Your thoughts on the lack of workers- Great Dave Ramsey with Mike Row video

You moved to where opportunity was and seized it. I did the same thing back in 2006. Moved 950+ miles on New Years Eve into New Years Day of 2007 to start a new career. Sometimes you have to leave the comfort of everything you know to grow.

 

Regulating the distribution of earnings is the key component to socialism. And once you do that why would anyone work any more? Sounds like you need to read atlas shrugged.

 

I watched the Ramsey / Rowe video with some interest.

I have nothing against either of them, and they both hit on some very fair points. I know there are some really big fans of Dave Ramsey on here, and some who dislike his advice. I am somewhere in the middle. Realistically a person needs to have a certain amount of income to apply Ramsey’s plan beyond saving up a basic emergency fund, and paying off or staying out of CC debt. If you live paycheck it’s going to be tough to save money for a big housing down payment or sock away 15% of your income in investments. I’m not slavishly inclined to follow his plan to the letter on some things like paying off your mortgage as quickly as possible, we could pay off our mortgage tomorrow if we wanted to, but refinanced at 2.25% on a 30 year fixed it makes more sense to us to consider other investments should an opportunity arise. Otherwise his plans to eliminate debt and incrementally invest disposable income are a solid conservative plan to build wealth in a sustainable manner.

As far as the disparity in workforce participation vs opportunity I don’t have a good answer. In my industry we are struggling to recruit and retain people in the RR industry. This problem lies squarely at the feet of RR C suite management who have decided to cut costs, lay off workers, and work those left to the point of exhaustion. Now the word is out and younger workers aren’t interested in riding that train. I can’t blame them. Now the infrastructure out here is rundown from years of not maintaining things to lower operating costs. That derailment in East Palestine, OH is an unfortunate symptom of an industry wide problem.

RR management is going to have to figure out how to attract people and retain them. They better do it quick, and get their operations back up to snuff because they’re about to get their dicks kicked in with regulations if they don’t.

 

Sending a PM with a response as I don't want a ban.

 

Just don't let the brass see us....

 

Meh. They're not on site tomorrow.

 

My dad grew up on a farm and is capable of doing all that himself but is at the age where he'd rather spend $40 and an hour or so of his time to have someone else do it for him.

 

I've read it; and you've misunderstood my point. I'm not in the least suggesting an outside limit on the distribution of earnings by some regulatory agency/organization. Read what I wrote again:

Emphasis on the "your" - meaning, from the POV of the CEO. In other words, I'm suggesting it might be nice if outrageously compensated CEOs (and we know there definitely are some) choose to self-limit their compensation to some less-absolutely-outrageous amount, in order to offset increased compensation for hard-working employees.

(Granted, that'd be totally subjective; and I would not EVER suggest this be 'imposed.' But it's a nice thought. lol)

 

Kind of the point though. He spent all that time learning and doing those things and saving the money and earning the skill to get to the point in life he doesn’t have to do it anymore. He could have spent some teaching you or others how to do these things and the why and passed this on.

Not saying he didn’t with you, just speaking general.

 

Fully agree, and knowing when to pick and choose your battles is a learned skill as well.

But finding people that'll do things to my personal caliber is a constant challenge these days, it sucks. To the point I'll procrastinate in doing some things for months because I've been burned letting a "professional" do it one too many times. If you can't relate, you're a lucky man. The only thing that sucks worse than having a dad who taught you a shedload of crafts and skills but too little time to use those, is subbing the work out to someone else and them doing a mediocre job that doesn't meet your base standards.

I swear, one of these days I'll get my coilovers and UCAs installed

I don't like the guy one bit, but Dan Price did exactly that, if I recall, many years ago. And if I'm not mistaken, the result ended up being a sizable windfall for him (and his staff and company, for the record).

Similar experiments are underway to challenge whether a 40-hour work week is actually the best model for innovation and productivity, or if it's just something we're holding onto because "It's the way we've always done it, it's normal, if it's not broke, don't fix it". That mentality tends to hold us humans back from progress, unfortunately. 32-hour work week is showing - if we're to believe the plethora of studies conducted here and abroad - significantly promising results.

EDIT: And universal basic income is showing significant promise as well, as much as people like to mock it as a "handout", it legitimately seems to be having a positive effect across the board.

At some point, we need to explore other ways to work, work norms, etc. "Adapt or die", et al.

 

Good thread and excellent commentary.

Let me muddy it up some.

For myself, moving far away from home as a young man created opportunities. YMMV

For those unable or unwilling to radically change their environment let me make a suggestion.

Start a poplar farm and sell lamposts...

 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Whether you start rich or poor, it takes risk to seize opportunity.

 

Well that and it helps to show up and be willing to work.

Seizing opportunity:

Step 1.) Show up.

Step 2.) Be willing to put the work in.

Step 3.) Accept that there are risks.

Step 4.) Work to mitigate those risks.

Step 5.) Repeat steps 1-4 consistently.

 

We're having trouble hiring engineers. The recruiting side of HR is telling the supervisors who are trying to hire that candidates are saying the pay is too low when they're being offered 100-120% of the salary range. Meanwhile, the payroll part of HR is telling those of us employees in the 80-100% bracket of the salary range (who are working extra to make up for the fact that we can't hire right now) how well we're compensated vs our peers and how raises can't keep up with inflation.

 

HR is involved with pay instead of Accounting handling it? Eeeeeew.

 

Maybe I misspoke. But you get the idea.

 

Oh, I thought that was some Northern thing. I know there's lots of stuff done differently by our Canadian neighbors.

 

This right here is not uncommon.

 

Just wanted to offer a little bit of balance here… In Sept 1993 (only 30 years ago) General Electric had the highest market capitalization in the world at $84B. Today, there are 161 companies in the world with a higher market cap than that, including five companies worth over $1T, and three of those are worth over $2T. Apple is currently valued at $2.7T.

CEOs who can protect and even grow a corporation’s market cap over a full market cycle are paid what they are paid because 1) it is worth it to shareholders to grow their investment, and 2) those people are significantly scarcer than the engineers, etc who fill the jobs down the corporate ladder. Yes, people down the ladder need to be paid what they’re worth, and there are way too many examples of people not being valued like they should be. I’m not dismissing anyone’s stories of being treated terribly or undervalued or underpaid. That is a real problem. If I didn’t like the conditions I worked under, I’d like to think that I would go somewhere else. If every company in my field were like that, I would do something else. Of course, not everyone can go somewhere else, but the reality is hardly anyone will go somewhere else. Most people will stay and deal with it.

But that seems tangential to the point in the original video posted, which is that Americans are simply ignoring honest, well-paying jobs in the trades. The world has changed. I’m not going to push my kids toward college unless they are dead set on something in a STEM field, and even then, they are going in eyes wide open to how much excess BS they will have to swallow, not to mention how much it will cost. I’m teaching them that everything we get to do that is fun, every adventure, every vehicle, our house and property, the food we eat, etc—it all comes from earning money. Don’t look at wildly successful people who post lavish lifestyles on social media. That itself is their job—they earn money from people looking at their content. Resentment and discouragement will fester if this is your standard of success. Look at the young married couple who own a modest home on one income and actually raise their own kids (gasp!). Being free of keeping up with the Joneses, being free of envying social media influencers, being free of an all consuming, subscription-based lifestyle that requires dual incomes and makes it so the kids are raised by the state—THAT is wealth.

 

100%. I would add that this lifestyle and “wealth” can lead to freedom (aka financial independence). And having that freedom and wealth, is a great reason to not work once you achieve it.

People can hate on Ramsey (I’m not a fan myself more a money guy follower), but financial literacy and a b*dget (such a bad word these days don’t want to get the ban hammer) can help people leave all the complaints mentioned above. Is it a bad thing to be independent of a company, and not going back into the corporate world? I say no, but to each their own.

For me I left the corporate world just 10 days ago and the freedom has already allowed me to again do some woodworking and starting and finishing projects that would have cost thousands of dollars (to @ColoradoTJ point above), and are part of our ability to grow, eat and store our own food.

Financial well-being is discipline. Grinding everyday to get there is also discipline. Leaving work and helping yourself, others around you and managing day-to-day life without being a sloth is also discipline.

So my perspective is different for sure, but before we hate on people “not working” maybe their perspective is one that could help us more of us not work and be truly free. Is that bad?

 

It’s simple really.

The “value of a dollar” is not being taught nor applied at any level of society anymore.

Oh, and taxation is theft.

 

Pretty obvious there’s a lot more ways to make a lot more money without doing hard labor so younger people are going that direction. I mean seriously a dam Uber driver makes as much as a mechanic or welder around here. If I was a woman I’d definitely jump on that only fans band wagon. I’m 100% for trades and hard work how I was raised and what I find to be the way a man should work and raising my son to do the same. I think college is one of the biggest scams in this country to. There’s just a lot wrong that contributes to this generation now and it’s showing more and more.I think too many people get caught up in “money is everything”, financial freedom crap it takes away from the important things in life. Live within your means do something you love and spend your time wisely doing what you love to do live each day like it’s your last before it is.

 

Hey I loved the Fountainhead, but Atlas Shrugged went way too far into fantasy land while taking itself too seriously.

Why read a dusty old book for "info" ... written by someone with no expertise on the subject... when you could study all the other developed countries in the world? Real world, baby. Somehow, they manage a high living standard (higher than the US for most people), with a lot less stick.

 

… no expertise on the subject. Right.

that’s like saying don’t listen to holocaust victims about preventing guns being taken away from citizens because they don’t know anything about it.

 

Experiencing the Russian Revolution as a child does not make someone an expert on socio-economic matters.

Just the facts, man:

The Anti-Defamation League "has always strenuously objected to the use of Nazi analogies to advance any kind of political debate, including the gun control debate," said Deborah Lauter, the group's civil rights director. "We believe it's historically inaccurate and incredibly insensitive, particularly to Holocaust survivors and their families."

"In no way could armed people have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi state," she said, noting that some European Jews had access to a small number of firearms. "There could be symbolic resistance, as we saw in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but it would not have stopped the Nazis."

The invocation of the Holocaust to argue against gun control is an abuse of history, said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

 

I think the nice people at the Anti-Defamation league are willfully ignorant of recent history.

We have several recent examples within the last 60 years of populations of people armed largely with small arms effectively defeat attempts to control and subdue them despite seemingly overwhelming military power being used against them. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq… ring any bells?