By Manifesto Joe
Ever heard the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is?
I recently joined the ranks of America's unemployed, and that bit of wisdom is coming in quite handy for me as my job search heats up. There are job scams galore out there, and if you've got e-mail addresses involved in your search, you're certain to be getting all kinds of offers from con artists.
With as many nervous and vulnerable job hunters as there are out there, there are countless vultures ready and willing to prey on them and put their unemployment benefits in a different bank. I can identify several types of these scams.
1. Insurance companies
However good their pitch, and however reputable they sound, this is one of the most common scams. Oh, it's legal, and they tend to merely stretch the truth rather than outright lie. If you've uploaded a resume, any resume, on any kind of a site like careerbuilder.com, you've either gotten these kinds of offers or will soon get them. The requirement for their interest: a pulse.
I almost fell for one of their common ploys -- a presentation that serves as a sort of preliminary interview. I decided recently to accept an offer to do this, so I suited up, printed out my resume, got my briefcase out and used this as a "dress rehearsal" for a one-on-one interview.
The presentation was good, I had to admit. But I looked around the room. These prelim events generally have five to 15 prospects in the room. I was one of 10, so we were very average. There were people there from all walks of life, all levels of education. Most already had jobs and were looking for a different sort of opportunity.
It all sounded pretty good, until you are told that it's going to cost quite a bit of money to get licensed by the state. It's also 100% commission, and they avoid telling you that most "agents" don't survive the first year. Even among the ones who do, there's a trainer there who's going to help you build a call list, and that person is very likely to take the lion's share of the money. They say it's not a pyramid scheme, but you eventually find that's how it works.
When a company sends you an e-mail, Google the company's name and then type in "scam." I'll bet you get numerous hits on that every time.
I'm not going to name names, but I'll go so far as to say that it's every single one of them that directly contacts resume posters. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you didn't send a resume directly to this company, chances are 99.44% that this is a scam.
2. Franchises
Again, these outfits will send you an e-mail and lay lots of flattery on you about your "experience." They will tell you how much money you can make, and how you can be your "own boss" as a franchisee.
Delete, with extreme prejudice.
3. Work-at-home schemes
Again, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. A common one of these is how one can make $77 an hour working at home on one's PC.
Do yourself a favor and get rid of it.
4. For-profit colleges
Ever gotten into what looks like a job-search website, then get bombarded by pop-up ads for those "for-profit" online colleges?
They'll gladly take your money for a degree that, in the end, you may be unable to use.
Exit these, post haste.
One problem that's not exactly a scam, but is a disgusting time-waster, is when you're trying to apply for a company's advertised job, and your software isn't communicating with the company's. This is tied in with how unhealthily dependent companies have become on computer programs. In this case, the company's IT people haven't updated their system to be compatible with a wide range of PC software. So, you get taken around in circles until you realize that this is an exercise in futility.
Perhaps the worst scammer of all is Corporate America itself
This is happening where I used to work, and it's common all across the U.S. People get laid off from full-time jobs with benefits. Then, six months to a year later, if they're still available, the same company offers them a part-time job, with no benefits, of course.
Also, have you noticed how many of the advertised job openings are part time, or for temporary contract posts, etc.?
We live in the age of the Throwaway American Workforce. More than ever, people are being replaced by computers, and employee pension plans are being abandoned so that corporations can "afford" to pay lavish executive pensions.
The official U.S. unemployment rate has generally been 8-9% for years. If you take into account the number of people who are underemployed, stuck in no-future jobs with no benefits, I think you could double that percentage for all practical purposes. And then, there are millions who have just plain given up.
Bottom line: If you are hunting for a job, be careful out there.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Showing posts with label Labor Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labor Day. Show all posts
Monday, September 3, 2012
Monday, September 5, 2011
On Labor Day, Remembering Who Really Built America
By Manifesto Joe
Once almost 20 years ago, when I was having a conversation with a young man whom I knew to be politically right-wing, the subject somehow moved to entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs built this country," he told me.
I tend to be reluctant to get into arguments with people whose minds, I know, cannot be changed. I simply replied, "Well, yes and no," and moved the conversation on to other matters. In my time on Earth, I've never yet known a person whose mind was changed as a result of a political argument.
Another factor is that I often don't think of the right things to say at the right times. I'm much better with a keyboard or on paper, because it affords more time to consider things.
Looking back, what I wish I had said back to this young man was, "They had a hell of a lot of help from the people who did the hands-on labor. You know, workers. You've heard of them, right?"
Beasts of burden?
You don't have to talk to libertarians or most American conservatives for very long to discover that, in the world they inhabit, workers are more or less like a team of mules, mere beasts of burden. The entrepreneur is like the farmer behind the plow, motivating and guiding them and taking almost all the risks.
I feel compelled to point out that Farmer Jones would have an awfully hard time plowing his own back forty without his team of mules. And even if one subscribes to this unsympathetic and inhumane view of human labor, doesn't it make sense to feed and care for the beasts of burden well, so that they will stay healthy and strong for their work?
You wouldn't know that while looking at capitalism as it's been practiced through most of U.S. history. Overworked, underpaid, ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-doctored laborers have been the norm, not the exception. Our "entrepreneurial" class has consistently squeezed all it could out of those brutish proles, and then tossed them out onto the street when the time came that they weren't needed or were no longer much good.
And there, I'm talking about the ones fortunate enough to be paid at least a bare subsistence for their labor. Until the 1860s, there was a very large class of Americans whose labor was taken from them by force.
On Labor Day, take a break from the grill and those cold ones and take time to remember who really did the work that built this nation. They are the ones who did the sweating behind jackhammers, not behind a roulette wheel.
The U.S. did see a significant period during the 20th century in which conditions for working people improved, thanks to union organizing and governmental reforms. But since about 1980, we've been seeing the fingers of workers pried off those gains, one by one. Now, joblessness and working conditions are as bad as or worse than they've been anytime since 1940.
Marx: Right about one thing?
Karl Marx was apparently wrong about a lot, but from the looks of things now, he may have been dead-on right about one -- the inability of capitalism to reform itself. Marx predicted that there would be many efforts to mitigate the harsh conditions that capitalism generally brings to the working class, but that capitalism would always, inexorably revert back to its primitive state -- like it's doing now, in America and elsewhere.
For decades, I've been one of those who has hoped that a workable "third way" could be found, given the brutality of laissez-faire on one extreme and communism on the other. I've seen my hopes usually dashed, to the point that I fear them now to be just wishful thinking. I sincerely hope, on this Labor Day, that my current inclinations are wrong.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Once almost 20 years ago, when I was having a conversation with a young man whom I knew to be politically right-wing, the subject somehow moved to entrepreneurs. "Entrepreneurs built this country," he told me.
I tend to be reluctant to get into arguments with people whose minds, I know, cannot be changed. I simply replied, "Well, yes and no," and moved the conversation on to other matters. In my time on Earth, I've never yet known a person whose mind was changed as a result of a political argument.
Another factor is that I often don't think of the right things to say at the right times. I'm much better with a keyboard or on paper, because it affords more time to consider things.
Looking back, what I wish I had said back to this young man was, "They had a hell of a lot of help from the people who did the hands-on labor. You know, workers. You've heard of them, right?"
Beasts of burden?
You don't have to talk to libertarians or most American conservatives for very long to discover that, in the world they inhabit, workers are more or less like a team of mules, mere beasts of burden. The entrepreneur is like the farmer behind the plow, motivating and guiding them and taking almost all the risks.
I feel compelled to point out that Farmer Jones would have an awfully hard time plowing his own back forty without his team of mules. And even if one subscribes to this unsympathetic and inhumane view of human labor, doesn't it make sense to feed and care for the beasts of burden well, so that they will stay healthy and strong for their work?
You wouldn't know that while looking at capitalism as it's been practiced through most of U.S. history. Overworked, underpaid, ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-doctored laborers have been the norm, not the exception. Our "entrepreneurial" class has consistently squeezed all it could out of those brutish proles, and then tossed them out onto the street when the time came that they weren't needed or were no longer much good.
And there, I'm talking about the ones fortunate enough to be paid at least a bare subsistence for their labor. Until the 1860s, there was a very large class of Americans whose labor was taken from them by force.
On Labor Day, take a break from the grill and those cold ones and take time to remember who really did the work that built this nation. They are the ones who did the sweating behind jackhammers, not behind a roulette wheel.
The U.S. did see a significant period during the 20th century in which conditions for working people improved, thanks to union organizing and governmental reforms. But since about 1980, we've been seeing the fingers of workers pried off those gains, one by one. Now, joblessness and working conditions are as bad as or worse than they've been anytime since 1940.
Marx: Right about one thing?
Karl Marx was apparently wrong about a lot, but from the looks of things now, he may have been dead-on right about one -- the inability of capitalism to reform itself. Marx predicted that there would be many efforts to mitigate the harsh conditions that capitalism generally brings to the working class, but that capitalism would always, inexorably revert back to its primitive state -- like it's doing now, in America and elsewhere.
For decades, I've been one of those who has hoped that a workable "third way" could be found, given the brutality of laissez-faire on one extreme and communism on the other. I've seen my hopes usually dashed, to the point that I fear them now to be just wishful thinking. I sincerely hope, on this Labor Day, that my current inclinations are wrong.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Monday, September 6, 2010
On Labor Day, MSM News Ranges From Bad To Stupid
By Manifesto Joe
Labor Day was made an official federal holiday in 1894, during the second Grover Cleveland administration. I understand that it was an effort to placate the American labor movement after certain of that number were murdered by goons/police during the Pullman strike.
Since then, it has become a sort of beer-guzzling and barbecue holiday, in which most working folks get a day off and are festive with friends and family. Well, from what the MSM is telling us, get ready for cheaper beer and lower-rent barbecue. The Third-World style of economics is upon us, and it's being reinforced with the clear subtext that there are supposed to be no alternatives.
Story No. 1: Economists are forecasting that when a recovery does finally come, the jobs will be mostly of two kinds: professional gigs that pay very good, upper-middle-class salaries, and then all the rest of the schmucks working for wages in the service sector.
Here's a link that explains the prognostication.
Kiss the Middle Class Goodbye
If the economic prognosticators are correct, the jobs of tomorrow will mostly pay either $80,000 a year (today's dollars) or $20,000 a year, with not much in between. People like me, in-between baby boomers who started careers in the '70s and '80s, will be tomorrow's dinosaurs, from back in the day when there was a viable lower-middle class in the U.S. The jobs of tomorrow will generally be for people who are either upper-middle-class professionals, or working-class slobs just subsisting on what the service sector deigns to pay. Those erstwhile lower-middle-class jobs are all in places like Mexico and Indonesia now, and that's been going on since the Reagan years.
Our politicians not only didn't do anything to stop it -- they seemed to encourage it, with tax breaks, and bad trade deals like NAFTA and such. (Yeah, even Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore had a very big hand in that one.)
Unfortunately, this is a megatrend that's going to be very hard to stop. Many of the decent jobs are gone, probably for good, and many service-sector employers live precariously off cheap labor.
The first and perhaps biggest step is for the American people to, at long last, understand who their real friends are, and perhaps more importantly who their real enemies are. Yes, many Democrats have had a hand in all this. But you won't find one Republican politician still viable today who stood up and fought against having this sort of thing happen. Go back and look at how Congress voted on NAFTA.
The immigrant-baiting found among Republicans rings hollow -- for one thing, illegal workers usually compete only for low-wage jobs, not the kind that Americans can start a kid in college on. For another, you haven't seen them ever try to ramp up penalties against the employers who hire illegal labor. An awful lot of those people are -- you guessed it, Republicans who make campaign donations.
For 30 years, the American people have had every chance to see who has stood up for them, and who hasn't. Yet, obviously many still don't get it. If they did, the Republicans would be polling something like 25% of eligible voters by now.
That's the bad news. Now for the stupid news -- story No. 2:
If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?
In the current economic climate, it seems pretty moronic to compare the lifestyles of stingy zillionaires to the hardships that many Americans have to face every grim day of their lives. But, leave it to a few big outlets of the MSM to do exactly that.
Yahoo! Finance picked up an item from Investopedia called "7 Spending Tips From Frugal Billionaires." Now this stuff (link) will really come in handy for all you working-class slobs out there. One of the examples was Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, now believed to be the world's richest man, with $60.6 billion in holdings, according to Forbes magazine. He's lived in the same house for 40 years! Wow, like, I wonder how much money you would need to get a tour of those digs?
Warren Buffet, another of the world's richest men, was given as another example. He's lived in the same house in Omaha all these years, a little five-bedroom shack he purchased back in 1957.
Well, enough with the teases. Onward to the 7 spending tips. (My comments will be in parentheses and italics.)
Keep your home simple
Billionaires can afford to live in the most exclusive mansions imaginable - and many do, including Bill Gates' sprawling 66,000-square-foot, $147.5 million mansion in Medina, Wash. - yet frugal billionaires like Warren Buffet choose to keep it simple. Buffet still lives in the five-bedroom house in Omaha that he purchased in 1957 for $31,500. Likewise, Carlos Slim has lived in the same house for more than 40 years.
(I couldn't afford to buy a home until I was nearly 42. For 12 years plus, I've lived in the same four-bedroom house, built in 1955. By now I should surely be a millionaire, but my net worth is, alas, a good deal less than that.)
Use self-powered or public transportation
Thrifty billionaires including John Caudwell, David Cheriton and Chuck Feeney prefer to walk, bike or use public transportation when getting around town. Certainly these wealthy individuals could afford to take a helicopter to their lunch meetings, or ride in chauffeur-driven Bentleys, but they choose to get a little exercise and take advantage of public transportation instead. Good for the bank account and great for the environment.
("Self-powered transportation"! Who woulda thunk it? I've been doing that for years, forgoing the helicopter and taking my 1984 pickup truck back and forth to my night-shift job.)
Buy your clothes off the rack
While some people, regardless of their net value, place a huge emphasis on wearing designer clothes and shoes, some frugal billionaires decide it's simply not worth the effort, or expense. You can find David Cheriton, the Stanford professor who matched Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to the venture capitalists at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (resulting in a large reward of Google stock), wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the furniture company Ikea, avoids wearing suits, and John Caudwell, mobile phone mogul, buys his clothes off the rack instead of spending his wealth on designer clothes.
("Off the rack" ... Does Wal-Mart count?)
Keep your scissors sharp
The average haircut costs about $45, but people can and do spend up to $800 per cut and style. Multiply that by 8.6 (to account for a cut every six weeks) and it adds up to $7,200 per year, not including tips. These billionaires can certainly afford the most stylish haircuts, buy many cannot be bothered by the time it takes or the high price tag for the posh salons. Billionaires like John Caudwell and David Cheriton opt for cutting their own hair at home.
($45 for an "average" haircut? Where do these people get their hair cut? My wife has been cutting her own hair for many years, and when I get mine cut, about once every three months, I pay $12 and get every penny's worth. Then I wait until I'm a semi-hippie to get it cut again. Hey, what happened to that first million?
Of course, I can hear someone out there saying, "Maybe he isn't that successful exactly because he doesn't get enough haircuts." Hey, all that extra money has been going straight into my 401(k), so there.)
Drive a regular car
While billionaires like Larry Ellison (co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation) enjoy spending millions on cars, boats and planes, others remain low key with their vehicles of choice. Jim Walton (of the Wal-Mart clan) drives a 15-year-old pickup truck. Azim Premji, an Indian business tycoon, reportedly drives a Toyota Corolla. And Ingvar Kamprad of Ikea drives a 10-year-old Volvo. The idea is to buy a dependable car, and drive it into the ground. No need for a different car each day of the week for these frugal billionaires.
(We have my 1984 pickup, and my wife drives our 2004 Honda Civic hybrid. Look out, Jim Walton, I'm comin'!)
Skip luxury items
It may surprise some of us, but the world's wealthiest person, Carlos Slim (the one who could spend more than a thousand dollars a minute and not run out of money for one hundred years) does not own a yacht or a plane.
Many other billionaires have chosen to skip these luxury items. Warren Buffet also avoids these lavish material items, stating "Most toys are just a pain in the neck."
(Does this mean that our pit bull terrier, who guards the back yard, was a mistake? He damn sure eats a lot.)
What we can learn
Some of the world's billionaires have frugal tendencies. Perhaps this thrifty nature even helped them make some of their money. Regardless, they have chosen to avoid some unnecessary spending (at least on their scale) and the 6,864,605,142 non-billionaires out there can follow suit, eliminating excessive, keep-up-with-the-Jones style spending. No matter what a person's income bracket is, most can usually find a way to cut back on frivolous spending, just like a few frugal billionaires.
(I'm just trying to keep up with my Jones, not anybody else's.)
Well, there you have it, working slobs -- how to get rich. Funny, though, how often it doesn't work. Most of us have to follow those rules, quite involuntarily.
The American mentality betrays a tragic lack of respect for the dignity of labor. Recently, while I was watching a young comedian on The Comedy Channel, he observed that when one is Employee of the Month, one is a winner, and a loser, at the same time.
The joke is that, while the Employee of the Month has won an award, he's still an employee, which by the American definition is supposed to make him or her a loser. By that definition, certainly a majority of us will be losers for most, if not all, of our lives. Relatively few people can qualify as winners.
And what, then, does that make all those Americans out there who are trying to find work and can't? I presume that they are supposed to be even worse than losers.
So, happy Labor Day, all you losers out there who actually have jobs. The news ranges from bad to stupid.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Labor Day was made an official federal holiday in 1894, during the second Grover Cleveland administration. I understand that it was an effort to placate the American labor movement after certain of that number were murdered by goons/police during the Pullman strike.
Since then, it has become a sort of beer-guzzling and barbecue holiday, in which most working folks get a day off and are festive with friends and family. Well, from what the MSM is telling us, get ready for cheaper beer and lower-rent barbecue. The Third-World style of economics is upon us, and it's being reinforced with the clear subtext that there are supposed to be no alternatives.
Story No. 1: Economists are forecasting that when a recovery does finally come, the jobs will be mostly of two kinds: professional gigs that pay very good, upper-middle-class salaries, and then all the rest of the schmucks working for wages in the service sector.
Here's a link that explains the prognostication.
Kiss the Middle Class Goodbye
If the economic prognosticators are correct, the jobs of tomorrow will mostly pay either $80,000 a year (today's dollars) or $20,000 a year, with not much in between. People like me, in-between baby boomers who started careers in the '70s and '80s, will be tomorrow's dinosaurs, from back in the day when there was a viable lower-middle class in the U.S. The jobs of tomorrow will generally be for people who are either upper-middle-class professionals, or working-class slobs just subsisting on what the service sector deigns to pay. Those erstwhile lower-middle-class jobs are all in places like Mexico and Indonesia now, and that's been going on since the Reagan years.
Our politicians not only didn't do anything to stop it -- they seemed to encourage it, with tax breaks, and bad trade deals like NAFTA and such. (Yeah, even Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore had a very big hand in that one.)
Unfortunately, this is a megatrend that's going to be very hard to stop. Many of the decent jobs are gone, probably for good, and many service-sector employers live precariously off cheap labor.
The first and perhaps biggest step is for the American people to, at long last, understand who their real friends are, and perhaps more importantly who their real enemies are. Yes, many Democrats have had a hand in all this. But you won't find one Republican politician still viable today who stood up and fought against having this sort of thing happen. Go back and look at how Congress voted on NAFTA.
The immigrant-baiting found among Republicans rings hollow -- for one thing, illegal workers usually compete only for low-wage jobs, not the kind that Americans can start a kid in college on. For another, you haven't seen them ever try to ramp up penalties against the employers who hire illegal labor. An awful lot of those people are -- you guessed it, Republicans who make campaign donations.
For 30 years, the American people have had every chance to see who has stood up for them, and who hasn't. Yet, obviously many still don't get it. If they did, the Republicans would be polling something like 25% of eligible voters by now.
That's the bad news. Now for the stupid news -- story No. 2:
If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich?
In the current economic climate, it seems pretty moronic to compare the lifestyles of stingy zillionaires to the hardships that many Americans have to face every grim day of their lives. But, leave it to a few big outlets of the MSM to do exactly that.
Yahoo! Finance picked up an item from Investopedia called "7 Spending Tips From Frugal Billionaires." Now this stuff (link) will really come in handy for all you working-class slobs out there. One of the examples was Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, now believed to be the world's richest man, with $60.6 billion in holdings, according to Forbes magazine. He's lived in the same house for 40 years! Wow, like, I wonder how much money you would need to get a tour of those digs?
Warren Buffet, another of the world's richest men, was given as another example. He's lived in the same house in Omaha all these years, a little five-bedroom shack he purchased back in 1957.
Well, enough with the teases. Onward to the 7 spending tips. (My comments will be in parentheses and italics.)
Keep your home simple
Billionaires can afford to live in the most exclusive mansions imaginable - and many do, including Bill Gates' sprawling 66,000-square-foot, $147.5 million mansion in Medina, Wash. - yet frugal billionaires like Warren Buffet choose to keep it simple. Buffet still lives in the five-bedroom house in Omaha that he purchased in 1957 for $31,500. Likewise, Carlos Slim has lived in the same house for more than 40 years.
(I couldn't afford to buy a home until I was nearly 42. For 12 years plus, I've lived in the same four-bedroom house, built in 1955. By now I should surely be a millionaire, but my net worth is, alas, a good deal less than that.)
Use self-powered or public transportation
Thrifty billionaires including John Caudwell, David Cheriton and Chuck Feeney prefer to walk, bike or use public transportation when getting around town. Certainly these wealthy individuals could afford to take a helicopter to their lunch meetings, or ride in chauffeur-driven Bentleys, but they choose to get a little exercise and take advantage of public transportation instead. Good for the bank account and great for the environment.
("Self-powered transportation"! Who woulda thunk it? I've been doing that for years, forgoing the helicopter and taking my 1984 pickup truck back and forth to my night-shift job.)
Buy your clothes off the rack
While some people, regardless of their net value, place a huge emphasis on wearing designer clothes and shoes, some frugal billionaires decide it's simply not worth the effort, or expense. You can find David Cheriton, the Stanford professor who matched Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to the venture capitalists at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (resulting in a large reward of Google stock), wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the furniture company Ikea, avoids wearing suits, and John Caudwell, mobile phone mogul, buys his clothes off the rack instead of spending his wealth on designer clothes.
("Off the rack" ... Does Wal-Mart count?)
Keep your scissors sharp
The average haircut costs about $45, but people can and do spend up to $800 per cut and style. Multiply that by 8.6 (to account for a cut every six weeks) and it adds up to $7,200 per year, not including tips. These billionaires can certainly afford the most stylish haircuts, buy many cannot be bothered by the time it takes or the high price tag for the posh salons. Billionaires like John Caudwell and David Cheriton opt for cutting their own hair at home.
($45 for an "average" haircut? Where do these people get their hair cut? My wife has been cutting her own hair for many years, and when I get mine cut, about once every three months, I pay $12 and get every penny's worth. Then I wait until I'm a semi-hippie to get it cut again. Hey, what happened to that first million?
Of course, I can hear someone out there saying, "Maybe he isn't that successful exactly because he doesn't get enough haircuts." Hey, all that extra money has been going straight into my 401(k), so there.)
Drive a regular car
While billionaires like Larry Ellison (co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation) enjoy spending millions on cars, boats and planes, others remain low key with their vehicles of choice. Jim Walton (of the Wal-Mart clan) drives a 15-year-old pickup truck. Azim Premji, an Indian business tycoon, reportedly drives a Toyota Corolla. And Ingvar Kamprad of Ikea drives a 10-year-old Volvo. The idea is to buy a dependable car, and drive it into the ground. No need for a different car each day of the week for these frugal billionaires.
(We have my 1984 pickup, and my wife drives our 2004 Honda Civic hybrid. Look out, Jim Walton, I'm comin'!)
Skip luxury items
It may surprise some of us, but the world's wealthiest person, Carlos Slim (the one who could spend more than a thousand dollars a minute and not run out of money for one hundred years) does not own a yacht or a plane.
Many other billionaires have chosen to skip these luxury items. Warren Buffet also avoids these lavish material items, stating "Most toys are just a pain in the neck."
(Does this mean that our pit bull terrier, who guards the back yard, was a mistake? He damn sure eats a lot.)
What we can learn
Some of the world's billionaires have frugal tendencies. Perhaps this thrifty nature even helped them make some of their money. Regardless, they have chosen to avoid some unnecessary spending (at least on their scale) and the 6,864,605,142 non-billionaires out there can follow suit, eliminating excessive, keep-up-with-the-Jones style spending. No matter what a person's income bracket is, most can usually find a way to cut back on frivolous spending, just like a few frugal billionaires.
(I'm just trying to keep up with my Jones, not anybody else's.)
Well, there you have it, working slobs -- how to get rich. Funny, though, how often it doesn't work. Most of us have to follow those rules, quite involuntarily.
The American mentality betrays a tragic lack of respect for the dignity of labor. Recently, while I was watching a young comedian on The Comedy Channel, he observed that when one is Employee of the Month, one is a winner, and a loser, at the same time.
The joke is that, while the Employee of the Month has won an award, he's still an employee, which by the American definition is supposed to make him or her a loser. By that definition, certainly a majority of us will be losers for most, if not all, of our lives. Relatively few people can qualify as winners.
And what, then, does that make all those Americans out there who are trying to find work and can't? I presume that they are supposed to be even worse than losers.
So, happy Labor Day, all you losers out there who actually have jobs. The news ranges from bad to stupid.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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