Employment Opportunities

DRC Archive Lounge Lizard
41

[quote=“Jocephus, post:40, topic:2254”]
Well, I’m sure that you’re sure of your math, but another key that you should consider is living cost. In many cases young people that did not go to college end up being younger parents, wedded earlier, etc… So trying to compare earnings is a bit pointless. Now if you were to consider money remaining after expenses, I’d be interested in seeing your results.

Not much right now, check in the spring:

http://www.aza.org/joblistings/[/quote]

Haha, I glanced at that and thought it was a link for Astra Zeneca.

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[quote=“Jocephus, post:40, topic:2254”]
Now if you were to consider money remaining after expenses, I’d be interested in seeing your results.[/quote]

+1. income minus the amount of the loan payment. if the non grad is bringing home 400 dollars a week, or approx 1735 a month… and the grad pulls down 750/week or 3250/month but pays 400/month in college loans, the grad is still making 1100 dollars more per month AFTER paying the loan payment. i think u can set up a graph to show the benefit EITHER WAY. its all in the presentation. GO TO COLLEGE!

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so about are fish tanks.

44
so about are fish tanks.
???
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[quote=“logans_daddy, post:44, topic:2254”]

so about are fish tanks.
???[/quote] poor jon and grammar never mixed well... "so, about OUR fish tanks" i believe is what he was saying. (BUT, the thread is in lounge lizard so.....)
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[quote=“logans_daddy, post:32, topic:2254”]

lol. its in attitude, work habits and getting off ass every day and doing something that makes a worker of any job suceed. i see the young kids that rather stand around and get a 7 doolar an hour check rather than use a shovel all day and get lets say 14 an hour. cant figure out the math and lodgic in it. oh ya they are just lazy. lol

thats a whole different conversation and i could not agree more. i think there is sometimes an arrogance associated with college that unfortunately can be seen quite often in this hobby. the kid in college that thinks because he took biology last semester he is the premier authority on all things in this hobby is annoying enough. When hes condescending towards an advanced hobbyiest that is “just a plumber, electrician, etc etc” that can run circles around him intellectually its just plain funny!

I respect intelligence. I respect education regardless of the source. Without these, a degree is a piece of paper that is nothing more than a proxy for your mommy and daddy’s bank account statement.[/quote]

what about one who’s major is biology lOl

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Yeah, even though this thread got hijacked at least it’s in the proper forum.

On a positive note, I have concluded that I should probably scratch “high school guidance counselor” off my list of jobs that I’d be good at. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, like Glen and entero show its not about degrees or not, but finding something you like to do and applying yourself to it. No matter what your training, success and happiness come from hard work that often you dont think of as hard work. because you like it.

On the other hand, the kaching is not the whole solution either. Its a matter of what you do with it. I’ve got too many professional friends who make 2, 3 or 4 times the average income, and think they are poor because they manage money so poorly. and have nothing to show for it. it just runs through their fingers like water. Better to have the attitude like in the book, “The Millionaire Next Door”,

of regularly paying yourself with savings and investing, over a long time. and you end up better off than most. and feel better about it too, because you know how to manage. The younger you start saving/investing, the less money you actually have to put in. Those that wait till they are in their 50s to start thinking of saving for retirement will need to dump the whole pay check in every month. so it’s pay me now or pay me later.

So I guess one should consider the whole picture. Study, Career choice, jobs and investing to make a balanced life of satisfaction and reward.

49

It’s funny you mention this. When I worked at MBNA I started in collections and eventually moved into credit and credit line management. There was one painfully obvious reoccurring theme I noticed…

Have you ever heard the expression “live within your means”? That’s not what people do.

People “live TO their means.”

Meaning the more money the average person makes, the more money the average person spends.

As much as I appreciate the career advice, I’d like to restate that I owned a restaurant for the last five years. My Economics degree did nothing to help me with it. The store did over 500k a year in sales and I took home about 20-25% of that. It was the easiest job I’ve ever had and the best investment I’ve ever made. I’d spend a ton of time at the store but it wasn’t work, it was play. I hired cute girls and hard working guys to run the show while I kicked back in my office drinking a beer and watching movies. Now even though I was goofing off in the back, I knew where every single penny went. I was able to track hourly sales and adjust staffing accordingly.

For the first time in history, inflation was about 300%. I’d buy mozzerella cheese at $22/20 lbs in 2007 and $59/20lbs in 2008. My flour went from $6/10 lbs to $18/10 lbs. Our logo boxes started off at $25/250 units and ended up at $55/250 units.

Not sure if you’ve ever heard of this but the New York Times or Wallstreet Journal keeps a “pizza index”. The cost of producing a pizza. I called my state senator and attempted to apply for federal bailout money after hearing that SBarro, one of the nation’s largest pizza franchises, applied for federal funds. Big surprise, no one could tell me where the millions of dollars was spent but it wasn’t available for small business.

I spent a lot of time researching what actually caused my cost of food disaster. I knew the stock market was going to collapse when I first saw the trend in my food prices. Aside from the securities scam diversion, the real reason for our nation’s collapse is simple, OIL.

Some idiots in Washington decided to pump money into Ethanol research and production. Ethanol is made from corn. Corn is what they feed cattle. The stupid Washington elite decided to incent farmers to stop producing food and start growing energy. So now that farmers are no longer feeding their cattle corn, they needed something else to feed them. They turned to grain. Now instead of grain being used for flower, it was used to feed cattle. This stupid, stupid Ethanol decision came when Oil hit record highs. 250 Logo boxes weigh about 50 lbs. So when I order 20 cases a week, I’m shipping 1,000 pounds. When oil hit record high, shipping costs went through the roof and caused the boxes to go up.

So basically, oil goes up. We start researching Ethanol. Which causes cattle to eat more expensive food. Which happened to be the food used for flour. And transporting becomes more expensive because oil went up.

Don’t believe the securities hype. OPEC was a major cause of our recession. I don’t know why this is being overlooked. Ethanol was such a stupid idea. The law makers that decided to invest in it should be held accountable.

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interesting post, especially your comments about the recession from the perspective of a small business owner. i think its awesome that your reached out to your senator for bail out money >LOL<

Don't believe the securities hype. OPEC was a major cause of our recession. I don't know why this is being overlooked. Ethanol was such a stupid idea. The law makers that decided to invest in it should be held accountable.

politics are fun. i wont add a lot just becuase i dont have time for a spiritied debate! i happend to agree with your post for the most part. one little “overlooked” thing about the recession and the role of banks, mortgages, securities, and most importantly the infamous derivitives is that the legistlation that made derivitives legal is a recent thing. they were explicitly illegal since banking reform legislation was passed shortly after the great depression. legislation was changed in the 90’s by our favorite saxaphone playing president of all people that actually made these investments legal. i agree that it can seem like a lot of “obvious” factors are often overlooked about the media. i think everyone can now clearly see how much of a disaster ethanol was but hindsight is 20/20. personally, i find it hard to believe that anyone really believed that it would be a longterm solution and, to be honest, i wouldnt be surprised if it was pushed more to put a good face on oil than anything else. has anyone noticed all the “clean coal” commericals lately? what about the “wonders of natural gas” commercials? or my favorite of all time, what about the exxon mobile awesome commericals with all the happy, beautiful, well educated employees representing every minority group you can think of singing the praises of oil as they show footage of wipe boards with calculus equations on it? LOL i got a smirk on my face just thinking about it.

my point is that there are a LOT of things that contributed to the economic collapse. i dont have an economics degree, and even if i did, i still wouldnt be able to wrap my head around it. hell, even the experts cant agree on the cause or the solution.

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[quote=“logans_daddy, post:50, topic:2254”]
even the experts cant agree on the cause or the solution.[/quote]

I blame the educational system. For 20+ years now we have been preaching about getting a good education and going to college to get a degree. As has been previously mentioned people are coming out of college with Master degrees but also $100K + in debt. The feel they are no entitled to a larger starting salary because they went to school. The problem is the employers can not afford to hire them at their requested starting salaries so they are choosing to NOT WORK rather then take a job making $25K a year.

This is turn causes them to stay at home with their parents, eating their food, draining their utilities, etc. etc. This in turn prevents the older generation from retiring and freeing up some of the bottom-line to be able to afford the new grad salary requirments. This also causes the student loans to fall in to default which in turn means banks have to reserve for the losses associated with the write-offs which takes avaiable money out of the market.

The banks then have to start raising interest rates to increase revenue to off-set the losses being reserved for which means the people that were just getting by are no longer able to afford the new minimum payment, causing delinquencies. And the cycle continues, banks have to reserve thus raise interest rates, thus cause more people to default.

We are taught during our “higher education” (ironic isn’t it?) that we are too good for manual labor because we have an education now - -so we’d rather sit on our parent’s couches watching re-runs of Hogan’s Heros and Judge Mathis then to go out and dig a hole… but we still have time to jump online and complain about the immigrants coming in and taking all of the jobs we as Americans should have.

So there - I ppint my finger at the United States Educational System!!! And the parents who won’t tell Jr. to get off his ass and go apply for a job at McDonalds!!!

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oooo… i wrote a paper on ethanol production… I think that bio fuels is where its at, and experimenting with inefficient ones, ethanol from corn, will lead to more advanced ones… like all processes the beginnings are always not what we want. But on a note a lot of ethanol now is not being made from corn, in fact the US is starting to move away from it. My prediction in the next century is the rise of Brazil. They have more sugarcane then they know what to do with. heres a question, as of now what the best organic product to use to create ethanol?.. ding ding sugar cane. It yields the highest ethanol per kg of organic material. Thus i believe that the world is gonna start turning to that… There are also a lot of wetland weeds that can be made into ethanol. Ethanol is not the problem, the hurdle is perfecting the process on a reasonable level to maximize output and cost. ethanol is a great idea, its just it takes some refinement and perfection… where are you getting the background to throw accusations that ethanol sucks?. While i agree opec and its affect on oil has been a long term effect to our recession, but i believe it has been more than that. Economies have to go through recessions and highs, its the natural cycle. Without it, the competitive market place would not succeed. while recessions are bad they are necessary and after it everything will be good again. we have to be smart with money, universal healthcare is not the way to go. I believe money needs to be flushed into the market place… the government needs to put as much into the economy as they can…

i have a lot more to write, but ill get back to it later…

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ding ding sugar cane
which crop is not suited for growing in 90% of our country and costs more to import than it does to use a readily available subsitute known as corny syrup? ding ding....sugar cane!! ;D

im just joking with you, but there are a LOT of issues with ethanol and almost every other biofuel including the huge CO2 footprint associated with production.

ill admit that most of the sources i use for news lean a little to the left, but from what i understand there is generally no future in biofuels for large scale energy production except for maybe as a stop-gap measure until other technologies are further refined and more cost effective. personally i believe that hydrogen coupled with sustainable electricity garnered from mutiple technologies will be the template for the future. The only way using bio matter as fuel makes sense is where it concerns the reuse of biowaste. Growing grains to provide fuel will burden our economy, our land, our…wait a minute…kind of sounds like fossile fuels huh? ;D Ethanol was alwasy more about politics and money than it ever was about the environment. Oh yeah…have you ever seen pure ethanol available at your gas station? Probably not. Big oil companies want you to think ethanol is good for the environment. 10% ethanol, 90% irreplaceable, CO2 producing fossile fuels and they get to make pretty commercials, run pro environment commericals, and plaster their stations with propaganda painted with shades of greens and iconic imagery of the “wheatfield”.

damn you marchingband…i said i didnt want to get into this!!! lOl

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well going back to person a, which is me. After highschool i started making around 40K gross. what do i make now? 41k 5 years later. I started at a suppermarket in highschool and after graduating i became a manager. unless u are fortunate to get a good JOB(different than carrer) after highschool u have to factor in depression, drug addiction, and credit card/loan interests. i wish i had went to college and not been a drug dealer :frowning:

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That’s pretty good pay you all are tossing around with impunity. the Median national income is just $31,000. The mean individual income is $41,000, skewed higher by the upper bracket. the median family household income , including working spouses and live at home kids is about $50,000 a year. meaning half the countrys households makes less and half more than that. 90% make less than $100,000.

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So Whats the beef? are you complaining because you are not rich like Bernie Madoff? A Weekend At Bernie’s might change your mind. Most people are grouped in the $30-75 thousand income range. and that is where Most Americans live. outside that range is extraordinary, either good or bad. Above $100K is the top 10%. but only a percent or so are above $250K a year. So most Americans do live in the middle. and muddle along just fine. Once again, its not what you make, but what you keep that matters. Investors get ahead, spenders are forever broke and in debt. or so the story goes.

Actually, living below ones means allows you to save and invest, and get ahead.

Ethanol from grains is a bad idea. if we took every grain we grow today, it would only make about 20% of our fuel needs. and it takes a lot of energy for distilation. as noted, we are robbing our dinner table to drive to the meat market for higher priced steak. Better would be to solve two problems with one solution. we seem to have an endless supply of high protein/carb/fat sewage and garbage. we spend a lot of energy on trying to get rid of it. so instead we should convert that to ethanol and bio gas and keep the rivers clean for drinking water and creat fuel.

there is a lot of work going on now to grow micro algaes that can eat the sludge and make high quality bio diesel.

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Ethanol is not the end, but I feel it is a necessary stepping stone. I think that to get farther down the road with alternative fuels we need to start with basic things. Yes it eats up a lot of corn to make, but there are more efficient things to make it. While it does use up a lot of crops, it also uses the surplus. Last year the USDA predicted that 1.4 billion bushels of crops were overproduced. Biofuel production is taking that surplus and using it. The whole shortage of food is not taking place in our country its taking place in 3rd world countries. It has also been happening for centuries. I don’t believe that all of a sudden that biofuel production is causes starvation in third world countries. I think the media is picking things to aid them.

People make the argument that it raises crop prices. It does in the range of 1-2 per bushel. This is comparably a lot. But its affect on gas prices and stimulation of the economy I think offsets that. 15-20 mill is pumped into farmers for their products, so that the experimental phases can be complete. The affect on gasoline is also extraordinary. 3 years ago prices hit what 4 bucks, and then they started adding 15% ethanol. They predicted that this would take .35 cents off per gallon, which translates to 150-300bucks for a single consumer and 29-49 billion dollars saved in the United States. That’s 10%. GM believes that in the next decade (2005-2015) that it can produce e85 (85%ethanol) for under one dollar. Ethanol is much safer than other biofuels; its flashpoint is at 150 degrees Celsius compared to the 53 degree Celsius flash point of diesel.

One other promising alternative fuel can be oil that is gathered from none other than algae. Solix CEO Dough Henston predicts that algae can produce 10k gallons of oil per acre, per year. At this rate he predicts that, an area 1/10th the size of New Mexico that’s devoted to algae production, could reach the fuel demands for the entire us.

I think hydrogen would be good, except, if you get in a crash that’s one large kabooooooom. Either way something will prevail, there’s my research I came across while writing a report on biofuels last year.

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Have you bought a gallon of milk recently? Do you know what that same gallon of milk cost 5 years ago?

Don’t tell me that’s not hyper inflation due to ethanol production.

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I think hydrogen would be good, except, if you get in a crash that’s one large kabooooooom

thats just not true. Gasoline is flammable and combustible but there isnt a large kabooooom everytime there is an accident ;D

While it does use up a lot of crops, it also uses the surplus. Last year the USDA predicted that 1.4 billion bushels of crops were overproduced. Biofuel production is taking that surplus and using it.

we could make fuel with it or we could let people that are going hungry eat it!

ethanol is a dead end and so are most biofuels unless, like Ken and I mentioned, its recycled biowaste. Algea is a novel idea, but from what i understand it justnt isnt scalabe and is a pipedream.

People make the argument that it raises crop prices. It does in the range of 1-2 per bushel. This is comparably a lot. But its affect on gas prices and stimulation of the economy I think offsets that. 15-20 mill is pumped into farmers for their products, so that the experimental phases can be complete. The affect on gasoline is also extraordinary. 3 years ago prices hit what 4 bucks, and then they started adding 15% ethanol. They predicted that this would take .35 cents off per gallon, which translates to 150-300bucks for a single consumer and 29-49 billion dollars saved in the United States. That’s 10%. GM believes that in the next decade (2005-2015) that it can produce e85 (85%ethanol) for under one dollar. Ethanol is much safer than other biofuels; its flashpoint is at 150 degrees Celsius compared to the 53 degree Celsius flash point of diesel.

Ethanol is a political solution, not an environmental solution. The sole purpose of ethanol is to wean our dependence on foreign oil no matter how many layers of green they paint it. Its not environmentally sound, its not socially conscious, and its not sustainable. What is sustainable is sunlight, wind, and water. Radiation from the sun will be here a lot longer than we will and the more money and research that is put into harnessing these energies they more efficient and affordable the technology will become. Anyone with two braincells to rub together will recognize that these are the platforms for the techonlogies that will solve our enegy and environmental crisis. The reason why we dont see a push for these technologies and we see so many half-ass solutions like biofuels is becuase the big traditional energy conglomerates can still make their money. Changing our economy/energy base from fossil fuels to sun/wind/water would mean a large scale transistion of power and wealth which would mean a lot of obscenely rich, old white men would have to put energy into finding new ways to get/stay rich. Why do that when you can spend millions on propganda promiting the virtues of a half ass fuel alternative that will allow you to stay rich with little effort?

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Actually, I just took a look at the CPI and it looks like Milk prices are starting to return to where they belong(coincidence that Ethanol research is no longer the big thing?) It cost about $2.6/gallon in 2003 and spiked at $3.8/gallon in 2007. That’s a 146% increase. Don’t tell me that’s the normal 2-3% inflation.

That 146% is then increased again by the cheese producers and the distributing companies before finally being compounded by the insane shipping costs due to oil prices. Hence, the 300% inflation.

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[quote=“RCA, post:59, topic:2254”]
Actually, I just took a look at the CPI and it looks like Milk prices are starting to return to where they belong(coincidence that Ethanol research is no longer the big thing?) It cost about $2.6/gallon in 2003 and spiked at $3.8/gallon in 2007. That’s a 146% increase. [/quote]

actually that’s only a 46% increase