Posts by restlesssurfer97

Matthew Young35 said:And what exactly defines "bias" in this context?
Is it complaining because a kid you hired for $30 an hour decided to jump ship to a competitor?$1167 Or is it pointing out that we have some of the lowest hourly wages in the entire country?

So basically, you read this article and immediately decided the guy went to jail just because of that one employee leaving for a rival firm, which honestly means you're just supercharged on biases since you can't even look at a basic news story without letting assumptions cloud your judgment.

And I mean, you immediately jumped down this entrepreneur's throat, whereas I’m just speaking in generalities and not even commenting on how this specific dude runs his business, but you're already out here trashing him over a single sentence in the whole piece, and yeah, we all know he's the type to exploit workers.

Nice job.

Matthew Young35 said:Yes, I must admit, it was quite a pleasant surprise.
I suppose I would have been even more pleased if he had suggested some actually decent spots instead of just shutting things down entirely, but what can you do? Even this version was somewhat enjoyable.

There's more to come. This isn't over yet.

According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average weekly work hours here in the States are among the lowest in the developed world. If that’s the case, shouldn't we be looking deeper? If people aren't even working full tilt, then the issue clearly isn't just the cost of labor. It has to be something else entirely.

And then there’s this guy. He had some kid working for him for a mere $3,000?$1167It’s honestly a bit pathetic when you look at the competition. You have this miserable employer losing talent to companies that actually understand the value of paying people what they're worth. Is it really that hard to offer a fair wage? Apparently, for some, yes.

Just walk me through this one more time, though.

The way I’m reading the situation—and tell me if I’m totally off base here—is that you basically think he believed he couldn't pull in $100,000, so he settled for $50,000, and since that wasn't enough to make it worth his while, he decided to just close shop entirely rather than offer better pay and settle for that $50,000 mark.

Is that really how it went down? Feel free to set me straight if I'm tripping.

The sheer amount of bias here is just unreal. Seriously.

And honestly, blaming entrepreneurs for a failing economy or the state of this backwater town we live in is a massive level of stupidity. Forgive me if that sounds harsh, but I don't really know how else to put it.

Whatever, I guess now American workers and their Irish bosses will just ride bicycles to work together.😂

I couldn't care less, actually; if anything, I’d love to see more of this happening until every single business and corporation shuts down for good. And frankly, everything seems to be heading that way. I realized a long time ago that sometimes you need a kick in the ass to actually move forward.
The only ones who are going to end up starving are the philosophers, those types like some guy from a local college campus$0.00 clutching my money while waving a communist flag out the window, a Cuban cigar in his mouth, and an iPhone sitting on the table that was cobbled together by tiny hands in a factory overseas. And his followers? There's no shortage of them.
As for the rest of us, we'll figure it out—we're used to working for a living.

@ironpanther5, man, people just don't get that markets basically regulate themselves, provided you have those necessary government guardrails in place, but the real headache starts when those state regulations kick in, because look, if America offered business conditions on par with what they have in Ireland, then American employers would actually be able to offer competitive wages, and honestly, anyone who refuses to step up like that is just going to end up struggling to find any decent talent, so there's your answer right there.

What really cracks me up is how some folks seem to think an American employer is out here trying to drive a beat-up old bike while the Irish guy is cruising in a BMW, which is why the Irish guy can afford to pay more, but that's not it at all, see, it's more that Irish employers are just socially conscious, they're basically socialists at heart. 🤦

Anthony Jackson2 said:Honestly, we should just bring in workers from overseas at $167 a month—it's the only way our local "entrepreneurs" can actually stay afloat ☕

Look, Anthony Jackson2, honestly, that’s an old trick in the book, and the government here has been pulling that move pretty successfully since we even became an independent nation.
Think about all those folks coming in from Mexico or Central America who end up working themselves to the bone for their countrymen along the Florida coast, grinding 15 hours a day without a single day off, totally off the books, sometimes without even legal status, while the bosses just report a tiny fraction of their daily cash to the IRS, all while being totally in sync with the tax authorities and the state itself—that whole system has already proven to be incredibly effective, except the government is the one running the show.

So, you got a better idea for how the government should step in? 🍿

I bet this bit of news is going to make Charles Chase4 absolutely lose his mind with joy

Honestly, he’d be doing them a favor. With that groomed, pampered look he's got going on—trying way too hard to act tough—he'd basically be the jackpot for whatever crew he ends up bunking with in a state penitentiary. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already passing his photo around just to laugh at him.

The whole thing you mentioned about those funds not getting any contributions is really just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the fact that by the time we actually hit retirement age in twenty years, Social Security is probably going to be nothing more than pocket change.

The absolute worst part about what you just said is how those Social Security contributions aren't even being made, which basically means it's money down the drain that you can never, ever get back. 🙂

And since I’ve already got basically every politician in Washington on my radar, I honestly feel like I could just spit right in that guy Vrdoljak’s face if I ever caught him. I mean, I’d just hock a loogie straight at that nose of his, right onto that balding head and that fake, forced grin he uses to hide those tiny little teeth. He’s such an absolute bottom-feeder, a total creep, it actually makes me physically sick just thinking about him. It's gross.

Look, you’re constantly calling out these shady entrepreneurs, though I honestly have no clue who you’re even targeting, but this whole trend of workers moving around within the US is just going to balance things out naturally here in America. Either more jobs will open up to meet the demand, or those businesses are just going to fold, and that’s just how it works when the market regulates itself instead of having the government stepping in with all those interventions and minimum wage mandates.

That pig of a Secretary basically said they’d love to expand job opportunities in the textile industry, but Uncle Sam won't allow it. 🤦

And then you've got Kruscevic comparing the federal bureaucracy to Microsoft. 🤦

Plus, when you look at the opposition, you've already got those idiots I mentioned before, along with that lost cause Priest Petrova and that narcissistic, empty populist Pernara.

I will give you credit on one thing though, Franjo Harmon is the answer.

Matthew Young35 said:I have an even better suggestion.
Abolish wages entirely. It would trigger hyper-efficient, low-cost production, making our top American entrepreneurs incredibly wealthy and driving up our GDP within the global market.

It’s the universal fix for everything: slash wages, gut Social Security, and scrap "free" healthcare.

The only catch is... how do I put this... who on earth is going to work for those slashed wages?
Americans won't do it; in twenty years, there won't be anyone left in this country.
Immigrants won't either; they're fleeing the States like it's a plague zone.
People from Mexico or Canada won't bother; why would they move here if they're already leaving their own homes just to head to somewhere like London or Tokyo instead of the US?

How does one propose cutting wages when people are already struggling just to cover their basic utility bills?
I'd love to see that play out.

Why don't we just hike the minimum wage to $1333? That’s the real fix, right? You feeling that same vibe as those geniuses Maras and Bernardic?
Do you agree with their logic that lowering tax brackets for higher earners is basically just taking money from the poor to hand it to the wealthy? Meanwhile, look at how places like Poland used much stricter measures to become a massive tech powerhouse compared to us.

Our "progressive" politicians are so brilliant that this brainless right-wing crowd is probably going to stay in power forever.

Maras and Bernardic are just one step ahead of being complete idiots. What absolute morons. 🤦

shadowmarlin22 said:It’s funny how we're still obsessing over who robbed the country back in the early '90s—basically just debating whether the old administration or the current one is worse, or pointing fingers at who's responsible for which mess. The thing is, nobody is actually offering any real solutions.

Honestly, the answer is pretty simple if you look at how any functional modern nation operates—you just have to let the market handle everything it's supposed to handle. You can't really call it a free market when you're dealing with the kind of corrupt government interference we see here, because then it isn't true capitalism, it's just straight-up cronyism, kind of like what you see over in Russia. It's wild because while the Polish are busy looking toward Germany for inspiration, we seem perfectly content just following the Russian playbook.🤦

brightpilot6 said:Good grief, who on earth are you talking to? In the last decade, I haven't heard a single soul making jokes about the Czech Republic's economy.

PS

And honestly, a massive round of applause for those scheduling spreadsheets; whoever came up with that deserves a Nobel Prize in Bureaucracy.🙏

The same goes for those vehicle usage logs, especially since the government already accounts for those expenses through flat-rate tax deductions anyway.🙏

There’s an endless supply of this nonsense, but one that really sticks out—this little parting gift from the previous administration—was a literal stamp used just for liquidating incoming invoices. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

ruggedjackal46 said:In our supposedly "great" nation, the privatization scams and the absolute wreckage of the state were orchestrated by those ultra-conservative types, not some hippies with flowers in their hair. Let's be real: the leftists are basically irrelevant here; it’s the right-wing crowd that actually ran the con.

The sheer amount of red tape is all thanks to the EU's influence on global standards.

So, who exactly are these "leftists with flowers in their hair"? It’s funny how whenever someone mentions a "champagne socialist," everyone suddenly gets all worked up about it.

I mean, wasn't it actually guys like Linchenko making backroom deals with his buddies from big corporations during his time in office?

Seriously though, who counts as a leftist and who counts as a religious conservative in this mess?

The ones who actually picked our pockets were the former communists who just rebranded themselves as Democrats or moderate conservatives back in the early 90s. They weren't actually committed to any ideology, they were just crooks.

I'm honestly sick of people constantly picking sides between the far-left and the far-right, or arguing over old Civil War leftovers. When is this cycle ever going to end?

wiredfalcon2 said:Just start a business then. Go boost the GDP.

Look, I actually run my own little side hustle, and honestly, there hasn't been a single week since I started where I haven't felt some level of regret about it. And before you even ask why I don't just shut the whole thing down, let me tell you that anyone who has ever tried to navigate the world of small business in America knows exactly why that’s easier said than done.

btw, I’ve actually scaled things to the point where I could pretty much automate the expansion year after year, but I just don't have the desire or the mental energy to go out and start fighting windmills all over again. We're talking micro-entrepreneurship here, and instead of actually focusing on the work I love, I end up spending hours upon hours every single day drowning in paperwork. And yeah, I'm definitely not playing strictly by the book, because if I didn't, I wouldn't get a day off for months at a time, considering I'm pulling 15-hour shifts regularly. But I still have to maintain these logs in spreadsheets, capping everything at a max of 8 hours, logging when I worked, marking my days off 😂 And please, don't even get me started on "management contracts"—of course there are plenty of "legal solutions" for all this stuff here in the States, but if I actually utilized every single one of those official loopholes, I'd be left with absolutely nothing. I'd be broke.
Luckily, I manage to pull in enough income from other ventures and international sources that I can play around with actual cash, rather than dealing with the pennies I'd be left with here if I had to cover every single living expense through local means.

ps. Just to be clear, we're talking small-scale income and minor operations here, so nobody gets the wrong idea and thinks I'm out here running some massive corporation or making millions; I'm really just doing this to keep food on the table.

In some other country, with the amount of energy and grit I put into this, I would have secured a more than decent lifestyle a long time ago. And yeah, I actually think about it, because I know people who have just straight-up bailed on working in this backwater part of the country, though it isn't exactly an easy call to make. Okay, maybe not just this specific corner of the US, because there are other places that feel like the "West" to us but are actually even worse when it comes to certain things. Specifically, Italy.

Man, everyone’s losing their minds over the abortion bans and those religious fanatics running the show in DC, so look, here’s a quick take on what’s actually happening. I feel like on this forum we need a freaking 10,000-page academic thesis because apparently, we Americans are all supposed to be these high-level economic gurus who just somehow know that something isn't sitting right with the way things are going in places like Texas... this whole argument over one basic article is basically a perfect snapshot of our society right now, where everyone thinks they’re an expert on everything and knows it all, yet for some reason, we just can't seem to get anything right.

They privatized everything, went through the absolute wringer at first, and then you had the companies that were bleeding money either pivot or go bust, which eventually turned the private sector into this massive engine that pushed us into the top 10 economies in the world.

I mean, seriously, why is it so hard to just acknowledge a few positive things for once?

But hey, I guess wiredfalcon2 needs a 10,000-page dissertation instead.

It’s pretty wild that nobody even brought up that controversial Holocaust law 😂

Maybe this would be right up ruggedjackal46's alley

So, they just landed 25 $0.00 federal grants, which basically gives them the green light to just own the whole damn situation. 🤣

Look, if you can actually prove to ruggedjackal46 that there’s some kind of government setup out there where this wouldn't be a total disaster, then maybe—and I mean maybe—we can sit down and talk about making some actual changes. But until then, we might as well just assume any tiny bit of leftover change is basically gone with the wind.