One hears a lot of complaining nowadays about how people are being laid off because the company is "downsizing," or how difficult it is to get a job, or who is to blame for jobs going overseas, or illegal aliens taking jobs away from Americans, or how people can't get jobs because they're being discriminated against, or other such crap. I, for one, am sick of it!
What these people mean by the word "job" is "a means of acquiring money." They don't want to actually do anything, they just want to get paid! They think the world owes them a living, and that a job is the way to get it. A lot of them think that if even if they don't do anything useful, the world owes them a living anyway, and they should be getting it from people who already have it in the form of outright gifts. It's called "welfare" or "winning the lottery" or "winning a lawsuit."
Before you start arguing about this, let me point out that most people who have jobs aren't paid to do anything, they're just paid to show up at the employer's place of business. They're perfectly happy to be paid by the hour, with time and a half for overtime. We even have a minimum wage, a cost per hour for labor below which it's illegal to pay someone, even if he does nothing at all! The less you do per hour, the longer it takes to do it, and the more you get paid. That's the American Way.
The United States Government is the chief instigator of all this nonsense. Government employees get jobs by filling out forms and taking a test that shows whether they could do a job if they wanted, not what they are actually going to do if they get hired. Once the government hires them, they're paid by the hour. They can be fired for insubordination, or for doing something illegal, but not for not doing anything worthwhile. Same with government contractors. It's actually illegal to pay anyone on a government contract for what he does; he must be paid by how long it takes for him to do it. The lazier he is, the more he gets paid. And the taxpayer foots the bill.
I fervently hope that one of these days the taxpayers are going to wake up and realize that for the past two generations they have essentially been empowering the government to take money from people who pay taxes and give it to people who don't. But I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, because we have too many people entranced by the concept of "rights of the poor." The function of government is not to take from the rich and give to the poor, which is stealing, but to provide government services to people who pay for them. People who vote to give money to other people because they're lazy or stupid or have illegitimate children or something bad happened to them have only themselves to blame for high taxes. When you tax something you get more of it, and when you subsidize something you get less of it, and for all of my lifetime we've been taxing income and diligence and subsidizing poverty and laziness and creating incentives for every employer in the country to look elsewhere for someone who wants to get paid for actually doing something.
Not that I'm against paying someone for just working, mind you. Someone figured out that an adult athlete can work at about 250 watts for short periods of time, and perhaps 100 watts for an extended period. I'm willing to pay any healthy employee who works flat out for 8 hours, with little breaks here and there to use the bathroom or take a drink of water, what his day's work is worth, one horsepower hour. But that's all "hard work" is actually worth, regardless of what anyone, including the "employee" thinks.
One hears more crap about how "the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes," when the fact is that rich people have exactly as many votes per capita as poor people do. What's wrong with the concept of "one dollar, one vote?" Corporations do this, and they are much more efficient than the United States government. If we need to tax someone's money, let's tax outgo, not income. Then we'd have less outgo, at least, which seems to me to be a good thing.
American employees have priced themselves right out of the job market, and foreign employees, who are interested in actually doing things to get paid for them, are eager to fill the gap. Employers have also found it cost effective to spend big bucks for technology and machinery to replace whiny, lazy, inefficient employees. Even welfare recipients have cell phones nowadays, but whenever you call a business, you are likely to get a recorded message telling you the lie that all the customer service representatives are busy helping other customers, and that your call is very important to them. "Busy" indeed! Bat puckey! The customer service representatives don't give a damn about the customers. If they did, they'd answer the damn phone! No, they're "busy" taking a break and talking to their friends, on their own cell phones. They go on strike and demonstrate for higher wages or better working conditions or more benefits or a bigger say in company decisions, but when did you last see anyone picketing an employer for the opportunity to do more things? Yeah, right!
When I was a kid, it was assumed that in order to get a job you had to be able to do something useful, something that other people would pay you to do. My dad learned his trade by apprenticing, by working for food and a place to sleep, for someone who already knew how to do something useful, and was willing to teach and maintain him in return for what help he provided doing it. Then he got to go out and do it himself and teach others. I learned my trade by going to school and by becoming certified by recognized authorities to show that I actually could do what I said I could. But by the time I got into the work force, nobody except the United States Army was interested in hiring me for doing anything, only for showing up at work on time. Nowadays, people expect to get jobs even if they don't know how to do anything at all! If they are expected to accomplish anything, they expect the employer to show them how.
A good example of this is Wal-Mart, surely one of the most generous employers in the civilized world. Wal-Mart has pension plans, health benefits, promotion opportunities and educational programs that half of all the entire world's employees would give everything they ever hope to own to receive. And yet you hear regularly about Wal-Mart employees "protesting" their employer. If they don't like working for Wal-Mart, why for heaven's sake don't they just quit?
The fact is, Wal-Mart doesn't employ rocket scientists and brain surgeons and nuclear engineers. It employs stock boys and sales girls and checkout girls and bag boys. And the reason they're called "stock boys" and "checkout girls" is because these aren't adult, professional-type jobs, they're "gettin' started" jobs; basic, entry level occupations that provide valuable free occupational education by teaching their employees basic occupational skills like showing up for work and doing what they're told, even if they don't want to. If they're good workers and show loyalty and initiative, the promotion path is open all the way to the top, where the really big money is!
I actually heard some moron on TV bemoaning the claim that a person couldn't maintain a family of three above the poverty level on what Wal-Mart pays its entry level employees. Of course an entry level employee can't maintain a family of three on what he makes at Wal-Mart, you dolt! Hell, college graduates can't maintain a family of three above the poverty level; that's why both parents have to work to make ends meet nowadays. If you're trying to maintain a family as a bag boy at Wal-Mart, you probably shouldn't be allowed to breed! Bag boy salaries are for putting gas in dad's car to take your girl to the movies. Face it, if the Wal-Mart executives paid their employees what they're actually worth, they'd all go to jail!
And don't get me started on that "discrimination" crap! Sure, discrimination exists, but it's irrelevant if you can do something useful. Nobody in his right mind is going to refuse to pay you to do something he wants done because of what color you are. Look at Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Kobe Bryant, Norman Mineta! On the other hand, only the Government is going to pay you solely because of what color you are if you happen otherwise to be a useless, ignorant slob!
You see it everywhere. Walk into any store and you'll actually be surprised if anyone tries to help you. Some will say that, but they're paid to say it, not to do it. When was the last time you paid for something based on how much the clerk helped you? If the clerk works at a counter, he or she is likely to interrupt you, who got up and got dressed and went to all the trouble to come to his place of employment to do business, to answer a phone call from some lazy person who just dialed the telephone number. Surly waitresses! Salespeople who don't know anything about the product! Telemarketers! Incompetent mechanics! Shoddy manufacturers! Obnoxious freaks! The list is endless!
It's even infiltrated into the clergy. In our parish, we have exactly one service on Christmas. One! On Christmas! It used to be that on Saturday, when most employees had a day off and could actually go to worship services, we didn't have any at all! What do you suppose the pastor and assistant pastor were doing all day instead of serving the needs of their parishioners, anyway?
Fact is, in a capitalist society, such as ours, income is a quantitative measure of what your society thinks of you. Wealth is a precise measure of how smart you've been with your income. Paying people according to what they actually need is called communism, which doesn't work. The best the communists have been able to make work is socialism, where people are paid according to what the government thinks they need, which doesn't work too well, either. It sure as hell doesn't work in this country. If you need more than you're making, adjust your needs or do something more useful.
So if you are serious about getting rich, you have to be willing to do what it takes to do that. What it takes is not working for someone else at a job, but by accomplishing something that people are willing to pay you a lot for, like Bill Gates did. Part of what that takes is to get education, as he did, and this information requires you to do that, too. If you are one of those people who want to get rich without working for it, you might as well quit now, because you just aren't up to the challenge, and probably never will be. If you spend more time finding excuses for failure instead of finding opportunities for success, this knowledge is not for you. Even if you win the lottery or the Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes, you'll just get cheated out of your new found wealth by people who are smarter than you are and are out there hustling. Better you should go on welfare and learn to be content with being poor.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a way to become really, seriously, fabulously rich, doing something worthwhile that requires minimum physical labor, can be done from anywhere, including your own home or vacation resort, in your spare time, makes a significant positive contribution to human civilization, and will allow you to receive a fabulous income even after you retire and even die, click here. Be aware, though, that understanding the instructions is part of the process. If you expect somebody to explain them to you, you might as well quit now.
Don't bother to thank me, but if you feel grateful, you might consider donating to worthy charities, like Bill and Melinda Gates do.