ignorant of economics, you couldn’t possibly be doing a better job. Job are a thing of the past? No, they are not. Many Americans have jobs. Ergo, they are not a thing of the past.
As for you mantra of “start your own business”, many people have tried to inform you already that businesses require capital. It’s not exactly a secret. All “isms” are named for the things that they center around. Communism centers around communal living. Racism centers around race. Authoritarianism centers around authority. And capitalism? It centers around capital. If you have capital in a capitalist society, you can start a business. If you don’t have capital, you can’t.
Ten years ago my mother started a gardening business. A pretty simple, straightforward business, wouldn’t you say? Nothing difficult about hiring a few workers and doing gardening work for a few clients, right? Well just consider that to start a gardening business, she had to:
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Buy a pickup truck. ($15,000)
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Purchase accident and injury insurance for all her workers. ($12,000)
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Purchase property insurance in case she damaged any of the properties she worked on. ($30,000)
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Hire an accountant to do tax work and other important paperwork. ($5,000)
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Get stockpiles of a whole bunch of supplies. ($ Several thousand)
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Buy advertising. ($2,000)
Add it all up and you see that she needed to spend about $75,000 before she earned her first penny. Now, where did that money come from? It came from my father. How did he have money? He has a job. (Remember jobs, the things you described as “a thing of the past”). But people who are poor do not have $75,000 to throw away on a venture that may fail. That is why most people cannot start businesses, and why your mantra of “start your own business” makes you look clueless.
Beyond the excellent post from ITR Champion is that you spend the money, set up your business and discover that 49 other people have done the same thing and your area can only support 5.
There are a limited types of businesses that can be done from home or for minimal startup and likely the local market will be overloaded if everyone tried to “start their own”.
When people run out of unemployment the are adapting and making do. Unfortunately, a lot of the jobs that people could be doing are being done under the table by illegal immigrants.
Not sure what your point is.
It must be laziness. I am so tired of the whining: “I can’t find a job, my children are starving, they took my house… Wahhh.”
Jeeez people, I am doing my part: I fully invest half of my mid-six figure income, and coupled with the tax breaks I have gotten, this is more than enough money to provide jobs for a bunch of these lazy deadbeats. But are they grateful? NOOOOoooo. Assholes.
It’s no wonder many of the companies I have been investing in have been hiring Chinese and Indians to do much of the work, they don’t have this sense of entitilement and are actually so grateful they have a shot at the American dream that they will work seven 16 hour days in a week for their wage. No laziness there.
This country is going to hell, those damn liberals are ruining it for everyone. :mad:
:rolleyes:
There are no referrals in Post Production, no unions either. I’ve received reference letters from my freelance clients, but let me explain a couple things. There aren’t referrals in post.
A post house does coloring, editing, duplication, etc. A client calls for editing services. The house will try to sell a complete package including subtitles. Now most clients, especially these days, do not have lengthy contracts with one or two post houses, it’s usually up to 10 or 11 per film. Editing gets done where I work, but they’ve already set up a price with someone else for coloring, and someone else for subtitling, then off it goes to another company for a QC.
Now you’d think that clients like Disney, FoxSports, Lakeshore Films, Nickelodeon, Paramount and Warner Bros and other big names would prefer the service from ONE house instead of 10 or 11. Not true. The amount of property and offices large companies hold lack one large thing: a post facility. These large companies pinch pennies till they scream.
In over ten years, I have never seen one film or TV show select one post house to do all their post work. Example: I did the subs for 53 episodes of the original Six Million Dollar Man for DVD. Universal sent Bionic Woman to someone else. Why? Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. It takes a long time to subtitle and the tapes with the episodes are always, always late. So while they may have planned to get them all done in one place, they wouldn’t have made the holiday deadline for sales. Hence, two subtitling houses. And both SMDM and Bionic Woman were QCd in two separate post houses. 4 houses, 4 jobs. Crazy, eh?
So where would the referral be in this nutty process? It’s not like a different subtitle company will take me on for one project simply because a boss refers me to them. They have their own people. Nor will a duplication company take me on for a project just to help duplicate.
If I were a plumber, or in home repair and design, this is where referrals are a different story. That type business is built on those. In my field, the more work I do for different companies adds to my experience and fills my resume. Hence, I can only stay active and build my experience.
The way post works really makes no sense. When you buy a computer, I doubt anyone buys a Mac from one store, the hard drive from a second, a printer from a third, mouse from a fourth, paper from a fifth, software from a sixth. But that’s how post production DOES buy their products. Each step, new contractor.
That’s what I see from the outside looking in, too. One of the last words I’d use to describe Americans is lazy. Now, ask me which words I would use. 
I think this is a mistake in perception that a lot of people make. I did some gardening this summer - my capital required was my car to get me to the job, a few hand tools and good gloves. A business doesn’t have to start out at the level where you have staff and accountants - you grow it up to that level (no pun intended).
One question, “Doctor”: Do you earn your mid-six figure income by working 7 16 hour days for a wage?
A friend of mine back east is a dermatologist. He had a mid six figure income as well years ago. This year he was foreclosed on his house, he sold his car and now takes the train to Philly to work at a catering company. No legal trouble or anything like that, but the derma biz is gone.
Please invest in some catering companies and maybe you can help your PhD brethren back into medicine. :dubious:
I will say that in my case I simply want a steady paycheck. I own my own place, my own car, I don’t want kids or a mate or a boat or a mansion. Just a steady job. I AM, however, lucky that I have found freelance to keep me afloat, and as I’ve described, it doesn’t account to laziness.
As a matter of fact, PM me with these companies you invest in. You can write me a reference letter and I’d be happy for a long work week.
I understood that post as a joke. I’m hoping I was right about that.
I did too. Hoping I was right as well. That’s where my flippant response came from.
Sorry. Should’ve indicated that with a smiley or something.
The OP is kidding, right?
Worker productivity in the U.S. has been rising for years, with a few brief exceptions. The American worker remains one of the most productive in the world.
“Nov.05, 2010 …Increased productivity by American workers pushed down labor costs for employers in the third quarter, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)…Worker costs fell for the fifth time in the past seven quarters as employee output per hour increased at a 1.9 percent annual rate.”
And wages for most workers have been stagnant since the 1970’s.
Sure, some immigrants come here and make millions, as do some born here. But considering that those earning more than $200,000 a year represent a mere 3% of the ENTIRE POPULATION at this point, not a hell of a lot of either accomplish this.
And funny thing about just getting out and starting a business/making your own job: when the economy is in the dumps as it is, there just aren’t that many CUSTOMERS to support a bunch of new start-ups.
No-one, not even the rich investors or large corporations we keep throwing more money at under the rationale that they are the “job creators”, can create a job out of thin air…until there is enough DEMAND, enough CONSUMERS with money to spend to support it.
Further, when the banks sit on the money and don’t loan it out, not a lot of start-up funds available to the enterprising souls who’d like to do so.
I’m someone who has run a couple of businesses, ftr.
Fact is, there are currently simply not enough jobs for all those who want one and not enough demand (e.g. people with money to spend on good and services) to support the millions of small businesses which would have to be started to “make jobs” for those lacking one.
I am one of the people who was on unemployment for about 8 mths, begining in the last months of Bush’s administration, and I am still unemployed. But I and many like me are no longer counted as such because we either went back to school (as I did) OR are no longer on UE because it ran out.
I see a lot of people struggling to survive and a lot who’ve been seeking work for many months or even years to no avail, but I don’t see a lot of “laziness”.
Overall, the American worker works harder for less than workers in most other democratic, developed nations. If anything, we might need to put forth LESS, which would force companies to HIRE rather than continue to dump more and more work onto fewer and fewer workers.
This country seems to be turning into something out of Dickens lately…damn lazy peasants, not working hard enough for their gruel!
Then it was I who was wooshed. :smack:
I blame my lazy American attitude.
I was all set to mock you relentlessly for such a hilarious suggestion, but once again you managed to grope around and find an acorn.
What the economy needs right now is for the remaining few people with savings to go out and spend it all–sink every last cent into a new start up. Lease some office/retail space, higher some contractors to renovate, fill it full of furniture and office supplies, and buy some ad space (maybe even do some post work).
There is no doubt in my mind all these new businesses will fail, since the problem with the current economy is that there isn’t enough demand. But we don’t care about them so it doesn’t matter. They were destined to starve and die anyways, might as well put them to good use.
What matter is that by getting their money into the system, businesses can hire again. Contractors will have work, which means buying things from Home Depot, which means Home Depot will hire. All those office supplies mean Staples will hire. And so on and so on. The multiplier effect will kick in and the economy will grow once again, fertilized by the bodies of these noble heroes.
Brilliant.
This statement is important, and if we were to turn this thread into an actual discussion it woul need to center around this theme.
As far as I can tell, the issue isn’t that Americans are lazy, it’s that for decades they got used to things always getting better.
Consider the last time house prices fell. For decades we got used to the idea that houses appreciated in value. Never by more than a few percent per year, but we just took it for granted that prices went up. Ditto for wages, decades of wage increases, combined with yearly bonuses.
And now, for the first time in a long time, we are switching from a sellers market to a buyers market. From an employee’s market, to an employer’s market. That means wages are going to fall, and with it standard of living–a concept few of us are ready to grasp.
For conservatives, consider the reasons for extending the Bush tax cuts–people got used to the increased salary. To put the tax back to what they were meant lower realized wages.
That same phenomenon is about to play out, wages/benefits are going to start to fall. There are too many employees for the amount of work needed. Market forces dictate that their value will fall.
As a personal anecdote, I’m in the process of hiring a bunch of new staff. I can do that because I can offer considerably lower wages than in 2007. I used to have to bid up on new hires. I’d only get a few job applicants, and I’d have to provide extra incentive to get the better employees. I kad to kiss their asses and put up with a lot of shit to keep them from getting poached. I posted a job Friday, for part time hours, at half the pay rate I offered in 2007 and had 15 applicants in the first hour. I’ll be more profitable as a result, because labour costs are my single biggest concern.
I look forward to the OP running for public office and serving in a high level policy making position. I think all our problems will be solved by him. I feel better about the future already.
I take a little solace in that overbearing Type-As like you usually stress yourselves into fatal heart attacks or strokes before age 50.
y’know, one of the things that really startled me on my first trip to Japan was seeing the piles of surplussed (i.e. homeless) salarymen sleeping outside of train stations and on trains.
it makes me wonder if the pseudo-intellectual assholes that make up the American media have ever actually been to the countries they act like they know so much about.
Plus the fact both were already at Stanford…
But the rewards are correspondingly magnified: the majority of immigrants to the United States become multi-millionaires; or so I inferred from the OP.
I love the smell of sententiousness in the morning.
I was going to say that, but I just couldn’t work up the energy.
I don’t have much to add, I just wanted to post this because I think it’s funny. But note the key words in those phrases: “I ever know” and “almost.”
Can we conclude that HRoark43 doesn’t know many liberals? It’s possible he’s never met enough. Perhaps he should stop some of the liberals he sees leaving the big box stores and ask if any of them own their own business.
And when he/she/it says “almost synonymous,” how almost are we talking? If it is almost synonymous, does that means it’s not synonymous. I’m almost 6’ 3", which means I’m not 6’ 3". I’m also almost black, except that both my parents are white.