They're never satisfied

[ivanm]

You make some good points Vel, and the possibility of manufacturing ventures going offshore tends to dampen the desire to start new ventures.  However, there are a number of job opportunities in niche occupations that work best onshore, so to speak.  My book "Fort Hickok A Green Community", speaks of this.  The nice thing about many service jobs, such as healthcare, is that they must be where the demand is, with the American patient at home here in America, for the most part.  Inroads have been made into the healthcare staffs, such as doctors, nurses, and other specialists, because foreign trained people will come here and work for less than an American trained person would. 
 
Personally, I prefer to see a healthcare person that I can understand and so many of the foreign staffers cannot speak good English as much as they try to please me.  I will hand it to the doctors from India in that they have excellent bedside manners, so to speak.

From a pure personal income standpoint you are correct.  I worked as a programmer/analyst, a service type career, and I enjoyed much better income than if I had been a machinist turning out widgets.  Maybe I am wrong, but IMO mining, argriculture, and manufacturing form the basic wealth of an economy, and the service occupations, except for those that serve people needs, such as healthcare workers and hair dressers, basically service the wealth brought about by the basic industries. 

At one time farmers used relatively little services, but now they probably spend a fair share of their gross income on services.  Without the crop there is no business to service because the farm business would fold.

To me, manufacturing, energy making, and food production are national security issues.  Already we are seeing tainted foodstuffs coming in from China, and maybe they have gotten a bad rap from the MSM, but it pisses me off to think my little dogs and maybe my loved ones and me are eating food that can damage their health or even kill them. American food production in general is well supervised when it comes to guarding against life or health threatening contaminants.  I see that as food security.

Manufacturing is important from another standpoint we often overlook.  Mass production creates jobs for hundreds, perhaps a few thousand people, in a large plant such as an auto assembly plant or an aircraft factory.  The profit margins are generous enough to provide the workers with a decent wage plus decent fringe benefits.  Many service jobs have no equal in thar respect because they typically do not employ large numbers of lower skilled employees and the profits are siphoned off by the upper level staff.  I was a computer consultant for about 10 years and saw first hand how it worked.  The only hourly workers we had in a company of about 50 employees was a few clerical people, and they apparently did not garner a high wage like we consultants did.


There are those that think we should educate ourselves so we don't have to work on assembly lines and the like, but I don't think that is feasible.  Only a small percentage of people have the skills and temperant, mainly patience and perseverence, to become professionals.  We cannot all drive the train and we cannot all be boss.

Service is or can be a lucrative occupation for a professional such as you, a lawyer,
a doctor, or some other specialist that is in great demand.  I certainly don't begrudge what you charge per hour so long as you give good advice and service to your clients.

 How does it go?  Hire a consultant and go wrong with confidence?     That was used on we consultants in one company and was a cartoon in a WDC paper.  We had a few dead head job hoppers in our midst but overall I was impressed by the level of competence and the sincerity of the consultants.  I was commended for my sincerity and my consistency in grinding out new solutions to some very nagging problems that faced the clients, which were utility clients, light and gas companies, phone companies, and the like.  Our servies were very popular after Sam forced the majors to unbundle.

[Michael]

I'm not sue who's post you are answering.  Please explain.

Sometimes damage cannot be undone, but the best we can do now is to stop the bleeding.
I don't think that turning over large areas of our country to the native Americans will get us out of the hole we are in. 

I don't think you concerns will ever get enough support to do anything that might compensate your people but I would support this type of a proposition.  Place certain tracts of land in the care of the tribes with a 100 year lease with provision that the tribes would permit eco friendly use of that land by the whites.  I am thinking in terms of managed forest cutting, wildlife parks for recreation  purposes, and the like.  I think that even now there are Indians who have producing mineral rights in parts of Oklahoma but I won't swear to that.  That approach  can give the royalty holder a nice income, and in the case of natrual gas wells, does not do wholesale damage to the land surface.  My wife and step kids have mineral rights and they get a little check almost monthly.  It comes in handy.  They have inherited this gas producing property from their ancesgors.  Just the other day the stepdaughter who lives with us got a 7100 dollar check because a company wanted to run a pipeline across her share of the 130 acres she and her brother own jointly.  It is like finding it in a way, and in time the scars of trenching will heal. My father farmed an 80 acre patch that had 4 large NG pipelines running across it.  For a few years the scar left from the backfill did not produce well but in time it came back alive. Subsoil, if left on top, doesn't have the nutrients and the traits to make good crop soil.  In time crop residue and commercial fertilizer brings it back up to snuff.

I guess we posted close to the same time.  I was responding to lucy's post.

My concerns weren't about the losses of indigenous people.  They were about the losses of everyone else whose legacy comes from the warped self-assurance and dogged-greed economics.  Things which derived from those mis-deeds and mis-perceptions against/toward the indigenous. 

The U.S. is more of a business venture (gamble) than a well-grounded cultural pursuit.  If the U.S. is a mere "melting-pot" of the worlds business personal incentives that are separated from the religious freedoms/soul of the indigenous people...where is the religious freedom/soul of the "Nation"?  I don't see it.

Religion is a viewpoint ABOVE the manipulations for mere earthly comforts. 

[ivanm]

Mike in general religion is a belief system that is based on many suppositions that have little to no basis in fact.  So the fact that the US doesn't have some sort of a system like the Apaches did just doesn't amount to much. 

There are still a lot of conscientous well intended hard working white people in this country who wish you and yours no harm at all. However, they aren't about to lay down and let you walk over their beliefs or take what they think is theirs.

Modern day Ameircans did not take your land, and some of it was even bought from Indian tribes, fair and square. 

[lucy]

I guess we posted close to the same time.  I was responding to lucy's post.

My concerns weren't about the losses of indigenous people.  They were about the losses of everyone else whose legacy comes from the warped self-assurance and dogged-greed economics.  Things which derived from those mis-deeds and mis-perceptions against/toward the indigenous. 

The U.S. is more of a business venture (gamble) than a well-grounded cultural pursuit.  If the U.S. is a mere "melting-pot" of the worlds business personal incentives that are separated from the religious freedoms/soul of the indigenous people...where is the religious freedom/soul of the "Nation"?  I don't see it.

Religion is a viewpoint ABOVE the manipulations for mere earthly comforts. 

And that is why one needs to contemplate where their heart's treasures truly lie....If you only live for material gains, then when those material things are not there for some reason, what does one have left to hold dear?

[lucy]

I knew a family in Japan when I was still in my teens. They lived next-door to me. There were four little guys under the age of 7 or so, and the two parents living in two rooms about 500 sq ft with no bath...we went to the public bath in that building of apartments. The mother invited me to eat a couple of times....naturally they slept on Japanese roll-out bedding which was hidden in the daytime in the closet, but this was a happy family. They saved their money and moved to a larger place the following year....but, it taught me something about having "things" vs being happy and a loving family...I am not saying this is the bottom line....just living in such close quarters is not for everyone, but when one sees the waste and the ambition to have more and more and more, and still it is not satisfying....hmmmm.

[Velleity]

Manufacturing is important from another standpoint we often overlook.  Mass production creates jobs for hundreds, perhaps a few thousand people, in a large plant such as an auto assembly plant or an aircraft factory.  The profit margins are generous enough to provide the workers with a decent wage plus decent fringe benefits.  Many service jobs have no equal in thar respect because they typically do not employ large numbers of lower skilled employees and the profits are siphoned off by the upper level staff.  I was a computer consultant for about 10 years and saw first hand how it worked.  The only hourly workers we had in a company of about 50 employees was a few clerical people, and they apparently did not garner a high wage like we consultants did.

Yes, this was what I meant when I said that a certain segment of our population needs heavy lifting type jobs.

There are those that think we should educate ourselves so we don't have to work on assembly lines and the like, but I don't think that is feasible.  Only a small percentage of people have the skills and temperant, mainly patience and perseverence, to become professionals.  We cannot all drive the train and we cannot all be boss.

Service is or can be a lucrative occupation for a professional such as you, a lawyer,
a doctor, or some other specialist that is in great demand.  I certainly don't begrudge what you charge per hour so long as you give good advice and service to your clients.

And if you look at the bigger picture, from 1,000 feet up or 10,000 feet up, what is it all about?

It's not really about making money because those of us who have lived our lives, as Lucy points out very well, know that money is really an empty bag. What it's really about is to make the system work for as many of WE, THE PEOPLE as possible.

If it only works for the top 1% the system is not legitimate. This is where "Conservatives" really miss the boat and unless and until they understand this fundamental point they will reside for a long, long time in the ideological wilderness.

I mean it's just common sense: you can only go so far to screw over the vast majority of people. Eventually they will call your bluff.

You can fool some of the people all of the time . . .

[Michael]

Mike in general religion is a belief system that is based on many suppositions that have little to no basis in fact.  So the fact that the US doesn't have some sort of a system like the Apaches did just doesn't amount to much. 

There are still a lot of conscientous well intended hard working white people in this country who wish you and yours no harm at all. However, they aren't about to lay down and let you walk over their beliefs or take what they think is theirs.

Modern day Ameircans did not take your land, and some of it was even bought from Indian tribes, fair and square. 

Again... it is not about anyones version of religion or what was done to Indians.   It is about the psychological profile of those whose inception was based upon mis-understandings.

The very fact alone that the indigenous have had to carry with them a huge handicap in the form of emotional handicap....says they were obviously misjudged by those who took advantage of them. 

Religion may be a mere "belief system that is based upon suppositions rather than fact"....but only to those who do not have the facts.  Usually those whose self-confidence is based upon mis-understandings about their actual historical religious standings.

[ivanm]

Mike you are interesting until you get off on this Native American kick, and then you become a boring pain in the ass.