Good ole boot straps.
Works well if you are in with peeps.
Not so if you are new to the game.
30 Years ago...
- Thread starter TheCainer
- Start date
Works well if you are in with peeps.
Not so if you are new to the game.
You do realize that a grocery chain operates on about a 1.5% profit margin which leaves no room for price gouging?
The President didn’t drive any factor?
My god man. You are kinda coming across as not understanding the “human” part of life and economics.
Jeez. You just can’t agree that pub policies lose jobs, Dem policies gain jobs.
You can post plenty of links to rebut my post, and likely you will.
How did Clinton create the tech bubble?
How did Bush create the housing bubble?
I'll hang up and listen.
Go ahead and post your myriad links. You have no humanity, yet are “tech savvy”. It isn’t all about the hidden hand.
If it is your assertion that the President, and not the Federal Reserve, was the driving force behind the tech bubble and housing bubble, and thus the timing of the associated job gains and losses, please explain.
Well don't tell my kids that, they are all 3 in their 20's and living great lives with out knowing any peeps. Crazy how that works.
At any given day Buffet has much more than 263 million in some tax liability going through the court systems.
The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.
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Blaming government and political parties for everything is easy. And in this case misguided IMO.
The blame lies with an age-old human weakness - greed.
The stock market and private equity have driven business for the last few decades. In that environment, short term growth and profitability have become the only things that matter. Quarterly earnings. Cutting costs. Outsourcing jobs to the service industries or overseas. Executive pay. The demise of the pension plan. "Leverage" is the model - do more with less.
Long term investment in people and infrastructure has given way to short term thinking. The goal of private equity is to acquire companies, make 20%-30% on their investment and sell in 5-7 years. 90% of the people that work in the business are strangers to the owners, and vice-versa. They are a cost, and they can be replaced or eliminated.
It's not the government's fault that the best way for businesses to create wealth for owners and executives these days is with short term thinking. That is the biggest reason we have become a 2-tiered society.
It's the American way.
The blame lies with an age-old human weakness - greed.
The stock market and private equity have driven business for the last few decades. In that environment, short term growth and profitability have become the only things that matter. Quarterly earnings. Cutting costs. Outsourcing jobs to the service industries or overseas. Executive pay. The demise of the pension plan. "Leverage" is the model - do more with less.
Long term investment in people and infrastructure has given way to short term thinking. The goal of private equity is to acquire companies, make 20%-30% on their investment and sell in 5-7 years. 90% of the people that work in the business are strangers to the owners, and vice-versa. They are a cost, and they can be replaced or eliminated.
It's not the government's fault that the best way for businesses to create wealth for owners and executives these days is with short term thinking. That is the biggest reason we have become a 2-tiered society.
It's the American way.
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This is precisely what our HOA(s) have observed over the past few years.
Management companies get bought up by Wall St, "streamline" their systems and get rid of good managers. Service goes to shit and creates loads of problems for the community. Our large master HOA just dumped one of those and moved to a smaller, privately owned company and already service is substantially better (our Treasurer had accounting issues with them constantly not paying invoices, screwing up billing, etc and it was a nightmare for her).
Same deal w/ landscape companies; we had one that was family owned and was head and shoulders better than what we'd had in the past; they got bought up by a larger entity, which we had not realized was another hedge-fund owned deal. Service went to shit; we have $10k or more we're withholding in invoicing to them after switching, due to areas that were never turned on for irrigation and it may have killed off multiple trees in our areas. It'll cost us 2x more to replace those trees than what we owe them in outstanding invoicing, and we may well end up suing them to recoup those losses.
And I know from inside info how they changed their work structure that literally destroyed their responsiveness. We had countless problems with them after the changeover compared with how great they were for 2 yrs prior and dumped them mid-season.
And you see the exact same formula in the news with rental properties - big hedge fund buys up large apartment complexes, raises fees and rents and their service goes to shit. And IIRC, there's an investigation looking at price-fixing for rents by the few major entities buying up all these properties in major markets. Localities need to improve the regulations and impose stiff fines for these big companies that abuse their market power; disincentivize them from buying up in the first place so that local companies can own and run them at a reasonable profit, where there's actual market competition.
You're absolutely right. Big companies buy smaller ones so they can get big enough to sell to a private equity group. But the only way they can get profitable enough is to cut workers. There isn't a lot of fancy technology in a landscape company or a management company so they make the workers "work faster", Service sucks, employees leave and the company hires untrained workers and pat themselves on the back for saving money on cheaper workers.
My vacuum cleaner wasn't working right and figured I would have to buy a new one. But instead I went to a very small business (maybe the owner and 1 other employee). Kind of a crappy place off the beaten path, but nice and clean. Two days later I got a call - my vacuum was fixed and the bill was $60. And I know there were parts involved. I have no idea how he stays in business charging so little.
Growing up in a small town, every business was like that. But Walmart moved to town and almost all the small businesses closed.
Bigger is not "better", but that's how you generate wealth today.
This is precisely what I've observed.
And I'm certain it's not limited to HOA management companies, landscape companies and rental agency companies (Have also seen it w/ people dealing with 'self storage' companies, who had their stuff sold off when they were told in emails their "regular payment" methods will still work - but they stopped working and anyone who didn't notice got their lockers broken into and sold off within 60 or 90 days.
State AGs need to start cracking down on this, because it is crushing the lower middle class folks who rent and get screwed. Only now w/ HOAs and landscapers, it's going to affect people further up the food chain. Our HOA master assn is likely to end up in litigation over $15k+ in outstanding invoicing, but we 'have the receipts' of all the issues the landscape company caused and will incur direct losses. If they sue over it, I'm voting to counter w/ 2x the losses and problems cause, and not settle unless we get every dime.
These are the smaller businesses that don't show up on Google Search (cuz they cannot afford the advertising fees). But you can find them in local searches/networks like FB or ND.
Wall St coming after and buying Main St businesses and pushing them under large corporate umbrellas and price structures will have a significant negative effect on people in flyover country.
Middle class starter home was also a lot different 30 years ago.
Most people would turn their noses up at them today. Has to be bigger with more garage stalls and fancy amenities.
Middle class expectations have increased more than the costs IMO.
Most people would turn their noses up at them today. Has to be bigger with more garage stalls and fancy amenities.
Middle class expectations have increased more than the costs IMO.
If tomorrow people decided the stock they own is worth half as much do they get a refund on the taxes for unrealized gains?
These people that Reich loathes actually have a hand in creating what other people have declared are things worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
He loathes them because he's not a creator, he can only imagine taking, and finding some way to do it under the cover of the law.
Imagine if those people hadn't created things that other people decided were worth billions. Imagine no SpaceX, or Amazon, etc. and let Reich tell you we would be better off.
Then why are you defending Trump?
What "businesses" has he created that have "flourished", without massive amounts of fraud, bankruptcies and non-payments to small contractors who pretty much lost theirs due to his actions?
I am sure Elon will suffer in immeasurable ways, just as the “average American” will.
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