How hard do you work?

Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 11 years, 3 months ago to Politics
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After experiencing all the headaches of running a small business in these challenging times knowing that most of my hard work, sacrifice and profit will not be rewarded but instead taken by force from me and instead given to moochers and looters I've told my husband I'm done. I could work 60+ hrs a week, travel and make my business grow even more but I refuse to.
I will only work enough to meet our needs and no more. I will not Cooperate ! If someone wants a piece of the pie, let them bake !
So even though times are hard and sales aren't what they should be we're surviving but not one more drop of MY sweat is going to go to others.
Hank Reardon:
"I work for nothing but my own profit. I earn it."
"No, I do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner. I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with - voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product!
Just wondering what others think !

All Comments

  • Posted by MikeJoyous 11 years, 3 months ago
    Personally, I think you'd do better to work harder, make more, and put it into gold or survival foods, or solar energy. Anyways, what kind of work are you into? What's the name of your business? Maybe I'd be interested:)
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  • Posted by plusaf 11 years, 3 months ago
    You remind me of a time many decades ago when my employer sent me to Stockholm to train some sales reps.

    While being chauffeured around by one, I asked him how the Swedish taxes affected him.

    Very simply, he replied: when my boss offers me a raise, I negotiate with him for additional vacation time, instead. The extra cash would disappear in taxes. The vacation time is mine.

    Simple question, simple answer, and an indication of the diminishing returns to a country when workers prefer vacation to raises.

    And that was some time back in the early 1970s!
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  • Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You don't necessarily have to dial it back but certainly not work additional hours getting new contracts. That in itself will scale the business back. When needed, you go get new customers but in the meantime I'm not feeding the beast at my expense.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 11 years, 3 months ago
    How do you dial it back? Do you raise prices until you have hardly any work, work that earns just enough to subsist? Or do you stop doing any trade show or networking even unless you just want to do it for fun, knowing that business will start to shrink if you don't go out and find customers?

    Business is like an addiction. How do you say no?
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  • Posted by squareone 11 years, 3 months ago
    I quit in 1983. I saw what was coming and wanted to gradually adjust to it, which I have done very well.
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  • Posted by squareone 11 years, 3 months ago
    My business has four members including myself - no employees, therefore no headaches.
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  • Posted by RonC 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I have had gold and silver. If you buy low and sell high it's as good as any commodity. It doesn't pay a dividend to hold it. So, I modeled my RE holdings in such a manner that the user/tenant is paying all the expenses, including a profit margin. We get income monthly, I didn't get that from gold. County real estate taxes are equivalent to corporate taxes in that the user really pays the tax. Corporations don't pay tax, customers do. The corp just handles the transaction for the govt. So for my little life it has been a good thing. I think the hardest thing to wrap my head around was modern rents. The last time I paid rent a 2 bedroom was $179/mo. The thought of getting $1000/mo for a thrown away house was beyond me. As it turns out. we have very nice properties and because of how we purchased them our rents are very competative.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    They won't at the federal level, but that's not where most property taxes are controlled from. It is at the state and county level, and there you may find a different story. My fear with real-estate is just that these local governments, when revenue begins to decrease, will keep jacking up the real-estate taxes. Gold I can hide. Tough to do with a house sitting on a street corner somewhere.
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  • Posted by squareone 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I tell people every day that by paying income taxes they are financing their own destruction. They give me a blank stare in return.
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  • Posted by khalling 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I have a friend who runs a company that developed software to categorize all the chemical breakdowns of a particular product. There clients are mostly European due to regs passed in the EU that forced companies to show this data for every product sold industrially. This information is then compared to stards for acceptable levels of each chemical compound. It's absurd and ridiculous and incredibly time consuming. Mistakes are easy to make in the compliance and the EU is loving hauling companies into court and fining the daylights out of them
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  • Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Thanks for the laugh. No, it's at the companies' expense and NOT tax deductible. Just like OSHA compliances and any other trainings required by the govt. They issue their orders and companies must obey at their own expense.
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  • Posted by BradA 11 years, 3 months ago
    Welcome to the strike. Here's my story, a re-posting of my own introduction when I joined GG almost a year ago.

    For the last 10 years or so I have been running a reasonably successful dive bar. And in doing so, I am on strike.

    It's not that the business doesn't require a huge amount of effort to operate profitably; it does. Just ask any other bar owner you may run into. And while I still work hard, I consider this endeavor's contribution back to our moocher society to be minimal, at best.

    You see, like Hugh Akston and his diner, I have chosen NOT to use my skills and training to benefit those who want to reward my efforts by looting me of the fruits of those efforts. Instead, I use them on projects that amuse me and maybe a few of my customers.

    Like Galt, I too am an engineer. I have degrees from MIT. I have patents. I have run more than one multi-million dollar hi-tech company. But no more. I am on strike. When California (and the Feds) sees fit to take more than 50% of what I produce / earn, then I simply stop producing.

    And what I find most depressing is what happened last November. I cannot recall an election where the choice between the producers and the moochers was more stark. And yet the moochers prevailed. We now live in a society where the majority feels a moral right to take what they want/need from the minority without compensation. It's a slippery slope from which I cannot see a recovery. But unfortunately we do not live in Galt's world. Our decline will be more gradual, playing out over multiple generations. But make no mistake, the scales have tipped and the decline has begun.

    And I remain on strike.

    And I pray that my assessment is wrong.
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  • Posted by JossAmbrose 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I take it the cost of compliance & the resulting loss of earnings/customers is tax deductible? If not, it SHOULD be.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If you can pick the highs and lows of stock market fluctuations, you really don't have to do work.
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  • Posted by cp256 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's a small ISP business that used to do a lot of dialup sales, but is now mostly web hosting. Most of our income is from swing trading on the stock market these days.
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  • Posted by SolitudeIsBliss 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's currently being revamped to meet GHS requirements (GHS= Global Harmonized System) how's that for a name. All products require a Material Safety Data Sheet and manufacturers have until 2015 to revise all their documentation. We're in the process of rewriting all our documentation.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ah, so you're part of that profession that artificially keeps its ranks low so that there is a shortage of providers, thus keeping prices artificially high. Explains a lot.
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  • Posted by JossAmbrose 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Cool. Do you have a website? I'd be interested to browse. I'm always looking to improve my services/performance.
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  • Posted by MattFranke 11 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I believe it was Churchill who said, "If you're twenty years old, and you're not a socialist; you have no heart. If you're forty years old, and you're still a socialist; you have no brain."
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