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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: robert b furman who wrote (877)	3/14/2014 12:50:21 PM
From: Kirk ©	6 Recommendations Recommended By 3bar Blasher larryjoe PJr robroy1 and 1 more member Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 26621

I don't think it is off topic. My first job at 16 was slightly below ($1.35 vs ~$1.50) min wage because they paid us a "meal ticket" worth about $2 for a 4 hour shift. I bussed tables at "Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour" where they had a lunch crowd and birthday parties where we'd run around with a "Zoo" on a stretcher to deliver a BIG bowl of ice cream to a table that fed 20 or so kids.... Anyway, I got the best shifts (summer lunches which were usually business men who tipped far better than moms hosting kids Bday parties) because I was the best bus boy.. so I made over $2 an hour after the manager allocated tips. I learned right away that showing up for work on time and doing a good job was well rewarded. Funny, that $2 meal ticket would buy a bacon and cheese burger, a milkshake and an order of fries but I think the cooks gave me the upgraded burger as another reward for keeping their kitchen well stocks with clean plates, etc. I learned to work hard and was offered a promotion to the kitchen where "adults" worked when I decided to quit to play soccer after I save money for six months. I told them I'd come back in the summer to work again (I played soccer and made the Varsity tennis team as a sophomore). I eventually went to a better paying job at a car wash $2/hr vs $1.35 where tips there would buy a good lunch at McDonalds down the street. I quit that after a month and the manager was really upset with me as I promised to not quit... I said I'd stay if he could match the pay of $2.50 per hour. He said he could not, understood why I was leaving and wished me well. At that job, it was a "for Christmas only" job to assemble a toy department and sell toys for Christmas. I worked hard, did a good job was was offered a job in the paint department selling paint, ladders and compressors. My senior year in high school, rather than graduate early, I worked 32 hrs a week to save money for college. In college I washed dishes one year as the work-study type job that had to give union type wages (it was at UC Berkeley for heaven's sake!) so I made $5/hr... I could go on about other jobs with more skills and more pay up to being a summer intern making $1000 a month which was more than my father was making... and I asked my bosses boss if I could skip going back to school for the final year and work at that job. He PROMISED to make getting my degree worth the time not making money and offered me a Christmas job to help make money for a month... then I went back to work at HP where he kept his promise. The whole point is these are some of my strongest memories and they are all about working my way up the ladder with HARD WORK and DOING A GOOD JOB defined by the person who hired me. We've lost this. When I got to HP in 1978 we did EVERYTHING in Palo Alto... built the chips and assembled them into discrete IC type products (remember the black plastic?) or LEDs for the HP calculators. BUT we were starting to transfer final test over to Singapore to save on taxes. We had hundreds of "English as a Second Language" workers doing assembly and they were treated very well and very well paid. Singapore STOLE these JOBS and CALIFORNIA Drove them away with tax policy. Now these very nice, hard working people have to work at Walmart or McDonalds since CA and the US drove those jobs out of the country. I decided to leave when after 20 years I was told to train engineers who lived and worked in Singapore to do the R&D jobs I was training graduates from MIT, CAL an Stanford to do before. When I complained to management about why we were shipping whole product lines to Singapore that I helped create I was told the tax savings they were given was larger than all the profits that product line was expected to make if kept as it was... I could stay and keep inventing new products for high pay then transfer the jobs overseas but I decided I wanted to do something different and perhaps actually help people. I think I've taught a lot of people about low cost investing and "core and explore" techniques that work with my newsletters so I am happy enough. But, I'm not sitting still for the bullshit liberal idea of the solution to our problems is to raise taxes on job creators and pay better wages because I know it is bullshit from 30 years experience.