Yeah, they have to make a profit....Re: DOLLAR COLLAPSE NOW IMMINENT

Another edit of subject line....

On Fri, 16 May 2008 09:02:27 -0700 (PDT), BobR
<reed1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>> > So now lets change the view for a moment and YOU have a business and
>> > you are the employer.  Should YOU be forced to hire without the
>> > ability to determine who and without having a choice of how much to
>> > pay?  Is every employer a Robber-Baron
>>
>> Examples include: all the companies that did mass layoffs to offshore
>> their jobs, all the companies that did employee "replacement" projects
>> (local guy trains cheap immigrants), all of the companies that did
>> arbitrary wage reductions (this happened in the 1870s in the USA and
>> caused mass strikes...its in the history books). And, all the
>> companies that do bad things to employees not because they are having
>> difficulties but to increase an already adequate net profit bottom
>> line (one WSJ article listed many companies that had good profit
>> re****ts but the executives were only interested in more and so
>> initiated draconian further pressures on employees).
>>
>
>Hey, I was working at one of those cor****ations that did mass layoffs
>and outsourced a substantial amount of work.  I didn't like it one bit
>and still don't, but I can also understand the business decisions that
>made it almost impossible for the company to do anything else.  They
>are in competition on a global basis and in order to survive, they
>must remain competitive on a global basis.  I am not so naive as to
>believe that my job, no matter how good I might be at it, can't be
>done by someone else far cheaper.  It might take two or three Indians
>to do it but when they earn less than 10% of what I earned, it still
>remains a huge bargain for the cor****ation.

No disagreement with above...buuuut...why is it that even if they are
making decent profits, they still go ahead and screw the employees
even more? 

>> No, not every cor****ation is a robber-baron, but a lot of them are,
>> and a lot of them do as much bad as they do good and it would have to
>> be a separate discussion to go into this tangent in detail.
>>
>> and if so what would you do if
>>
>> > there were no employers?
>>
>> We'd be in the hunter-gatherer days.
>>
>>
>We 

Except the rich guys in the upper 1-2%. They are in clover, period. 

> really still are, we are just hunting a different game. 

Yeah, the CEOs are shooting fish in a barrel. 

> The
>problem is that the vast majority of people would starve to death if
>we returned to the "hunter-gatherer" days of the past.

They did, anyway, in the hunter-gatherer days of the past. 
And, even today, we've got that bottom 1/2 or so to 2/3, all over the
world, that are barely making it from one day to the next. 

The only people that are doing OK are those in the upper 1/3, and I'd
even say you have to be in the upper 5% to be able to say you can be
comfortable. Of course, those in the upper 1% to 0.1% are the
super-rich and have all the yachts, mansions, servants (lawyers, CPAs,
PR groups, etc.). 


>>
 deleted some


>> > The standard of living that you desire is your choice but that choice
>> > brings requirements.  If your standard requires a 3500sf house
instead
>> > of a 1800sf house it might also require two incomes.  Could you live
>> > and be comfortable in the smaller house?  Probably but the reality is
>> > that you don't want to and thus a requirement for two incomes.  Your
>> > choice.
>>
>> Too much of that choice is controlled NOT by you but by the income
>> associated with your resources and not that many people can control
>> that. The ones that can are the ones in the Forbes "400 richest
>> Americans" lists.
>>
>
>That just simply isn't true, none of it.  We all have choices but few
>of us really take advantage of those choices.  It is far easier for
>most to head to the local ice house for a cold beer than to attend
>cl***** at the local Jr. College.

Yeah, but when people come out of those retrainings, I've seen studies
that show at most 1/3 to 1/2 are successful. The rest have the school
bill and still no job. i.e. more debt and no income.  

Fine, you can say they didn't work hard enough. The minister at the
church can say if your prayers were not answered, its because you
didn't pray hard enough, either. 

>>
>> > You want to blame it all on the cor****ations which are nothing more
>> > than people just like you who are trying to do the best they can for
>> > themselves.  Don't get me wrong, I can't defend the stupid decisions
>> > made by the CEO's and directors of many of our cor****ations but in my
>> > 60 years I have also seen the demise of many of those same
>> > cor****ations.  They exist in a very competitive world where one
>> > mistake can end their existance.
>>
>> Yeah, but here is my gripe: the executives get a better "safety net"
>> and have a better deal in general than the underlings and the
>> underlings have zero control over anything. Cor****ations are,
>> basically, dictator****ps with a guy basically no different than
>> _kings_ or emperors in earlier history except that the wars are
>> economic rather than military.
>>
>
>I agree with you completely on the golden parachute bull **** but that
>is really making a super issue out of the tip of the tip of the
>iceburg.  The problems in all cor****ate environments isn't just with
>the top but from every level top to bottom.  The CEO's are simply the
>most visible element but many of the decisions that most effect the
>rank and file workers are made at various levels throughout the
>organization often without the knowledge of the CEO's.    The decision
>to layoff and outsource where I was working was made by a mid-level
>manager.

Fine. What bonuses did he get? What was his severance package compared
to yours? What else was in his package? 

>>
>>
>> deleted some b/c no new material
>>
>>
>> > Got laid off 5 years ago as a result of the huge movement of IT jobs
>> > offshore and the cutbacks following Y2K.  Whined about it for a while
>> > but realized that is was a total waste of time and found a new field.
>> > Took an initial cut in income but it has been short term and I have
>> > recovered.
>>
>> Good for you, congratulations. But, you might consider telling the
>> rest of the guys here more about what you're doing and give some
>> tips.
>>
>
>Took a tem****ary position as a Project Manager that led to a position
>as Senior Billing Analyst.  Both were total departures from my Lead
>Systems Designer position that I had been working for years.  Found
>that the IT field had totally collapsed following the Y2K and dot.com
>bust.  I could complain that I ran into a lot of age discrimination as
>well but the reality was that I had ridden my experience for several
>years instead of staying on top of current trends.

Yeah, but how do you keep one job and simultaneously  train for
another? All the books talk about "keeping up" but they don't tell you
how to do this and for lots of people who deserve life-work balance,
what are they supposed to do? Kill themselves? 

>The worst part of being out of work in your late 50's or early 60's is
>that your network of associates is mostly retired or worse, dead.  The
>second worst part is that you will find yourself interviewing with
>people half your age who don't want to hire you because they are
>insecure having someone older and more experienced working for them.
>My only choice was to fully exploit my network of former clients and
>associates with an open attitude and promote my business experience as
>well as my IT experience.  I got the position because I was willing to
>use my experience, to learn and most im****tant, I was willing to take
>responsibility.

I think I already answered this somewhere. 

That's why I'm editing the subject lines in the reposts, and I
recognize the stuff below, too.

End of this post.
=======================================

>>  Oh yes, I am not some twenty-something grad from Harvard
>>
>> > but a non-degreed 61 year old fart.
>>
>> I would say you were lucky. Out of dozens of stories like yours, most
>> of the guys are doing worse than before. Me, I'm 64 and retired and my
>> resources cover my expenses.
>>
>
>Hell, during the time I was out of work I spent three months working
>for $11 per hour shoveling sand in the heat and humidity of Houston to
>set the floor in a giant oil storage facility.  When not doing that, I
>was beating the bushes for something else and taking SAP Training.
>(Talk about a waste)  There was no luck involved, just plain hard
>work.
>
>> And, some of those 20-somethings from Harvard are having a hard time,
>> too.
>>
>Too many of them think that the only thing they had to do was get that
>degree and everyone would just automatically beat a path to their
>door.  Its not what you have but what you do with it.
>
>> > > And, I'm sorry, but re-training is not the answer because we're
back
>> > > to the applicant-to-job ratio. It does no good to have ten guys
>> > > fighting for one job; nine guys are going to go hungry.
>>
>> > That is a totally pathetic view.  I almost fell into the same mindset
>> > but that is the view of a loser who wants to blame everyone else for
>> > their own failures.
>>
>> You really have no answer, do you, for the fact that when the number
>> of applicants exceed the number of jobs that there will be real losers
>> and not because they want to be losers. And, this is why we are seeing
>> a lot of programmer/IT guys in the USA ending up bagging groceries at
>> Walmart for $8/hour.
>>
>If those programmer/IT guys were really smart enough to be good at
>their jobs, they have the same smarts to learn something new.  We are
>like the blacksmiths of a hundred years ago, the jobs moved on and we
>didn't.  Instead we believed all the hype that our profession would
>continue to grow and that we were all safe.
>
>> And, that is also an elitist view. You look at the vast majority of
>> people anywhere in the world who are born in poverty and ignorance and
>> all of the demographic studies will show that your _chances_ of
>> getting out of that are near zero, or very low. Most of the kids that
>> really do have a _chance_ are the ones coming out of typically middle
>> class backgrounds or above.
>>
>
>I am not talking about those people, they don't have the options that
>we have and that is clear.  What is also clear is that they are
>starting to climb the ecnomic ladder and as they do, they are
>threatening those of us who chose to climb up a few rungs on the
>ladder and then rest for the remainder of our life.
>
>>  Most of us would still be crawling on our hands
>>
>> > and knees if we had taken the same attitude when learning to walk.
>>
>> The fact of the matter is that out of a clutch of young birds just out
>> of the egg, a few will fall out of the nest before they learn to fly,
>> and a few of those will fall into the mouths of predators waiting on
>> the ground for them with their mouths open.
>>
>If not for that, the predators would starve.  Its called natural
>selection.
>
>> > Why is it that as adults we suddenly believe that we can no longer
>> > learn something new?
>>
>> It takes more than ability to learn something new to actually learn
>> something new.-
>
>You are right about that, it takes a willing attitude as well.  The
>real problem is that most of us really don't want to be forced to
>learn something new.