Escape Velocity
In physics, escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy plus the gravitational potential energy of an object is zero.[nb 1] It is the speed needed to "break free" from the gravitational attraction of a massive body, without further propulsion.
For a spherically symmetric body, the escape velocity at a given distance is calculated by the formula[1]
- On the surface of the Earth, the escape velocity is about 11.2 kilometers per second (~6.96 mi/s), which is approximately 33 times the speed of sound (Mach 33) and several times the muzzle velocity of a rifle bullet (up to 1.7 km/s). However, at 9,000 km altitude in "space", it is slightly less than 7.1 km/s.
To put this in layman's terms, you need to be going a certain speed in order to break free of earth's orbit to get out into space: to go to the moon, mars, whatever. If you are going a little bit under this speed with the accelerator maxed, you are going to start slowing down and eventually get pulled back down to earth, because you did not achieve escape velocity. Basically, escape velocity allows you to "break free" and onward to better things going up, and punishes and pulls back down those that do not achieve it. Achieving escape velocity requires a lot of energy. So does making money.
$12-$15 dollars an hour in 2014 is not achieving escape velocity
Life costs money. And when you are earning $24,000 to $30,000 (12-15/hr) you are not earning enough of it to cover your needs. And if you barely are able to cover your rent, utility bills, food, etc, you are one car repair away from catastrophe where everything comes unraveling down around you. You have to have money to repair the car or you can't go to work. If you pay the car repair, you won't have money this month to make rent. Things start to fall apart due to the laws of entropy (re: everything breaks eventually) and you are not going to have the money to cover it. Due to the laws of entropy you will only have so long you will be able to rely on your current resources until you consume them like a cloud of locusts, drawing energy from them because you are not drawing enough energy from outside sources; as in a sufficient salary. Thus eventually your car with 144,324 miles is gonna break, you are going to have an unexpected medical bill, your landlord is going to raise your rent, you are eventually going to max out your 2 or three credit cards that have a terrible interest rate of 14%+ because chances are your credit rating and or income level has not been deemed sufficient enough for a better more competitive rate, and you will start to drown in a sea of debt that you will attempt to make payments on but will unable to in the long term. The ship will start to sink.
So living like this will have you living in the red. It doesn't work. If a company tried operating like this it would go out of business.
So like a spacecraft attempting to leave earth's orbit and not achieving escape velocity and falling back down towards earth, so will you attempt to move forward in your life and collapse in on yourself like the house at the end of the first Poltergeist movie. You are simply going to have to make more money not only to just survive, but thrive. I figure that current escape volocity (July 2014) is approximately at $25+per hour. With that salary even though you will be living a bit tight, you can still put away some money to invest, start a business or whatever as long as you maintain a tight budget on your finances and not live above your means while you are scraping and saving. It also helps if you are living with a partner that is also earning a decent salary and you pool your resources. And it takes discipline. Here is a quick story about discipline. The thing about discipline is that a lot of foreigners that come to the united States have it and a lot of Americans do not, they feel entitled. Foreigners know strife and poverty and are not afraid of hard work.
A Cambodian Woman named Kayha in 1979
In 1979 there was a Cambodian Dictator named Pol Pot who was slaughtering millions of his people in his mad attempt to exert and maintain strict totalitarian control over the Cambodian nation. A young woman by the name of Kayha who had just given birth decided that she didn't want to raise her daughter in such a jackboot environment and decided to escape. Like escaping present day North Korea, being captured meant certain death. She ran miles through fields of barbed wire and machine guns and searchlights all the while holding her hand over her baby's mouth so that the babies cries wouldn't give their position away. Her husband, at the same time was also escaping, going another direction, as he couldn't be found there the next day with her gone. They didn't know if they were ever going to see each other again, or if one of them or any of them would make it out alive. Eventually Kayha made it to a safe refuge in a friendly country and had no idea if her husband was also as lucky. She eventually found some relatives in the United States who put her and her baby up while she worked hard as a cleaning lady, saving every dime. Her husband, much to her joy, located her family and contacted her, letting her know he was fine and he was coming to Illinois and they had a joyous reunion. They scrimped and saved and both had jobs as cleaning people working for agencies and finally had enough money saved to get a small apartment in Deerfield Illinois. Meanwhile, here I am 14 years old and picking my nose playing video games with a backwards baseball hat sitting on the couch knowing nothing about hard work as my Dad worked his way up to President of his company. Dad decided that my Mom now deserved a cleaning woman now that we were finally making some money (re: Dad was finally making some money) I looked up from the Atari game I was playing as I heard that the new cleaning woman would start Monday.
Monday came around and a very pretty Cambodian woman by the name of Kayha was smiling standing on our step.
She got to work and busted ass. She was a good looking girl, always with a smile on her face, and always did a great cleaning job, according to my parents. At first her command of the English language wasn't that strong, but she was a quick learner, aided mostly by the total immersion being in a foreign country. Imagine if you went to Cambodia to live and work...Asian and European languages are very foreign to one another with no real common linguistic roots. In short, for Kayha to come over here and start speaking English within 6 months was no small feat. It wasn't until about a year into working for us that she opened up to us and told us of the horrors that she escaped from. We were really astonished what our cleaning lady had been through to do the simplest thing that we took for granted: to survive. And she had plans. She wanted to open up a Cambodian Restaurant with her husband and said they were both saving every single cent.
She would get rides from her agency as her and her husband had no car. Sometimes I would ride with my mom and give her a ride back to her apartment across town in deerfield and she would tell us of how her and her husband would buy powered milk to save money and never eat out and only buy what was nessesary for them and the baby. Wow, me and my mom would say after we dropped her off. She is living super tight and saving everything. Good for them!
One day about 2 years later, the agency she worked for called us and told us that Kayha had moved on to other things and that they would be sending a replacement. Kayha then actually called us that night and told us the good news: Her and her husband were now working at a restaurant in order to learn the workings of running such a place, but were actually working as a hostess and waiter. We wished them well. For a couple of months, me and my mom would wonder what Kayha was up to as she was such a great person. We really liked her. Over the next few years, we lost touch.
Sometime around 1987 or 1988 we got a phone call in the late afternoon. It was Kayha! She excitedly told us that she now owned two Cambodian Restaurants with her husband and she is going to stop by our house later that night to give us some appetizers and dinner from her restaurant in celebration of the Chinese New Year. She came over, and blew into our house all excited and full of energy and dressed very fashionable. We all sat and talked with her and her husband and caught up. She now owned two Cambodian restaurants and finally has money and her and her husband were looking to purchase a third. It was amazing that this woman could come from nothing and make something out of herself. With financial discipline and a plan.
So what did Kayha do that was different? She was making the equivelent of todays 12-15 dollars an hour but she was also combining this salary with a significant other, who was also making the equivelent of todays 12-15 dollars an hour. Plus she scrimped and saved. And they didnt have a car. Old cars can suck money. And where they worked was right in the area where they lived, so they didnt have to spend a lot of time and resources (gas, bus passes) on travel to and from work. She saved every cent. He saved every cent. What Americans would have the dicapline to live like this? Not very many. This is why where it could be done, you would much rather get a job earning $25/hour and save and work your way up from there. I will tell you later in the post how anyone can do this. And it involves attaching yourself to the industry that the 1% are currently making thier billions from. And you don't even need a college degree. And now a quick history of the American worker and the Middle Class. A little sneak peak: it used to be real easy in the 1950's and 1960's. You could just graduate from high school and start work at the Solo cup assembly line or the mail room and work your way up over the years to the executive ranks. And with this salary you could buy a house, get married, have your wife stay home and not also have to work, buy a car or two and while enjoying suburbia even having money to vacation now and then. Not anymore! What happened? What happened to the leave it to Beaver middle class American Dream?
A Quick History of the American Worker
In the late 1800's the Industrial Revolution occurred as mechanization revolutionized industry and created the assembly line. No longer were workers living at home and tending their farms or banging out horseshoes working for themselves, now they were flowing to the cities in search of work. Working for someone else. There were big bosses, heads of industry that arose in an area where there were no rules. They made huge amounts of money and did anything necessary in order for their businesses to grow, take on market share and grow and profit some more. This was the Gilded Age. These men did great things for america. They build the railroads. They supplied the steel that built the cities. They created mechanized slaughterhouses and food distribution for grocery stores now supplying food for those that lived in the cities.
These men did this in an age of no rules. Anything went. This is before the trust busters, and monopolies were king, such as Standard Oil, Pullman Trains, and Carnegie Steel. The problem was, these Kings of the Guilded Age did these great works not only for the public, but for themselves. They massed fortunes that are worth 500 billion each today. And the american workers made almost none of it: People worked for 16 hours a day, had no healthcare, children also worked right along side of them for 16 hour days. Conditions for the worker were despicable and there were injuries and death. Workers were told how much they were gonna make and how they were going to work and too bad.
This didnt sit well with some workers. For instance, some mine workers formed something called the "Molly Maguires" in the 1870'swhich was a thug workers gang that was the beginning of unionization. Over the next several decades, workers unions began springing up sticking up for fair pay and unions rights. There was some epic clashes between the big companies and unions over the course of 50 years. Finally by the 1950's unions were at thier peak. And the American middle class union worker enjoyed prosperity at a never before seen level. There was fair work hours. Fair pay. Medical benifits. Collective bargaining. In the 50s and 60s the American worker was properous. Raising your family on one income was commonplace, and our nation prospered under the social programs of the 1930s and the 1960s. Yup. Things were great for America. Two cars in every driveway. The rapid expantion of suburbs. Grade schools. High schools. The husband coming home at the end of the day met by his wife wearing an apron with dinner in the oven.
And Then in 1979
Then the big money boys got together in the late 1970's and decided that they wanted all the money. They felt that money was being unnecessarily being spread out all over the place with the high salaries being forced upon them by the unions. They were bound by collective bargaining rules, high taxes, and restrictions. This needed to change. Enter their man Ronald Reagan. While most people look back on the prosperous big 80's as the go go big money prosperous 80's, it was really the beginning of the end of the American Dream.
Ronald Reagan and the end of the Unions
The Reagan era started in 1980 and along with it came the Republican's power bid to create a massive transfer of money from the wage earners to the owners of businesses by lowering tax rates, restricting employees collective bargaining, and rolling back rules and regulations on financial institutions. Under the leadership of Reagan, laws were issued and bills signed that began to dismantle the unions. This was the beginning of the end of the middle class as high paying jobs became low paying jobs with the difference going in the owners pocket. Now it was easy to get cheap labor. Plus in the 90's globalization came into play. Factories began to close down in North America because it was way cheaper to make gym shoes or car parts in third world countries paying workers there 70% less of what they would have to pay American workers. The only ones now making the money were the business owners and stockholders. The great age of prosperity had come to an end in america. If you drive around america you will see many closed factories, cities that are bankrupt like Detroit, and States that are bankrupt like Illinois and California. Now when a man and women live together they both have to work. And those high paying union jobs are quickly dissappearing. Its just harder to get by in america. You cant just have a high school degree and go across town to the solo cup factory and work your way up. Those in low paying non union assembly jobs tend to stay there in low paying positions and when the factory closes because it got outsourced to a company in Mexico the workers are now unemployed. Non union workers at Walmart are paid the lowest possible wage and are told to get thier healthcare from the state in a welfare configuration. Corporate profits are now up, yet at the same time, worker pay is now down, while the money all goes to the bosses and the stockholders who demand cheap labor and high profits. This is bankrupting America at the benefit of the few.
Reagan and the rich claimed "Trickle down Economics". Reagan also claimed that the job creators help everyone and their taxes should be cut and benefits should be levied their way in order for everyone to be helped, much like a rising tide raises all the boats in the harbor. But as the below video illustrates, that's not how it works.
Productivity climbed tremendously in the last 30 years, but the money isnt going into anyones pockets but the upper class. The richest 10% hold 86% of the world's wealth. The richest 1% hold 46% of the world's wealth. Its like an addiction: Money wants more money. And the rich have the money and the clout to do exactly what they did in the early 1980's. They swung their wieght around through political PACS and lobbyists and had the laws changed under the guise that it would help the economy to tax them less and have them less constrained to the unions with their bargaining and high salaries. They lobbied to have the trade agreements and borders eased so that instead of just having the united states as their production ground they could now move thier factories so soak in the cheap labor of mexico and Asian countries.
For example Nike in the 90s closed down factories in america and got rid of the high paid union workers in order to move their factories to Asia which had no unions and very cheap labor where they could have their gym shoes made for 80% cheaper cost. Then they ship those shoes right back to america and charge a high price for them. But who can afford them? Laid off or low salaried workers? The majority of america is now broke, and thats how its going to come back and bite the corporations in the ass. Its like these corporations are borrowing money (cheap oursourced overseas labor) but will have to pay the bill (america is broke, cant afford the products they are trying to sell here with labor they didnt pay for here) down the line.
Since 1980 onward, there was a larger and larger disparity between worker pay and CEO pay. In 1980, the average CEO was paid 80 times more than the average worker. Today in 2014, the average CEO makes 300 times more than the average worker. Companies claim its because to keep and retain the best talent, you have to pay for it, and if you don't dole out huge bonuses and stock options, another company will. The Wealthy's income has grown since the recession recovery and the bottom 90% have dropped. As a matter of fact, the wealthy have actually grown richer since the recession.
In a standard recession or depression, the average to poor get destroyed. They lose their wealth and they cannot find new jobs. The rich are financially independent. In a recession or depression when they observe real estate or stocks flattened in value, they simply bargain shop AND BUY MORE at lower prices. Then when the market comes back and the recession is over the flattened stock and or real estate jumps back up in price and viola, the rich make a huge profit.
Serious inequality is only good for the rich few percent, and even at that, only for the short term. Consider the following article:
6 Ways Extreme Income Inequality Is Making Your Life Worse
Below are the most shocking consequences of this income inequality:1. Income inequality forces Americans into debt.
As the wealthy become wealthier, they create an “economic arms race in which the middle class has been spending beyond their means in order to keep up,” a 2013 study from the University of Chicago’s Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse concludes.…2. Income inequality makes America sick.
Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that women living in areas with large gaps between the “haves” and “have-nots” are at greater risk of being depressed and are nearly twice as likely to suffer from depression compared to the women living in areas that have a more equal income distribution.…3. Income inequality makes America less safe.
Statistical patterns show that crime rates increase with rising economic inequality. For instance, a 1999 Harvard analysis of the homicide rates in each state and the District of Columbia found that as the gap between the rich and the poor rose, the rate of homicide rose along with it. Income inequality alone accounted for “74 percent of the variance in murder rates and half of the aggravated assaults,” the research concluded. A 2002 World Bank studyconfirmed these results, concluding that homicide and an unequal distribution of resources are inextricably tied throughout the world.…4. Income inequality makes America less democratic.
A large body of research suggests that high inequality leads to lower levels of representative democracy and a higher probability of revolution, as poorer citizens become convinced that the government is only serving and representing the interests of the rich. And today’s political candidates and parties are relying more on deep pocketed campaign donors than at any other time since the early 1970s, when Congress first enacted campaign finance laws.…5. Income inequality undermines the American dream.
New research finds that while economic mobility in the United States has stayed flat for two decades, the distance between the richest Americans and the poorest has grown dramatically. So if social mobility is a ladder, this means “the rungs of the ladder have grown further apart (inequality has increased), but children’s chances of climbing from lower to higher rungs have not changed,” the researchers note.…6. Income inequality is undermining long-term economic growth.
Societies with greater income inequality experience slower and less stable economic growth, a recent global comparison from the International Monetary Fund concluded, and see far shorter economic expansions.
An Example of a Trucker in 1975 and a Trucker in 2014
I remember growing up in the middle 1970's and two of my friends dads were truckers. Back then when you heard that someones dad was a trucker, you knew that they were making pretty good money, approximately 70,000-80,000 in todays money. I saw that they were living in nice big suburban homes, two cars in the driveway, kids in school, and a stay at home mom. Before Reagan came in and busted up the unions and deregulated trucking, salaries were high because there were only so many union trucking firms, as regulations dictated that they had to apply to the local government for the right of running authority in certain 'lanes'. For example, if a trucking firm wanted to run interstate between Michigan and Illinois, they had to get a permit to run that route and apply for that lane. There were only so many permits to be handed out and that protected trucking companies from other competitors and the federal government seemed satisfied that there weren't so many trucks on the road to enforce. Trucking was a good solid union high paying job with plenty of benefits, a fair work schedule, decent time off, and paid holidays. I worked a local paid by the hour trucking job and talked to one of the old timers working there who was about to retire. He told me that in the late 70's early 80's, his hourly salary was way higher, Sundays were paid time and a half, and holidays were triple time. After 8 hours work, they automatically got paid overtime (time and a half) for anything over 8 hours. To me in 2012, that sounded like he was telling me a story of elves and unicorns. All that was gone. No time and a half over 8 hours, just straight time. No extra pay on sunday or holidays. No more union. A lot of us got harassed by management at that hourly local driver job and we had no rights. We got demotions, passed over for promotions, crappy hours, bad shifts, followed by management out on the road. Made you really miss the 50s and 60s union jobs where the union would come in on your behalf and put a boot up the bosses ass.
The only people that weren't liking the union trucking firms in the 50's, 60's, and 70's was management. I knew a guy who trained me for the local job I worked a few years ago and he told me a story.
Trucking Union 1965
Back in 1965 the guy telling me the story was a 16 year old kid and he would go hang out by the truck docks by the train yards in Chicago where the union truckers for a certain company had a contract with Schwinn bicycles. The drivers would leave the union yard after an hour breakfast at a local diner next to the truck yard then head on over to the tracks to pick up the Schwinn bicycles coming off the box trains. According to Union rules, they weren't to touch the bicycles, instead there were unloaders/loaders that took care of that while the truckers stood there supervising having a smoke. By the time that was done it was 10:30 in the morning but due to the contract that their trucking firm signed with Schwinn (no doubt mediated by the truckers union) the bikes weren't due across town at the Schwinn warehouse until 12:45 pm. So the truckers would go back to the truck diner, park their trucks in the big lot, and have a long relaxing lunch for almost an hour and a half while still being paid hourly. According to union rules, management wasn't allowed to harass or say anything to them...they were on the clock, and that was that. Pass the ketchup. After lunch, they headed on over to the the Schwinn warehouse and once again weren't allowed to touch their load as workers on the dock unloaded their trucks while the truckers once again lit up a smoke. After they were done unloading, the union reps told the truckers they didn't want to see them come back to the truck yard until the end of the day, 4:00pm, so find something to do. So the truckers would head back on over to the diner for 2 hours in the late afternoon, getting paid as they had a sandwich or an early dinner. At 4pm, everyone jumped back in their trucks and headed back over to the yards.
When he was finished telling me this story I was looking at him like he was telling me of a world before the atomic wars and the robots took over. That's sure as hell not how things are now.
The Big Money boys and Trucking Deregulation in 1980
The big corporations and the people who owned them were not happy with the high transportation prices. As this cost was eating into their bottom line. So they backed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and once he became president he was working for the big money. In 1982 he deregulated the trucking industry. What this meant is that no longer would the few approved trucking companies have to apply for trucking lanes and be approved to run them. Now as long as your were licensed as interstate carrier with the approved trucking permits to the state and fed, anyone and thier brother could now throw their hat in the ring and start competing for companies trucking and shipping business.
And there were thousands and thousands of people that jumped in, bought a truck or two and started trucking. Now the interstates and highways are clogged full of semi trucks.
What this did was drive the price of frieght way down through the floor as the newly minted thousands and thousands of trucking companies all started undercutting each other with low prices in order to get business.
This caused the trucking industry to go into a tailspin as everybody was readjusting their pricing and trying to keep their previous accounts from being cannibalized from everyone else that was knocking at their door.
In the early to mid 80's the trucking unions started to collapse, as the new very low freight prices could no longer support them due to low workers salaries in compared to what they used to be the previous decade. Benefits began to be trimmed. Salaries cut. Overtime became a thing of the past. Now companies were looking at every minute spent by the driver and squeezing more and more of the day out of them as this now was a cutthroat business. For the first time since the 1950's, the pendulum began to swing back the other way. Now it was starting to look again like it did for workers in the 1870's and 1880's.
Schneider National Trucking
Chances are you've seen the big orange trucks on the highway and interstates. I worked for them for several years and the following is what happened to them before and after deregulation. SNI (Schneider) was started in 1938 by a good looking young dude by the name of Al Schneider. He bought a truck and started the company. In the 1970's it was a good company to drive for: The entire company was union, the drivers had great benefits and great pay and were able to provide for their families. After the 1980 deregulation and the subsequent drop in freight prices, Schneider was in trouble. The union was sucking them dry, they could no longer be able to afford the high salaries that the teamsters had in place for the drivers.
So in 1985 they consulted with their lawyers and figured out a go around to the problem. Schneider up to this point had been called 'Schneider Transport' and was union. So Schneider reorganized a second company that was union free and called it Schneider National, and had both companies operating inside the same company and truck yards. The Teamsters cried "Bullshit" and sued: you cant be running non union drivers right along side of us and give them the majority of the work because you get to pay them less! What eventually got worked out was that yes, both union and non union would work together in the same company. The union drivers would still work for Schnieder Transport and they could stay there until they retired. Schneider would let them drive and work for union pay until they retired and at the same time Schneider would no longer be hiring any new people to work at union Schneider Transport...knowing that through attrition (people retiring and eventually leaving for one reason or another) that Schneider Transport Union would cease to exist. In the meantime Schneider started hiring thousands and thousands of cheap non union drivers.
While at SNI, I would occasionally see some of the older union drivers. They could be ID'ed by a special emblem on the side of their cab, an 'S' that had an arrow on both ends. When I started there was a lot more of them. Management gave us an anti union talk during orientation. They had separate entrances to the break-rooms for the union drivers and non union drivers. They didn't want us talking to each other. I'm sure I wouldn't be too happy finding out that someone was making 3 times what I was making to do the same work. And getting great benefits, a fair working day and time off. I myself was getting burned out making a crap wage and all the while working for a total of 14-15 hours a day. Ain't that special? Now instead of having drivers stay at a great job for 30 years supporting their families Schnieder and other big non union carriers such as JB Hunt and Swift are operating driver employee mills, hiring thousands of people a year and having thousands a year quit because of the high stress, low pay, and 14-15 hour days. Its a turn and burn operation that makes the owners of Schnieder, JB Hunt and Swift rich. Like Walmart owners rich. Schneider National is a privately owned company who I believe just sold to a non schneider family owner. For 70+ years the schneider family owned by the company. I heard that Don Schneiders family had something crazy like 400 million dollars. I believe it....the company is nationwide and has been at it since the 1930's. All while the standard driver makes .36 cents per mile. After all the delays at whatever dock you are loading at (sometimes for hours) and the traffic jams on the interstates or the out of the way pickups in the middle of nowhere that comes out to about 10 dollars an hour for the drivers to work 14-15 hours a day. You might as well save yourself all the stress and 14 hour days living in a truck and just get a 10 dollar an hour job flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Yep, after trucking deregulation, all the money is now going into the owners pockets. Owners 1, Drivers 0.
America is Turning into a Third world Country
And the 20 dollars that's in your pocket shrinks magically a bit every day. That's right. America is printing off billions of dollars a month each month in order to stop the dollar from collapsing as the dollar is no longer tied to the value of gold, which is a constant. That 20 dollars in your pocket is paper that has value because our government SAYS it does. But in reality that 20 has less purchasing power than it did 5, 10 years ago. Remember 15 years ago a meal deal at McDonald's was $3.79? Now that same exact meal deal costs $7.85. The problem is that your salary hasn't climbed as quick to match that, so by treading water and staying constant, you are still slowly going broke. 12 to 15 dollars an hour each year that goes by is becoming less and less and is going to support you less and less. How did this come to be? Who is sucking the money out of America and turning it into Mexico? It turns out that a plan was hatched among the corporate elite and the wealthy families 100 years ago which in effect is slowly screwing us broke. Its all in the below 30 minutes video. You might want to settle in first, get a drink, maybe a snack. Because this is going to blow your mind.
The American Dream is emptying your pocket
And Now You Know What I know
You are no longer playing an even level game trying to earn a living. You are now living and playing in a rigged game, where the rich take all the breaks and the money based on your back breaking works all the while giving you less and less as they take more and more. This is pretty amazing. Can it last forever before there is a revolution? Who knows? Perhaps the beginning of it is already happening with the 99% protests in all the major cities this past year that you always saw on the news. The rich are definately getting richer and everyone else is treading water and getting poorer. And if they are just treading water that is the same as getting poorer as the money in your pocket is getting stolen from you and going into the bankers pockets. Without you even doing anything. So, you may ask. What does this have to do with me earning 12-15 dollars an hour?
I am demonstrating to you how that low salary is not going to cut it and why you have to make more without question. Absolutely without question. But how? Maybe you just work in a factory or a warehouse. Maybe you work on an assembly line, or you drive a truck. You are stuck, trying to get by supporting a family. You dont have the money to go back to school. What do you do?
The Big Secret
I want you to look at the below sentence:
"The reason income inequality has been increasing has been the rising income going to the top 1%. Most of that has come as capital gains and dividends."
That right there is the secret buried at the end of the sentence. "Most of that has come as capital gains and dividends." The rich become rich off the sweat and hard work of other people. They just sit back reading the paper in their leather chair having other people manage other people and squeeze them hard so that they produce and make money for everyone above them...including the rich who either own the companies outright or own thier stock. So that is the secret. You have to have the money to invest like the rich so your money can go off and work for you while you sit back. And this is where the majority of thier money and income comes from...owning stock and dividends of stock.Not only must you make a minumum of 25 dollars per hour you must save and invest like the rich
If you just work and spend each check as it comes in you are going to have nothing at the end of 30 yers. Even worse than that you will be stuck at an earning leverage of 1:1...one worker one output one paycheck. The wealthy become wealthy by changing that leverage to 1,000,000:1....they put up money and make money by that money leveraging millions of workers working in factories and producing output resulting in their investment climbing on the backs of multitudes of other workers. Once you have the money to invest and make more money that in turn creates a snowball rolling down hill effect.
Its kind of like a Ponzi scheme. The workers have to work for the money. The weatlthy know this so they make millions of times this output based on the workers sweat via investing in the companys stock. Then they keep the salaries down for the workers so they get all the money. Twisted, huh?
So back to it. What have we found?
One: The United States is no longer free unlimited oportunity for all...instead its like a rigged three card monty game rigged toward the operator...the wealthy
Now it takes a whole new set of rules to make it in this country. You can no longer just go down to AT&T after high school and work your way up to management. They now want college degrees. And not just from any school. The best schools. If you are an undereducated worker you will stay down. The money in your pocket will continue to devaluate as well as the small salary you are earning. What you are producing in the assembly line will no longer enable you to share the profits with your bosses. You no longer have the luxury of a union job, and it will be low paying with few benifits.
Two: It now takes 25 dollars an hour plus to achieve escape velocity
If you make any less and are living along without a partner you aren't going to make it. You aren't making enough money to survive unless you ride a bike and are renting a room somewhere by the week.
Three: There is no middle ground...either join the rich or you are gonna get stomped by the rich
If you don't do what I told you previously and start investing and having your money make money you are just going to fall by the wayside while you are trying to make your nut and get used by the rich making money for them.
Four: The Rich get Richer because the bigger money is, the faster it starts to roll drawing money to itself
Money attracts money. The more money you have the more opportunities you have that come your way. Looking to secure your business as a rich client, investment firms will give you top choice and top shelf investments earning yields that are not available to the standard investor, thus earning you more money. You will get preferential treatment via low interest rates, thus saving you more money freeing your money up for further investments. You will get easier lines of credit extended to you which you can utilize to make more money. For example if Donald Trump got himself in a business bind, banks knowing his name and credit and business acumen will extend him large lines of credit which he will use to put himself right back on top. Then there is Joe Schmoe who needs a loan to fix his car. If he is lucky to get credit at all, it will be at a higher percentage rate, thus hurting Joe Schmoe, who then needs to work twice as hard for the man to pay it off...the same man who is paying him not as much as he should so that the wealthy can profit.
The Answer to The Big Secret Or How To Join The Rich
So you have read this blog post and now you are saying to yourelf, "Ok. So I can't earn 12-15 dollars an hour. So now here I am in this factory/driving job/day care/grocery store/warehouse job. Now what do I do?
This is what to do
Think. What industry is intimately tied up with the rich and is something that they cannot live without because
none of their financial, inventory or infrastructure aspects in their companies can function on a level that is necessary to maintain order and profits? The answer is IT. Information Technology.You need IT guys because every cubicle has a computer in it. Every corporate office tower has cisco systems as well as Mircrosoft systems working in it. The phone system is hooked up into it. Communications between divisions and access to the World Wide Web. All information technology. Companies could not exist without it, even though 50 years ago it was minimal...a type writer and a telephone. Nowdays everything is stored digitally and work is done with computers. Computers that drive corporate workings and systems that make profits for the rich. So they are forced to pay high salaries to IT workers. Especially highly trained ones. The highly trained IT workers have the rich by the balls.
A quick story...I worked at Rand McNally in the mid 90's and they were developing CDROM travel programs and maps for the computer. They were using a new database system called Geocities and there was a lead programmer in charge of that who was making about 45 dollars an hour. He was the head of the programming division and knew all the ins and outs of the software program and its programming. The company was really banking on this new CDROM technology. One day he got up from his cubilcle and said "F THIS. I'm done." And with that, he quit his 90,000 dollar a year job and went home.
Well this didn't sit too well with the Rand McNally executives. The entire CDROM project and division rested on this guy. He invented the program. They called an emergency executive board meeting and decided that no matter what, they had to have this guy back. Seeing he wasn't answering his phone, they sent over someone to his house to ask the guy what it would take to get him back. "You couldn't afford it" said the programmer to the guy at the door. The guy at the door said "give me a number". The guy at the door went back to the executives and the following Monday the programmer was back at his desk making $400,000 thousand dollars a year. And the Tripmaker CDROM program shipped out and made Rand McNally a lot of money in the late 1990's.
In the late 90's and early 2000's there was a glut of IT workers working with no experience and no college degrees just having bought the training books from Barnes and Noble or Borders books, studying them, and passing the test and becoming certified in Microsoft or Cisco. They were bagging groceries and when they finally finished studying and taking the tests, companies were throwing 100,000 dollars a year at them to come and work for them as a certified Cisco technitian or a MCSE Microsoft Certified Tech. Then the stock market crashed in 2000 and again in 2008. Now companies want a 4 year degree in information technology as well as experience before they hire them. No more paper Cisco techs or MCSE techs. The bubble popped.
HOWEVER
This is how you get in the back door. Say you are making 12 bucks an hour at a grocery store. You would like to get into Cisco or Mircrosoft and be and IT Technician so you can start making some real money and have an actual upwardly mobile career. Go to Barnes and Noble and purchase out a Cisco Certification or Microsoft Certification book and maybe an accompaniing workbook with it.
Study it and take the test.
Now you are certified, meaning technically employable as an professionally certified user at that level for either Microsoft or Cisco.
The problem I covered in the above section however is that you have no college degree or experience. No company is going to hire you, right?
Temporary Staffing companies usually have an IT division, especially in bigger markets. They don't care if you have a 4 year degree, they just want to know if you have the certification so they can rent you out as a temporary workers to big corporations that need a temporary IT worker. The temporary staffing company will double check with Cisco or Mircrosoft to see if you are indeed certified at the level you claim, and the Temporary Staffing Company will also administer a proficiency test to make sure you are indeed up to par, which you should be if you were good enough to pass the official certification test for that level in Cisco or Mircrosoft.
So you will come into a company's IT department via a staffing agency. The company wont care you dont have a college degree because you are a tempoary worker and already have been vetted by both the temporary agency and either Microsoft or Cisco. Plus if you dont work out, there is no penatly and resources wasted for the compnay: they will simply ask the agency for another worker.
Now you do this for a few contracts, and viola: You now have actual work experience that you can put on your resume. At differnet companies. If you are a good worker you can also use some of the companies managers of the IT departments as references.
Now that you have done this for a year or two with several contracts and your resume now has a solid history your college degree will not be as important when being looked at by hiring managers in HR firms for companies. Obviously you now have experience and can work in the field. But some companies will also strictly maintain that they require a 4 year degree to work in their IT departments. So now this is what you do....you continue to work in IT and continue to get certified in higher and higher levels of either Cisco or Microsoft making you rarer and rarer as the air gets thinner and thinner up high in the certification levels until companies just HAVE to have you and will hire you anyway...at an extraordinary salary.
NOW you have money to do what you want. Money to invest, money to get lower intrest rates with, money to make more money with just like the rich.
Particulars: Stay away from Microsoft certifications. Cisco is where it is at. There are approx 4-5 different levels to Cisco, starting with Associate and working up to the equivalent of Master Technician. When you get the first Cisco book from the bookstore study it, get certified, and apply at a temporary agency that has an IT department. As you are working, you are always studying at night for the next level up. When you are done with that level, its up to the next. Salaries start at about 45,000 and then start rapidly jumping up. By the time you take the test for the Master Final level, you take that one at Cisco Headquarters.They want to test you themselves. I hear that one part of the test is that they put you in a room with parts and you have to assemble a router back together from pieces. When you are done with the test, you fly back home and if you passed it now you are ready to command a very big salary of anywhere up to a quarter of a million a year.
So thats that. Whew! What a post. Basics: Don't be poor, Don't be used by the rich, make more than 12-15 dollars and hour and the last part above is how you can make more by starting a real career making real money in the Information Technology (IT) field. Thanks for reading.
Mark
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