HRoark43, if there is no market for new employees, why would you think there is a market for new small businesses?
Wait… wait… so now you’re the defeatist!
That sounds like a defeatist attitude to me.
If some people start businesses, some will be successful, and they’ll need employees. One of my best friends has just started a business. He already needs an employee. At the rate he’s going by this time next year he’ll need at least two more. If every available person refuses to be an employee, instead insisting on starting their own businesses, where the hell are successful businesses going to find employees?
I was at a small business today, a client. They need four new employees as soon as they can find them. Actually, MY company has open positions - three last I checked. I hope not every single person out there’s starting a business, or how will my client grow? How will my company grow? We’re short as it is.
You’re engaging in a fantasy where the math doesn’t even work. A functioning economy needs employees.
They’ve been saying this for** two hundred years.** It’s always been wrong before. I’m going to guess that, as usual, it’ll be wrong this time, too. And I’ll bet a lot of money on it.
People talked about how the jobs weren’t coming back when they invented tractors, how the jobs weren’t coming back then they invented cars, how the jobs weren’t coming back when they eliminated chimney sweeps and typists and steno pools and lamplighters and switchboard operators and gosh, wouldn’t you know, they were wrong every time. They’re wrong this time.
Sure. Some businesses can. Some small businesses will vanish. And some small businesses will be created that didn’t exist at all before. Some small businesses will become big businesses. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. One thing is for sure: some businesses will need employees. Surely you realize not every business can be a one-man shop?
No, America has too little economy for its workers. To my admitted surprise, you appear to share the common socialist fantasy that an economy is a fixed pie thing that doesn’t grow. But the economy will grow again, as it always has, in part due to entrepreneurs creating new businesses, and in part due to the effects of the fiscal crisis receding. It’s just that it won’t be all 17,000,000 unemployed starting a business, because, to be honest, that’s just really, really stupid. There are some things you can’t make by yourself in your basement office.
Question is where the economy will grow. It wont be here. Plenty of jobs in China though. The trends of the past did not have to factor in off shoring. That changes the fundamental equation. It also makes it impossible to simply say business always came back in the past, so they will again. This time it might not. Then, we will have a large group of permanently unemployed people to deal with. It is not the uneducated. It is people with talent, education and plenty of experience who are in the group. IT pros, engineers, programmers etc. will be on the outside looking in.
Wanna bet on it?
Very mature of you.
Where are you getting your information from? While unemployment is high for everyone, it is significantly less for educated people like IT, engineers, etc.
What? And mess up are nice low unemployment rate, no thank you.
ETA I realize that was a bit rash, and I apologize. All are welcome, just remember we’re a socialist dictatorship that let’s the federal government run rampant over state’s rights.
ETA2 Ah who am I kidding, we’ll still accept you. We’ll even let you marry a dude if you so desire.
It is growing here, and probably will continue to grow with the occasional recessionary cycles.
That may or may not translate to more jobs or low unemployment.
Ah, someone else who doesn’t understand the difference between defeat and the need to adapt.
American workers need to ADAPT to a new reality which clearly dictates we need fewer workers. It means we need more of something else - entrepreneurs.
If they become entrepreneurs, won’t they be working? You said we need fewer workers, what does it matter if they’re at Walmart or starting up their own international department store?
If the local apple store is laying off staff because he can’t sell enough apples, it doesn’t do much good for those workers to open their own apple stores.
But wait, what’s that, you want them to adapt? Brilliant, they should sell oranges. Oh wait, turns out the original store owner wasn’t an idiot and has been trying to adapt for the past three years.
So your great idea is for all those unemployed to start businesses and compete against the current failing businesses.
Maybe next time, suggest something practical, like telling people to move to China. Or maybe you could run out and start a business then report back to us on your success.
If you don’t know the difference between working for yourself and working for an employer then I don’t know why we’re even discussing this.
Then you go sell something else.
If no one is buying apples, oranges or any other kind of fruit, it’s probably because most people in the area have fruit trees (hypothetically speaking) or are picking them off their neighbors’ trees, etc. In that case you adapt - you go and sell something else. Or you raise your skills to go into a different line of business.
It’s called adapting to change. There is no such thing as there not being a market in existence that you can move to and make money. People are making money right now. They were making money when the market went south. People made money during the Great Depression. I can’t hardly believe that everyone here disagrees with me on that basic fact. There’s always money to be made! Do you want to be the one who makes it or the one who bitches about others making it? Go ahead and disagree with me again. Defeatism and misery love company.
But… if, in your extremist scenario of defeat and doom, there is absolutely nothing out there for you to adapt to, then your society has much bigger problems on its hands than unemployment. Either adapt or cry.
MLM was running my own business. There was no dress code. I set my own hours. I was immune to being laid off. I gave myself raises by working harder. My income increased with direct proportion to any additional profits I brought in.
Suppose you work for some boss and you increase production by 10%. How many bosses would give you a 10% raise? When you work MLM or you run your own business under your own name, that 10% increase goes right to you. That’s just one of a legion of differences between working for a boss, doing MLM or owning your own business outright.
Both you and RickJay share a common problem, that being neither of you understand that the only constant in economics is change.
You claim to be on opposite sides of the fence - you being a leftist and him being right of center or whatever - but both of you in fact cling to the same old obsolete system of people looking for jobs.
Change is in the air, people. It’s time to adapt. 50 years ago we have job stability and Japan had lifetime guaranteed employment, while America had something quite close to that. Now there is no such thing as job security. Change is in the air. Jobs are moving toward cheaper labor and repetitive tasks are being automated. Change is in the air. Companies are getting away with doing more with fewer workers. Change is in the air.
America is transitioning to an economy where fewer workers will be needed. Saying this is not defeatism: it is admitting that change is happening again.
ADAPT!!! Stop obsessing over finding a job and try to become your own boss. Or continue to cling to a system that is being rendered obsolete by the relentless march of technology.
Monorail!
*Monorail! *
MONORAIL!
What’s your point? Is this some kind of inside joke?
My boss did give me that 10% raise, essentially. Because he knew that without my work, and the work of the other members of my team, he wouldn’t have got that 10%`increase.
I said how many bosses would give you a 10% raise as soon as you raised the company’s sales 10%? Your boss was generous and is the exception to the rule.
When you work for yourself or you work things like MLM / direct sales, you get an automatic 10% raise for closing 10% more sales. You do not need to wait for your boss to be generous.
I’ll ask again:
If some people start businesses, some will be successful, and they’ll need employees. If every available person refuses to be an employee, instead insisting on starting their own businesses, where the hell are successful businesses going to find employees?
You’re missing the point. Again. The future is moving toward a point where a business doesn’t need employees to be successful.
For instance. Who else besides Blockbuster now runs a brick and mortar video rental chain? That’s being rapidly taken over by automated kiosks like Red Box and the like; and online video-on-demand threatens to eclipse even that. When VOD fully matures even the kiosks will go away. (This is what makes net neutrality so important if you support Government interference in the bandwidth distribution industry… a concept which I am iffy on; it may in fact fall into the realm of Constitutionally-regulated interstate commerce.) Now you have full automation from the moment the licensed movie hits the media distributor’s hard drive to when it’s delivered to your TV screen… or maybe starting from way before that. Ever so often you have a guy check in to see if the series of tubes are not clogged or some file server needs a fan replaced or canned air to blow out the dust bunnies, and maybe slap in some security upgrades. But meanwhile there’ll be no more kiosk makers, no truck drivers needed to deliver them, and the brick and mortar business (along with the cashiers, etc.) will be LONG gone.
All of those people will have to ADAPT to whatever jobs are left. Or start their own businesses.
RickJay, technology is marching on. Workers are NOT inherently necessary. We are evolving past the time when entrepreneurs depend on workers as a means of production. We’re moving to an era when the entrepreneur has far greater direct ownership of the means of production. This will not happen overnight, but it is inevitable.
Stop clinging to the past and look forward to the future.
Oh now I get it, you’re trying to sell us on an MLM system. Well that clears things up. Obviously everyone could be making thousands from their homes, if only Americans weren’t so lazy. With just one ad in just one new paper…
Okay, humour us, what is the difference between working for yourself and working for an employer.