stinkfist
nuts zongo's in the house
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RE: The MAGA bubble is about to burst
(10-28-2026 09:07 PM)JRsec Wrote: (10-28-2026 08:05 PM)bill dazzle Wrote: (10-28-2026 05:28 PM)JRsec Wrote: (10-28-2026 04:04 PM)bill dazzle Wrote: (10-28-2026 02:14 PM)JRsec Wrote: There is plenty of work available for good business analysts paying more than $20 an hour. What is the endangered species soon to be extinct? It is the journalist. Corporations love to tell a version of history friendly to their world view. Hell, the local newspaper here was edited in Virginia and the plates digitally created with the edited version for the paper to run. They were not edited for grammar, correct word usage, spelling, or anything that once was part of the hallmark of newspaper integrity. They were edited for stories that might impact the company's stock positions, and to reflect the company's social values, which was simply word salad for politics. There's no integrity in that. If you want to maintain your integrity while preserving a livelihood then use your skills to analyze the businesses that you write about in ways that highlight what they do well, while alluding to things they could do to enhance their bottom line. Suggestions on enhancements make midlevel management that reads your bylines look better to their bosses, especially since those educated in the last 30 years haven't been taught skills in critical thinking.
You have knack for straddling fences, actually a good skill to have at times, but also finding the path between the horns of a dilemma. It's that last one that will make you worth a higher paygrade as it is a rarer skill than the labor force, and professional pool of advisors can readily demonstrate.
I've always found that by understanding as completely as possible all sides to an issue but not raising them in the context of my remarks, that I could offer a view of the situation which could get the parties to focus on the locus of mutual self-interest. That works unless of course there is no locus of mutual self-interest then it's time to layout a path that would be the most productive even in one side loses. And even then, I had only the obligation to lay it out. I didn't have to own it, the deciders did. The beauty of being an analyst is you deliver hard data with recommendations. A recommendation never winds up being your responsibility if you clearly place the decision in the hands of others.
Just a recommendation to any journalist writing about a technical or commercial field.
My goal is to simply report business news and hope that some readers find the articles interesting and/or useful. At this age and stage, I'm riding out my career while also helping my elderly parents.
There are some talented, fair-minded and respectable journalists left. Maybe not many. But some. I try to find those (and give props) while avoiding those who bring an agenda to their reporting, editing and commentary.
I'm sure they do Bill, it wasn't meant as a slight. As one who rode out two careers and still held a part time job to pay the house off for my wife who lagged in retiring and had irrational fears over it, I understand. I did what I enjoyed for 20 years and then I did what I felt led to do to make a difference for another 20. Then I took a job in an industry that fascinated me, but which I knew nothing about. It made the supplemental work fun and informative, but then I made the mistake of figuring a whole run of product in my head, so they looked into my background and made me a manager. That screwed the whole thing up. It more than doubled what I was making and enabled me to pay the house off two years early, but the stress of working with the younger generation who blamed everyone but themselves for their failures, didn't want to discuss things face to face and wanted to text when a 30 second phone call from the field could solve their problem, just didn't make any sense to me. I had a heart attack, literally. And to be quite frank it was a piddling dying industry loaded with mid level management all trying to figure out how to get theirs before it closed. What was fun to me was life and death to them, and those working below us in the food chain were 90% incompetent for their jobs and all college grads.
I didn't have to work to pay off the house. I just wanted some investments to mature without being disturbed. I took care of my aging in-laws along with my wife and that was no chore because they were wonderful people. When her father died, I let her brother live in one of our homes no charge. He had lost his job as whatever you would call the editor under the Sr. Editor for a prominent TV network news team, because he had to remind his boss that he was smarter than him every day and that man put up with it for 4 years before he canned him. He saw his mother in her assisted living facility twice in the 3 years she lived and both times because my wife made him go. His whole world and his editing were shaded heavily by his far-left political agenda. He lived off our charity until he died though he had means. Then he left no will and two sons on the West coast who hadn't seen him but a handful of times since he was fired. My wife tracked down his accounts, I think he had four, but he lost his condo in Seattle leaving one of his sons in the lurch because he didn't pay his HOA dues for an upgrade of their infrastructure. The estate may be settled in a month or two, but it's been over three years, and we were only able to get the cash portion to his kids for two accounts fairly quickly but the other is still tied up. My wife is doing all of it gratis on on our nickel.
Now I say all of that to let you know that I truly understand the situation. If you are like most of my friends and me, when you retire, you'll find something else to do when those parents you love have "slipped the surly bonds of earth" a quote from High Flight, for something eternal. If you don't have your own family to dote upon and help, I highly recommend finding a job just to have people to see and sanity. Just don't pick an industry under stress and find something you can work at your own pace.
My brother in-law, who couldn't accept help graciously, once tried to insult me by telling me I was the smartest person he knew who had a lousy education. I got my Masters at Emory. He went to Princeton for his undergrad. I smiled and told him he was the stupidest person I knew with an Ivy Education. At least he laughed.
To everyone, an education is only worth something if you do something with it. This pedigree strutting that I see particularly on the realignment forum makes me want to hurl. I graded papers from honors students who attended all of those AAU Big Ten, ACC, PAC, Big 12, and SEC schools. I went back for a Masters between careers. Education suffered a stroke sometime between 1970 and 1990. And it showed in every paper I waded through. They couldn't spell, they didn't proof, they had problems with subject verb agreement, misuse of words, something my wife and I have a running joke about when listening to the booth calling a college football game, and they couldn't do math in their heads. (We are getting dumber because of reliance on technology.)
Corporations may like paper pedigrees, but every business prefers competency and dedication to task. That's how you earn respect. Everything else you believe about the power of where you got your degree won't save you. I know a Princeton man who learned the hard way.
So set it in cruise control Bill, take care of your health otherwise there will be less care for your parents, and then take your gifts back into the workplace but on your terms, your hours, and a wage you like. Work is so very much more enjoyable, and even more social, when you can quit anytime. Miserable are those who stick it out for a 401k. Investments you manage are much more likely to give you a solid retirement.
And lest anyone think I never screwed up, I did, I just didn't screw up for the same reason twice. That's how you learn. My brother-in-law was so scared of screwing up and so sure he was right all of the time his manager listed the cause of his firing not as insubordination, but the inability to learn and adapt. He was fired for being unteachable. And frankly I find many of the far left to be exactly that, unteachable. And if you think I hated my brother in law, I didn't. I set him up with the prettiest girl from Oxford that you can imagine. I encouraged his recreation time and absolutely loved his family. One of his sons is stellar and I want to help the other but so far, he is unreachable. What I really felt about him was pity. He never learned how to enjoy others, and his downfall came when his only close friend ever, and from high school, died. God's speed all! It's over before you know it!
No slight taken at all, JR.
I seem to recall you recently posted about a relative who is having some health challenges. I wish you well with that.
Every day I see my folks is a blessing. We ate dinner together tonight and then I went upstairs to the attic room to exercise. Will watch some of the MTSU vs. Kennesaw State football game second half with my 95.5-year-old father (as he lays in bed). He loves college football. I will want to see the World Series game too.
I am very fortunate to be in decent shape financially as I've never had major debt, have not dependents and, perhaps most importantly, don't spend much on much of anything.
It would be nice to work until I no longer want to. As you note, working is enjoyable when you don't have to do it. At 64, I'm the "elder statesman" of our 45-person company. The young folks sometimes look to me for wisdom but typically look to me for some comic relief.
One more thing: I would like to think I continue to see more civility and less venom on this board. If I'm correct (and maybe I'm clueless wrong), I hope that continues (and I know you do too).
You absolutely learn more from anyone if you listen and empathize. If I goad, it is only to provoke an exchange of information. I had my family totally out of debt 12 years ago, and ostensibly out of debt since 2006. The house mortgage was covered by savings and investments but paying it out put all of those completely in the black. We now have one bill aside from utilities and checks to charities that we write a month and that one is to credit card company and it's been paid in full monthly for the last 20 years too.
When I spent time with young couples I kept in mind that only 1 in 10 marriages failed due to infidelity. 7 in ten failed due to finances. Folks should let that sink in. Most couples don't need a marriage counselor and most counselors quit when the insurance money runs out. What young couples need is either a solid family member who teach them the why and how of financial management, or a CPA if they are making money but don't know how to keep it. I would add to the old saw of "The love of money is the root of all evil" this: "The mismanagement of money is the root of most familial suffering and divorce." I had a young couple come to me because of finances. Both were MD's. They had their biggest fight over a bounced check to Dominoes. They lived in a massive home on about 2 acres of land in the ritziest part of town. They both drove flashy status vehicles, had memberships in the nicest country club, and owned an airplane. They got it all at once on credit. We started with the airplane. Once it sold, they began to chip away at the rest of it. Debt can snowball. So you have to teach people how to roll that snowball in the opposite direction and get all of their resources applying force in a positive direction.
The country works the same way. Our relationships break down over debt. Life is hard for all young people. But debt is bondage and nobody living in bondage can be happy. Living within your means requires humility. But humility pays dividends. No matter what you do if you are humble, stay within your means, and people will trust you because of it, you will grow your own success, and that largess of good will and self-sufficiency is the best fertilizer for happiness. Happy people stick together. Happy countries do as well. But for the U.S. to be happy it needs to live within its means, encourage charity, and conserve resources making us less dependent upon others. Self-sufficiency breeds happiness. The principles for saving this great nation are the same as the ones needed to save a marriage. If we taught it like that, and encouraged that conduct, we wouldn't have a national debt problem, we wouldn't despise those wanting more, we would help them manage their way out of it restoring their dignity and increasing their self-worth and making the nation stronger one family at a time. Conservative shouldn't mean skinflint. It should be a word that safeguards us all. Sadly, like the word liberal, which meant generous and is the other half of true conservatism, rather than opposed to it, both have become memes of a phony America.
It is those who want to rape this land and its people for financial benefit that encourage debt, buy it now pay it later thinking. They deliberately have made conservative and liberal dirty words to obscure what they represent, thrift and generosity. If you conserve you can afford to be generous.
These are Biblical principles as well and that too has been attacked to prevent its teachings from interfering with profiteering. "What does it profit a man if he gains the world, but loses his soul?" Words like those scare them because they shake the foundations of Hell. The corporate world steals with booms and busts all carefully orchestrated so that the savings of people fund them and don't have to be paid back but can be justified as "Too Big To Fail." The uber wealthy corporations being allegedly so important that our whole economy would falter if the actually went under. Pure Hogwash! When inefficient businesses fail efficient businesses arise to take their place. That's how the free market works. You know the free market is broken or hamstrung when bad businesses can't fail. As usual government protected those who fill their personal pockets. We'll all be better off it it ends before it kills U.S.
JR, I just had one of the frankest convos with me daughter ... I tapped on all this in context (as she's prepping the wedding and tending) ... she comes with, "yeah, Dad!, you already told me!" ... it was tough to hold back the 'tears of joy'
they're both LLC ... it's just a matter of what they want at this point...
however, as she told me ~5 yrs. ago (before I met him), "now, Dad, you need to know he's couuuuuuunnnntreeeeeeeeeeeeee ... the response, "I already love him ... now let's see how I can work him." ... two trips and you're better than this...
yeah, man ... this is when I point to the sky and give thanks...
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