And this kind of defeatism will only ensure their failure.
Patriotism has nothing to do with profit. You do what is legal.
I didn’t; but then, I’m not smart like you. I’m just a liberal business owner who hasn’t worked for anyone else in over eight years. You wouldn’t know me.
That is what I see too. If people who have run a small business for 20 years and as a result built a good clientele, perfected their trade, learned all the legal and tax laws, already bought the equipment, etc. and still go broke what chance does someone with none of those things going for them expect to do?
Add in the fact that people are likely trying this, which will flood the market with tons of various small businesses when demand is down.
Obviously those people were lazy, defeatist, liberal, and stupid. If they had hired cheap labour overseas they would be profiting in these troubled economic times. duh
You’re liberal, that’s all we need to know. It’s the beauty of seeing the world in simple terms, where everything and everyone fits into a neat little box. There are liberals and there are conservatives. That’s it.
I’m a small business owner. Actually, I’m a teeny weeny business owner who has to work full time at another job in addition to the one I created for myself. But technically, I am a business owner.
I’ve been working myself for about three months now. I run a sidewalk table on the artsy part of town, where people generally have cash and spendthrifty attitudes. I don’t rake in heavy profits but that’s fine since that’s not really why I started my business. But I don’t see how I possibly could even if I wanted to.
I sell craft/artwork. Mostly painted glassware and flower pots, made by my own hand. I put in serious hours every day just so I have something to sell on the weekends. I won’t say that I’m a genius at what I do, but I have some modicum of talent. Many people have stopped by my table and given me very generous compliments on some of my pieces. I’ve been commissioned to do custom orders for folks. So I’m not lazy or dumb by any measure.
Based on materials alone, my items are damn cheap. But if you factored in the labor–if I charged myself minimum wage based on how long it takes me to create something, for instance–then the stuff I make would be hella expensive. My stuff is one of a kind, not gonna find anywhere else, but you can go to Target and find something just as “cool”, though mass-produced somewhere in India. I cannot compete against that. So instead, my business model allows customers to choose their own price. Some people are very generous but the vast majority pay just enough for my expenses. Only one person–a very hip guy–actually stopped and asked me how many hours it took for me to make a piece and how much the materials cost. We calculated that the item he wanted to buy was probably worth about $12. Lo and behold, he paid it! But if I had put that price tag on similar items, I would no doubt leave each weekend without making a single penny (I’ve tried it, so I know). As it stands now–letting people pay whatever they want–most times I break even, sometimes I come up ahead, and on a few occassions I make nothing. Oh well. It’s just a hobby for me and I get fun out of just being able to see people walking around with my artwork. I’m not trying to make a living, so it doesn’t bug me.
You cannot compare business-minded immigrants from yesteryear with Americans today. Your grandparents didn’t have Walmarts, Kmarts, Targets, and Amazon.com to compete against. You could build a widget and not base the price based on what the guys in China or India are selling it for. And most immigrants who come here do not make it rich. Most of them come here with big dreams and are soon after very disappointed at how hard it is to make a living.
If it hasn’t been mentioned already, I recommend reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”. He explains why some immigrants (like those of Eastern European origins) outperformed other groups (like Irish and Italians) when it came to being business owners. It has nothing to do with laziness.
I doubt that’s even possible.
I am going to start a small business selling apples on the side of the road. What business model should I develop to ensure that I make a living wage? I’m thinking of painting flames on the side of the cart, that should attract younger consumers.
Oh ye of little faith. Sure things are tough now, but just wait 50 years until labor all over the planet is as expensive as US labor. Then we’ll bounce back since there will be no savings from it.
I heard on the radio that GM pays $7/hr in wages/benefits in Mexico and about $4/hr in China. I think the new starting wage in the US is about $12/hr. Throw in benefits and it is probably $17/hr or so. Since labor/benefits is a small part of the cost of production, and other expenses go up with outsourcing (shipping, management, some quality control issues, etc), the benefit is eroding.
What is funny (in a black comedy way) is how we all get fucked in the short term by this. Jobs leave the US to go to Mexico, where wages go up because there are more jobs than workers. Then the plant closes there and goes to China. Wages go up in China, now the jobs are leaving China and going to Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Africa, etc. So Mexico is probably experiencing a ‘great sucking sound’ too. Now China may start experiencing it.
In the long run, raising standards of living all over the globe is good and a world with less poverty and a higher standard of living (ie more education, scientists, health, etc) is great. But it sucks for my generation, and will probably lower my standard of living my entire life. We have to learn to live middle income lifestyles (Eastern Europe & latin America) here in the west while the rest of the world tries to achieve western lifestyles.
I still think you’re joking.
Seriously, I’m pretty smart (graduated college the first time with a 4.0 and am currently a junior working on a second degree with a 3.85, have run 2 successful small businesses, 129 IQ, for whatever any of that is worth :dubious:).
I have a kick-ass resume and never had a problem finding (or creating) a job UNTIL the last 3 yrs or so. The economy is BAD, getting better slowly, but still the worst it has been for everyone but the top richest 5% or so since the fucking Great Depression.
My not finding a job or starting another business had nothing to do with my intelligence or motivation (being a widowed mother with 2 kids to support is a HELL of a motivator!).
Now, had I been “smart” and ALSO had a chunk o’money available to start a business, MAYBE I could have been in a position to prosper during the downturn. I doubt it given the dismal outlook currently for small businesses, esp. start-ups.
The people who are prospering are the investors and others who make their money moving money around and scooping up the spoils (forclosed properties, stocks, etc…) at bargain basement prices because they have the cash to do so at a time when most others are busted. Their prosperity has more to do with pre-existing wealth/capital than IQ or native intelligence.
As it was, I was “smart” enough to get my ass back into school before the last of my unemployment ran out. Not only am I doing something productive which will (hopefully) result in eventual better opportunities, but I am able to support myself and my kids on student loans and grants instead of being in the street and/or on welfare (which is nigh unavailable at this point due to so many being on the rolls and lack of funds).
I think you may be confusing the terms “smart” and “wealthy”. You seem to think there is some sort of Darwinian system by which the two automatically equate.
As you seem to think that those who aren’t rich or getting rich suffer from some sort of character flaw/moral failing (laziness, bad attitude, lack of discipline, etc…) Jesus, these ideas went out of vogue in like, the 1890’s dude, along with debtors prisons and child labor. :smack:
I think you may be woefully (and/or WILLFULLY) ignorant of exactly how our system works and what is happening in the economy right now.
But then, what do I know? I’m obviously not “truly smart”. :rolleyes:
Intelligence is a characteristic, not a virtue. A smart good person is a blessing to us all, and a bad smart person is a curse and a bane. “Big” is a characteristic as well, when a big guy knocks down a little guy and takes his money, we curse him for a bully and a thief. But if a smart guy talks someone into signing something they ought not to, we wink at this cleverness and skill.
The dull are not here as prey for the clever, they are our brothers as surely as the halt and the lame. And the answer to Cain’s Question is Yes, yes indeed, you are your brother’s keeper, or, at the very, very least, he is not your appointed victim.
Dude, you’re the one calling an entire country lazy. And I’m not American.
Well, of course there is, which is why unemployment isn’t 100%.
But you don’t seriously think the solution is for 17 million people to start a business, do you? For the few that are successful, who the hell will they hire when they need a few employees?
Got a cite for that?
Jobs have vanished wholesale before. The very low unemployment of the early 2000s came after the elimination of virtually all jobs in agriculture, after factory automation on a large scale, after the offshoring of most of the clothing industry, much of the automotive industry, after the elimination of steno pools, and so on.
The economy will come back again in pretty much the same way it always did before. New industries and businesses will be created, and they’ll need to hire people.
You’re contradicting yourself over and over; on one hand you’re saying the jobs won’t come back, and on the next saying everyone should start a business and any other perspective is “defeatism.” How is it not “defeatism” to whine that the jobs aren’t coming back? You’re saying, in effect, that the American economy can’t create jobs, and then in the next saying it can create more jobs, if only people will start more businesses. Well, duh… small business startups are always major job providers. Once the recession ends, they’ll provide plenty of jobs (they already are, of course, but I mean in excess of job losses.) But it’s not going to be because every unemployed person started a business. It’ll be because a select few started businesses that lasted and provided jobs to other people.
I mean, some businesses just can’t be run with one person. Some businesses need employees.
Ok, so we all agree HRoark43’s idea is not going to work.
So what do you plan to do to find work? I mean because a lot of the plans I’m hearing seem to involve mostly complaining and waiting for other people to help out.
Despite your vaunted self-made-man credentials, your understanding of labor economics is about on a level with a novice in a nunnery’s.
The guy who doesn’t work as hard as me is lazy. The guy who works harder than me is a maniac.:rolleyes:
The critical part of this question is the word ‘too’. It conveys that idea that there is a measurable proper amount of laziness, and that laziness is a bad thing. Neither idea is provable. Laziness has produced the most important invention in the history of man, the television remote control.
IMHO, people spend too much time worrying about how hard someone else is working, and not enough time removing the need to work at all from consideration. This isn’t a simple thing to express in detail. The concept of laziness can be tied to a belief that hard work is essential independent of any useful result, or may be related to individual concepts of fairness. I’d go into more detail, but I’m too lazy to do that. That TV isn’t going to watch itself.
Most people I know who have worked up the ladder are surprised how little they have to work when they got on top.
And the guy who works exactly as hard as me is some kinda fucking stalker!
I am reminded of one of my favorite bits of Robert Heinlein. The parable of the Lazy Man. It’s part of one of his longer stories, but it works well enough.
And why do you think that is?
When I was a kid, most pharmacies were owned and operated by the pharmacist, now they’re all owned and operated by CVS.
You could say the same thing about all sorts of businesses. About the only small businesses left these days sell stuff to larger companies or provide professional services (doctors, lawyers, accountants).
Do you realize what a miniscule percentage of the million immigrants we get in this country every year end up striking it rich? Most people who “strike it rich” in this country were born and raised in this country. At every level of wealth above the median, native born Americans are overrepresented and immigrants are underrepresented.
That sort of economic cannibalism can’t go on forever.
That’s not how it works for lawyers. There is about making partner at law firms. Its like winning a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie.