Floyd Brown Loc: Milwaukee WI

Lt. Rob Polans ret.

My dad ran factories the way you say and his workers would have died for him. I think not literally. He had the greatest rapport with all the others. I worked with him as Vice President (no Biden jokes, please) it was great. It wasn't big business like the Fortune 500 companies, but everyone was happy.

Big Kahuna

Those stats tell me nothing about you being on the low rung of the totem pole.

truthiness

,,,
Your blindness or unwillingness to see the truth proves my point. QED

GmanTerry

From my perspective Capitalism is a two sided equation. I was born poor, really poor. However by the time I was 10 my father, a high school dropout, had finally got an apprenticeship as a machinist and we moved into the middle class. The employee, if he wants to get ahead has to put in the effort to be recognized by his employer as an asset to the company, not just another person doing the minimum to get along. I worked in the power utility business and I never had to ask for promotions or raises because I was thought of as a valuable asset to the organization. I was a senior Engineer because I was valued. I'm now retired and I live comfortably with my house and cars all paid for. You get out of life what you put in. As an Engineer, I had Union electricians working for me and some were awesome and did great work. Others were lazy and did as little as possible. It was difficult to fire Union members so it was the luck of the draw who was assigned to me. The shame of it was that being Union members they were all paid the same wage. I thought that was terribly unfair. There is no incentive except personal work ethic that defined the difference between the useless lazy electricians and the electricians who alway gave their all. I would hear the lazy ones deriding the hard workers because they made the lazy ones look bad. That is how I have always equated socialism. Everyone makes the same salary, therefore there is no incentive for anyone to do any more than the minimum. I have because of situations in my life had to work Union jobs from time to time but as soon as possible I got a position where I could compete with others. I think the work ethic I was raised with is what made this country the best place in the world because there was no limit on how far I could ascend the ladder of success. Guess who I voted for.

Semper Fi

Big Kahuna

My vision is a perfect 20/20. You still have tunnel vision. Be a visionary and not a regressive, Untruth!!

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

So my post about what Holland did brought out the evil in you! Sad. Work on your comprehension skills.
The issue was clearly one of attempted coercion by the unions using the threat of a nationwide strike to get far,far higher pay for their members than they were getting, which was already very substantial. It backfired!

Floyd Brown Loc: Milwaukee WI

I have been a member of unions & as a self employed individual.
I had nightmares of one factory job for quite some time after I left that job.
Just let me say that there was no end to seeing that time study person with the stop watch timing every move. Ever hundredth of a second had to be spent of a task.
I had more that my share of tasks that were timed badly.

You can do many task quickly for a while.
But you can not keep that pace up for as long as they would wish you too.
It is like seeing a person ruing a 1 minute mile & asking that person to run at that rate for eight hours.
Well you did get a 5 minute break each hour.

If you have never had a factory job you can never understand the humility you face as a human.
The lesson I got from that was if you break a task down in to small pieces you can do almost any thing.

I created in my self a working machine able to do most tasks in maintenance of rental housing.

Only to have those who I helped get rich while I only asked for what I needed to survive.
Called me not to long ago looking for thanks for what they did for me.
What I created was to be free to do things my way & ask for what I deemed fair.
I had a family to support.
There was so much needing doing that I was able to work as many hours as I wanted.

Calling me a while back looking for thanks from me for what they did for me.

It all ended when the person they hired to tell me what needed doing started doing many of those things. The things I had pointed out how simple most of them were to do.
He quit & took a job paying 3 times as much while just directing others.

In life there are givers & takers.
The takers seem to be rewarded better.

You can only get away with simple repairs for so long.
Then professional people are needed.
My advice at that time was not what they wanted to hear.
So the person I showed how simple most repairs are stop asking me to do what I was good at.
Then he started doing them.

I had hoped that they would keep me around s a consultant. They choose not to.

So I have chosen to advise a son in shaping his adventure in rental properties.
He has learned all I could teach him & advanced far beyond that.

What I have now for the most part has come from working till 78, inheritance & investing in a rental property. (That all I have to show for that is I paid off the mortgage.)

I depreciated it & the money I received for that was lost when I paid takes on that money where I sold the building.

I have no regrets.
I an neither proud or a shamed of what I am or have done.
Just some what content.

truthiness

...
You seem to think you have a clear view of sociological ladders, try this one:

https://www.russellsage.org/news/new-chartbooks-social-inequality-available-rsf-website

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

Floyd, my opinion is that people can start at the top (by inheritance), at the middle (by good education), or at the bottom (by necessity). I have seen the success and failure of people in all three cases. In many cases, I have seen guys with an idea and no money create a multimillion dollar company by sheer force of their idea and their personality. They were risk-takers, and willing to mortgage their homes and what else they owned to create a successful company.

Most of the successful ones had at least two breaks in the market place: 1) they hit on an idea whose time had come in the market they were addressing; 2) they found an investor willing to take a chance on them because the investor knew how it would likely pay off.

There was a 3rd component as well. They had invested time to obtain a good education in a popular field, and often spent years working at the bottom, only to rise step by step to the middle, and even near the top, and then took the risk of betting it all on their salesmanship and their big idea.

As I write this a fourth component occurs to me. The successful guys had great speaking ability, presence, experience and an air of authority about their work area. They were indeed excellent salesmen in their field of endeavor.

I started at the middle, but never made it to the very top, but quite a few of my contemporaries rose to great heights and retired wealthy.

Floyd Brown Loc: Milwaukee WI

Early in my path to earn a living I cleaned & painted apartments occupier by older widows.
Who moved into rental units. Many of them lived on a limited budget. Perhaps social security was a big part of that. It became clear to me that if I wished to have more money it could be a hard ship for them.

The truth of this became clear when I raised my expectations by $100.00 a month.
The rents for one building I worked at raised all monthly rents $100.00 shortly after that (Times 40)

It was plain to see I didn't live in a vacuum & that my wish for more could directly affect the well being of others. I think many just avoid that reality in their drive to succeed.

Now a good conservative just charges more & don't give it another thought.

Now when I see the numbers that show how the wealth ends up in fewer hands. I use this view of the issues to pursue & advance liberal views.
The bottom line view of a good conservative is only what is good for them self.
This is a cancer that eats at the soul of man-kind.

If we are to live together on this planet we need to temper those conservative views with some liberal views.
Now it will not be easy to get the balance needed just right.
But that don't mean we should not try to get a better balance.

Just think of how you view the better relationships you have with others & increase the number of times you apply those views with others.

There is no way that you can deny you know you have seem & had in your life what I am getting at.

Floyd Brown Loc: Milwaukee WI

Thank you for bring that article to our attention.

truthiness

You're welcome!

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

You bring up "conservative views" as if you knew exactly what they are. To comment properly on your post, I need to know your full definition of conservatism. Your implied definition seems rather inaccurate, even stereotypical---the big bad conservative that rises on the backs of the poor. Are you equating great wealth with conservatism?

Floyd Brown Loc: Milwaukee WI

Have you taken notice of how the rich have gotten much richer over the last 40 plus years.
While wages for most workers has been falling behind.

You bemoan the losses of many in the middle because some money is going to help the poor. Money that Is spent in the market place & soon is in the hands of the few.
The programs are set to help the poor, but they all end up with the money in the hands of the few.

Look at it any way you want.
The rich keep getting richer & the poor getting so poor that more money is being sucked out of the middle.

That is how things work in a conservative system.

As long as people like you turn a blind eye to it. I
t will only get worse.
With most the wealth still in only a few hands.
I have learned how to get by.
I have given up on having many wants.
The American dream has become a nightmare for many.

Be a part in bring the changes you would like to see, or get used to it.