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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed

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To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (273274)	1/9/2004 2:18:00 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) of 436258

a burgeoning class of amway sellers and people selling on ebay for fun and profit? <g> MCI started out as a multi level marketing firm. Some of those EBAY sellers make far more money than they did in their previous employment. EBAY is an engine for growing small businesses as well as an engine of growth for existing businesses. You are discounting where some of our largest enterprises came from. They weren't started by venture capital firms, that was late bubble activity, fluff. They were started by individuals who created companies somewhere, maybe their basement, or as I did, in the basement of my largest customer. All the people I know who run private companies with large numbers of employees started those companies with extremely small amounts of capital under the duress of needing a job. You couldn't buy a job when I graduated from college in 1978. I had to become self employed as did many of my colleagues. Most acted as independent contractors for large companies. I work in two different industries that have huge numbers of people who all work as independent contractors. The enterprise survey significantly under counts those kinds of structural shifts in employment. It was set up in a different time when the majority of people laid off from a particular industry would be re-hired by the same firm or industry after a cyclical downturn was over. Most of the jobs lost from 2000 forward aren't jobs where people will be rehired, the job description doesn't exist anymore or has been subjected to severe contraction from technological gains and shifts. My own job description changed radically in the last three years and I used to work at something that people have been making money doing for the last 100 years. Those people coming from those jobs which no longer exist will need to retrain and find some other way to make money. I can give countless stories about just this phenomenon. People like me don't just roll over and start selling Amway, we create new businesses. I created two in the last three years. No one I work with is hiring as well, I don't want to have employees either. I've had it with dealing with the expense of having employees. If I have to I will use independent contractors or other small competitors. Ask yourself this, how many people do you know aren't working that actually want to work? I know maybe half a dozen people who say they want work but they are what I'd call structurally unemployed, they don't look for work and they have a spouse or other family member who supports them. Most of them are people who can't show up clean and sober. I do know a number of people who work for themselves and would love to go back to the warm corporate womb. Back before 2000 I used to get 5 to 6 people a month asking me for work. I have gotten one call in the last year but this was a guy who wanted work from me as an independent contractor. My husband is still forced to hire guys straight out of jail and Mexicans who don't speak English on his construction jobs. These aren't low paying jobs, these are scale jobs. Typically he has to fire a couple a guys a week because the guys either don't show up or don't show up sober. He's still dipping down into the pool of the marginally employable. The company he works for has an almost permanent classified ad looking for workers.

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