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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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May 15, 2014 - 02:47pm PT
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TGT
Entrepreneurial spirit is seen as evil by progressives More flaming BS.
I am both a progressive/liberal and an entrepreneur. I ran my own small business for 15 years. I'm a true Job Creator. There are 10's of thousands like me.
JE
now THAT's quite a statement.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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May 15, 2014 - 03:31pm PT
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Well HT, being a small businessmen , job creator, and entrepenure for 35 years, I call BS on your last post. I've never seen before ,in my life, the regulatory hurdles and bad attitudes towards business as exists today.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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May 15, 2014 - 03:39pm PT
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rick
typical Chamber of Commerce propaganda. So I had to keep good records? Have a business license? Had to pay taxes? Wow, I had to hire a bookkeeper to keep it all straight. Another job I "created". I passed my overhead on to my customers in order to make a reasonable profit at competitive prices. Sounds like Capitalism to me.
Let's have some examples of your onerous repression.
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nah000
climber
canuckistan
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May 15, 2014 - 04:49pm PT
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madbolter1:
thanks for your elucidating post a couple days back. i just started to work my way through it...
while it may take a while, based on a first read, i suspect i'll still have some questions.
in the mean time, thanks for a post that a person can sink their brain into.
[and as to the people complaining about a lengthy post like mb1's: you are as absurd as a tagger crossing the country spraybombing the same personal tag in every washroom and on every public utility building who then bitches about a graffiti artist taking up space by composing murals on the full sides of buildings... not everyone is as enamored with 10000 post threads featuring call and return repetitions of the same opposing three line tropes as many of you seem to be...]
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
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May 15, 2014 - 06:34pm PT
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Look you may think what I have said is absurd,that is your opinion.
What I have said is my own.
I have run a carpentry business since 82,I made more in the 80's than I do now.The same goes for the 4 employees I have fought to keep for the same period.
All the while I have seen what is happening in America to the present.
Anyone can frame an explanation from quips of our forefathers to justify their "position",including me.
What he does not offer are any tangible solutions to what has happened to small business people OR their employees,just more of the same.
There are a whole lot more of folks like myself that have legit bitches of how the rich get all the grease and the middle class gets jack.
So ,If you do not like reactions to BS,You might be on the wrong side of the argument.
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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May 15, 2014 - 06:47pm PT
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Every society needs a slave class, or "lower" class to make it work. The US is no exception. Somebody has to do the grunt work, and in this case, it's providing services for those who can't/won't do it themselves. Fast food, etc. Who the f*#k can support a family on minimum wage? No one, that's who. Nevermind the bootstrap bullshit espoused by some. If you don't have a fighting chance to begin with, why bother?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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May 15, 2014 - 06:53pm PT
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There are a whole lot more of folks like myself that have legit bitches of how the rich get all the grease and the middle class gets jack. Yup
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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May 15, 2014 - 07:34pm PT
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If your only dealing with bookeepers to keep your records straight, were able to easily handle extra fed, state and local regulatory hurdles , and were able to pass these extra and often nonsensical costs onto your customers over the last seven years id like to know what kind of business your in HT.Before finally passing on my Alaskan construction business to my sons we had a number of pretty grim years ,just barely staying in the black.But that didn't stop fed, state and local agencies from imposing new and always costly regulations and permits in an attempt to make up for falling tax reciepts with regulatory and user fees. Im taking it easy now, my sons have the main headache, while I only maintaining a property holding co focused on rentals, occaisional acquisitions and sales In Ak and NV , and a very small construction operation in NV.Did your business survive these last years and did you maintain your direct and indirect work force HT? I did.
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nah000
climber
canuckistan
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May 15, 2014 - 07:51pm PT
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wilbeer: my comment wasn't directed at anyone specifically, certainly not at you in particular. more just a general comment on the inevitable and consistent reaction that mb1 gets to his lengthier posts. point being, if a person doesn't like them, stick to the shorter stuff and quit your bitchin...
but, in general i find the wanting of simple answers to complex questions [without as much of a fundamental understanding of the roots of the questions as is possible] to be absurd. so if you want to fight with me over something, i guess maybe there's that.
if i'm going to put my thoughts out there they would be along the lines of the following: i think the contemporary u.s. populace has a similar problem to say mid twentieth century russians. both populaces has/had in general a conception of reality that has become infected by a beautiful and alluring but partial truth. this infecting half truth skews individual and collective perceptions resulting in the undermining of the totality of their individual and collective decision making. this undermining pushes the collective organization and the majority of the individuals contained therin towards catastrophic failure.
not because the fundamental conceptions are in and of themselves incorrect. but rather because they are only half truths.
directly put: in the u.s.'s case it is the conception of humanity as being one born of "individuals" and in russia's case it was/is the conception of humanity as being one born of a "collective".
in both cases these conceptions were and are, in the absence of their counterparts, fictional constructs. just as light acts as both a particle and as a wave, humans are intrinsically rhizomatic/collective [genetic heritage, collective emotional legacies, collective linguistic/intellectual/conceptual heritages, the mystery of the earth and our own bodies that we are all born into and onto, etc.] and at the same time we are also dendriformic/individuated [we generally experience existence from our own singular perspectives, the decisions we individually make have apparent effects on the precession of events, etc.]
point being, so far, i have found all constructs and structures that view the world at this stage of the game and say look this is f*#king simple and all answers to our problems can be solved by adopting this one guiding principal, to be in denial of the above fundamental complexity.
from my experience, the world, and humanity in particular, is intrinsically messy at the same time that there are polar truths bookending that mess. it is intrinsically situational at the same time that there are fundamental truths underlying the complexity.
until we accept that we as humanity are both a part of a whole and at the same time we are also individuated we are doomed to continue to repeatedly attempt the eradication and killing of our intellectual/philosophical counterpart.
this includes the right and left debate in the u.s.
tea partiers have more fundamentally in common with their occupier counterpoint than they do with a republican congressman. and a democratic congressman has more fundamentally in common with their republican counterpart than either an occupier or a tea bagger.
until there is a collective understanding of why the above is true, the u.s. as a collective entity will continue to flirt with the circling drain grasping after structural solutions to philosophical problems...
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
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May 15, 2014 - 08:08pm PT
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I do not want to fight anyone,but I feel to have too defend at any angle lately.
Good words above.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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May 20, 2014 - 09:48pm PT
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Rather disturbing education results.
Earlier in this thread total educational achievement between US and the "1st" world was discussed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27442541
This is for math education only.
The maths skills of teenagers in parts of the deep south of the United States are worse than in countries such as Turkey and barely above South American countries such as Chile and Mexico. This analysis, from academics at Harvard and Stanford in the US and Munich University in Germany, punctures the idea that middle-class US pupils are high achievers.
The North/South divide is remarkable
There is a band of high achieving states across the north of the US, where maths results would be as good as many successful European and Asian countries. New York and California are similar in ability to countries such as Bulgaria, Rumania and Turkey, well below the averages for the US and OECD industrialised countries.
There are 23 US states which would be ranked below 30th place in an international ranking of 34 OECD countries at maths.
Could this be part of the reason there is so much Global Warming Denial in the US? A large portion of our population doesn't understand high school level math?
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rick sumner
No, my company didn't make it to 2006. My older clients moved their manufacturing operations to other areas of California (consolidation), were startups which failed, and my best client offered me a full time job I couldn't refuse. Here in California. Then closed the division in the crash of 2008.
I've been freelancing since.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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May 20, 2014 - 09:53pm PT
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Higher education has much more important things to worry about.
Dear Class of 2014: Thanks for Not Disinviting Me
7 May 15, 2014 1:09 PM EDT
By Stephen L. Carter
Members of the Class of 2014, I salute you. My warmest wishes on the occasion of your graduation from this fine institution.
And, before I go any further, I would like to express my personal thanks to all of you for not rescinding my invitation. I know that matters were dicey for a while, given that I have held and defended actual positions on politically contested issues. Now and then I’ve strayed from the party line. And if the demonstrators would quiet down for a moment, I’d like to offer an abject apology for any way in which I have offended against the increasingly narrow and often obscure values of the academy.
In my day, the college campus was a place that celebrated the diversity of ideas. Pure argument was our guide. Staking out an unpopular position was admired -- and the admiration, in turn, provided excellent training in the virtues of tolerance on the one hand and, on the other, integrity.
Your generation, I am pleased to say, seems to be doing away with all that. There’s no need for the ritual give and take of serious argument when, in your early 20s, you already know the answers to all questions. How marvelous it must be to realize at so tender an age that you will never, ever change your mind, because you will never, ever encounter disagreement! How I wish I’d had your confidence and fortitude. I could have spared myself many hours of patient reflection and intellectual struggle over the great issues of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are graduating into a world of enormous complexity and conflict. There are corners of the globe where violence and war and abject oppression still dominate. Capitalism is concentrating wealth in fewer hands but, in the developing world, lifting tens of millions out of poverty. Traditional societies are caught in an increasingly desperate struggle between the perils of fundamentalism on the one side and the perils of modernism on the other.
Given your generation’s penchant for shutting down speakers with whom you disagree, I am assuming that you have no intention of playing any serious adult role in mediating those conflicts. And that’s fine. We should leave the task of mediation to those unsophisticated enough to be sensitive to the concerns of both sides.
Besides, you will face more important problems. Once you depart the campus, the world will make unjust demands on you. You will have to work for a living. You will have to put up with people whose views you despise. Fortunately, as long as you don’t waste precious time reflecting in a serious way on the issues of the day -- or, worse, contemplating the possibility that you might be mistaken on a question or two -- you should have plenty of hours for Twitter and Google Hangout and the nonstop party that every truly just society was meant to be.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-15/dear-class-of-2014-thanks-for-not-disinviting-me
Same though process applies to the warmist drones.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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May 20, 2014 - 10:11pm PT
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by "warmist drones" I presume you're referring to Global Warming.
Given your generation’s penchant for shutting down speakers with whom you disagree No one's shutting you down. You're just scientifically wrong if you're a denier. It's not about philosophy or belief or morals or ethics or do you like Miley Cyrus.
The earth is not flat, is not the center of the solar system and is not 6000 years old.
Thermodynamics works.
We don't even require basic calculus to get a high school diploma. That's why we do so poorly in match.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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May 21, 2014 - 12:02am PT
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Rick Sumner...I think you are comparing your apples to HT's oranges...Construction is a different beast compared to whatever HT had going...You've got every mouth -breather that sat thru a Home Depot training course under- bidding your well-established and legit bussiness...Hard to make a profit in that climate playing by the rules...rj
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Braunini
Big Wall climber
cupertino
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May 21, 2014 - 12:27am PT
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New thread title:
"Suburban white guy's lifestyle not really impacted by events on news -- America on brink of third world status"
or
"Disaster seems imminent for white guy who has never been to an actual third world country"
Hopefully Sidmo will stop by and clean those up a little
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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May 21, 2014 - 07:53am PT
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I notice every day that our roads are literaly falling apart.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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May 21, 2014 - 09:36am PT
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Ahem, whoa, what's that 9 billion pound gorilla doing over there in the corner?
Oh never mind him, that's just military spending.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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May 21, 2014 - 12:29pm PT
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that's just fukking wrong
No sh#t. Then why is everyone so afraid to talk about it?
VA scandal? Refer to the above pie chart.
(plenty of money for bombs and tanks and ships, but not enough to care for our national "heroes")
Crumbling roads and bridges? Refer to pie chart.
American Education sucks? Refer to pie chart.
3% for science, 1% for food and agriculture, are you fukking kidding me?
We were warned, 55 years ago, by a very wise and good American, Dwight D Eisenhower.
How can we move toward world peace when we spend 60% of OUR money on the tools of death?
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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May 21, 2014 - 12:37pm PT
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Don't misunderstand me. I'm a military man, and I believe in a robust defense capability.
I just don't believe that we need to outspend our six nearest competitors COMBINED, year after year, decade after decade.
(especially when half of them are our allies.)
What does it buy us anyway? It doesn't buy us peace. Check out the number of wars we've been in since WWII.
It doesn't buy us victory. Check out Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
It doesn't buy us prosperity. Anybody checked out the debt clock lately?
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dirtbag
climber
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May 21, 2014 - 12:40pm PT
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What does it buy us anyway? It doesn't buy us peace. Check out the number of wars we've been in since WWII.
It doesn't buy us victory. Check out Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
Succinct and 100% spot on. This should be reposted 1000 times.
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