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A-1 (imported) wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:04 pm The optimism that I possess is, perhaps, unique to Americans. It may appear idiotic lunacy to HOPE, but that is the first step. You must BELIEVE that it is possible, or it will never be possible.

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A co-worker from India told me the key to American optimism a few years back.

"You Americans sometimes act as though you don't realize what you have here. In this country, you can start a business without needing the proper family connections or having the money to bribe the proper government officials, or needing to hire a lawyer or a facilitator to navigate a pile of paperwork through a maze of government offices. If you are willing to work, becoming successful is so much easier, than in most countries where you would not even have the chance to start. But most importantly, this is one of the few places in the world where if you fail you can start over! That's why almost every one in the world wants to come here."

Although, lately, it seems that people on both extremes of the political spectrum are trying to take it away from us we still have an environment of opportunity here in the United States. Anyone really determined to be better off can still use it. Within a mile of me are a dozen companies, that got started because someone saw an opportunity during the Great Depression and was willing to pursue it. If you want to be better off, and you are not living in a place where almost insurmountable obstacles are put in your way, go for it!

Coinflipper,

I know what you mean. Silicon Valley is lined with such businesses. That is not the only example, either.

America is full of such opportunity. Sometimes, the legislation is even there to prevent the kinds of problems that your Indian friend tells.

My experience with my friends from India is how lost some of the better-off who have imigrated have problems operating without a caste system. Some seem pretty confused with America and how mobile individuals are to move from one social class to another.

Don't you think that these individuals from India have a drive that those of us who were born and raised in America do not have, or is it just because they usually come from the top of their schools? I find that they sometimes have a hard time with their children because in India marriages and such are arranged by parents.

Arab Nights (imported) wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:52 pm I have a question for the older folks here.

Once upon a time we all went to work for a big company and ground away there until retirement. People actually had their own offices, health insurance and (quite honestly) fuckoff time. People got to conferences and meetings paid for by the company.

Today I find life much more interesting with a lot more opportunities, but I have to admit that it gets a bit old when the opportunities disappear like they have in the last six months. Even in the good times you have to always be looking over your shoulder or looking for the next opportunity. Definitely not like 20 or 30 years ago when you just went to work.

Since we have a cross-section of blue and white collar and peoples from different lands, I would be curious how individuals feel about the changes of the last decades. This is not a political question tied to a particular party or President, but a general question.

This is a VERY GOOD QUESTION. For me to properly and adequately answer it with all the relevant information would require several books. But in a single word answer: NO!

No I am NOT better off, and I do believe that most of the people I know are not better off. Things were better, and it is not only that I was younger (twenty or thirty years ago, we were all younger) that makes my perceptions of yesteryear better. Truly, I think the world has changed for the worse in many ways, especially since the early 90's, but I could see the downward spiral beginning as far back as 1980.

For those of you old enough to remember way way back that far... Remember what a big deal people made of how (then) Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter gave an interview to Playboy magazine, and he used the awful words "screw" and "shack up with" during that interview? It struck me even way back then, that the majority of people were all caught up with really stupid shit like that. "He used naughty words! Oh my! Tell the teacher!" Nobody seriously looked at a presidential candidate's competence or lack of it, they made a big to do over the naughty words. Seems like that was the start of it from my point of view. "It" being a resurgance of idiocy in the U.S. not seen since the McCarthy era "red scare" idiocy of the fifties.

The idiocy that more and more invades my simple life. People who have NOTIHING to do with me thinking they have the right to meddle in my life and the lives of others. This "globalization" idiocy is being used to completely destroy any good thing in the U.S., and completely demoralize Americans. The fact is, the only thing we are exporting is our jobs, the only things were are making in the U.S. anymore are over-hyped and over-valued stocks, and we are now realizing that the very countries who are sucking our life's blood from us, bitterly resent us for our gullibility that profits them so much.

Truly, everything about our lives today has actually become more difficult, our quality of life is getting WORSE not better.

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DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:28 pm Truly, I think the world has changed for the worse in many ways, especially since the early 90's, but I could see the downward spiral beginning as far back as 1980....

...Truly, everything about our lives today has actually become more difficult, our quality of life is getting WORSE not better.

I was forced to see it coming a lot farther back than that. In 1966 I was working in a manufacturing job, In December I was laid off at the company I was working for along with everyone but the office staff. The entire factory was packed up and shipped to Singapore where it was reassembled and staffed with locals. The office staff moved to an office in Century City where it remained, officially, an "American" company. Even 40 years ago American companies, looking to their bottom lines without a thought for long term consequences, were moving their manufacturing off shore to gain lower labor costs and to avoid having to comply with labor relations, health and safety, and anti-pollution laws. I became aware of job leakage from this country have, in my own small way tried to oppose it.

By 1980, when job leakage was already a torrent, I was sought out by a corporate head hunter for a job selling programming and engineering time overseas, in India, Ireland, and Eastern Europe, to corporations in this country. I refused on the grounds that every programming or engineering job going off shore meant that the knowledge gained in doing it was forever lost to our own pool of programmers and engineers. As an American, I do not regret having made that decision, although, had I taken that job I would probably be in a much better financial position today. In hindsight, resistance to the brain drain of technical jobs leaving the country was, by that time, probably already too late.

At the time that the tax deduction for interest payments other than mortgages was repealed, and the "home equity loan" came into being I was taking an accounting class. The day the bill was signed, the instructor came into class and announced, "I want you all to know that you have witnessed the beginning of the end of the American Middle Class!" As it turned out, he was right.

In the 1990's when regulations on banks, investment houses and insurance companies were being systematically removed to "get the government off the back of business" there were accountants, business analysts, and Yes, even legislators, who said that this de-regulation would lead to another Great Depression maybe as soon as the end of the first decade of the new century. They saw it coming! It's not that their voices were not loud enough, few people were willing to listen. The same voices were raised when the standards to qualify for a home loan were lowered in pursuit of a steady upward rise in property values. Again, few were willing to listen.

Meanwhile, our industrial base had become hollow. A great many respected "American" companies had become administrative shells with head offices in the United States, but with manufacturing all done in other countries. A large number of those that were still doing work here were snapped up by foreign investors, still mostly from England, Germany and France, but with a rapidly growing number from the Middle East and Asia. I saw this personally when I lost many customers because they were sold to foreign companies who immediately brought in their own IT staff to implement their preferred software suite.

To top it off, to add insult to injury, along came "Reality Television". Lest you think that I am simply being facetious, consider what this trend has done to the jobs of actors, writers and production technicians who used to work on the dramatic shows that have been displaced by all the cheaper "reality" shows, and this coming fall, by Jay Leno. It's that same effect as off shoring has on other industries. (Not to mention that amount of movie and TV production that actually HAS been off shored.)

Are we better off? Hell No! Did we do it to ourselves? Yes, we did. Can we do something about it? I think so. I believe that the current administration, from whatever side of the political spectrum you view it, is trying to dig us out of this hole. I will certainly do my part, freely giving my opinions to our elected officials, Federal, State and local,:D and trying to achieve business goals, even at this late stage in my life, that will contribute to the aggregate total of improvement in our national well being. We may have to rise to a level of national commitment commensurate with the Second World War to do it, but I hope to see this country back to the situation of having each generation better off than the last during my lifetime.

Paolo. I was hoping to see your thoughts here.

Arab Nights (imported) wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2009 11:38 pm Paolo. I was hoping to see your thoughts here.

OMG!

...are YOU ever asking for it...

...always best to let sleeping Paolos lie... NO LOUD NOISES... soothing thoughts...