Authored by Rob May, originally posted at Medium.com,
I agree with Bernie Sanders. The economy is rigged. In fact, it’s what my father, who is very conservative, taught me about life. Some find it surprising because the general position of liberals seems to be that conservatives don’t realize, or won’t acknowledge, this rigged economy. But my Dad’s advice to me time and time again was that the world was rigged and the only way I could make it was to work harder than the people who were in charge of the rigging.
A few years ago I was walking through Harvard Square when a woman holding flyers for Elizabeth Warren stepped in front of me. She asked me if I thought the government should pay off student’s debts. I don’t think the government should, but, then again I never had student loans. No, it wasn’t because I was from a wealthy family. I never had student loans because I worked every semester I was in college, and during some summers, I worked two jobs. I did this because I thought the world was rigged against me.
I missed out on a lot, because I worked so much. I didn’t have the life like many of the college students I’ve hired in the last few years. They study what they love?—?philosophy, political science, art, regardless of whether or not they have good job prospects. They travel. Mostly they seem to go to Vietnam and Cambodia. They eat out a lot more than I did at their age. They know all the trendy restaurants and hot bars.
When I got out of college, I lived well below my means, saving $25,000 so I could start my first business. That business failed miserably. I ended up losing over $50,000 total. It took three years to pay off the credit card debt I wracked up.
Over the next decade, I started 3 more businesses. Two of which failed. For one of them, a video yellow pages product I built with a friend in 2007, I used to take my vacation days from my “real” job and go door to door, selling video listings to small businesses. I lost a lot of my own money, as my disposable income never went to travel or luxury goods of any kind. It went to business ideas.
I kept at it because I believe, much like Bernie, that the world was rigged against me. I spent every evening after my day job working on side projects, learning new skills, reading. I didn’t own a tv for a long time and, even to this day, I’ve never seen any of the classic shows people like to discuss: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game Of Thrones. I was working while they were on.
When I finally had a company that was successful, the experience of running it was more stressful than you could ever imagine. I had to deal with some really rough things. There was the time when, on the day we were supposed to close our Series C funding round, the lead investor called and said they weren’t going to wire the money. We had 6 weeks of cash left, and now I had to figure out what to do. There was the time when 2 of my executives quit within 10 days of each other, making my board and employees all wonder what was going on, and if there was something detrimental going on at the company that I wasn’t telling them.
There was a board meeting where, I took so many rapid fire shots from board members that one of my executives told me afterwards that he would never want to be a CEO and go through something like that. There were things that I can’t write about publicly, but that, if you have ever run a company, you know what I’m talking about. It really sucks to be in charge sometimes.
Despite the strain that entrepreneurship put on my finances, my health, and my personal relationships, I kept at it because I wanted to be successful. And eventually, yes, I became a millionaire. It only took 15 years.
Along the way, I learned a lot. I created over 100 jobs. And in the end I helped build something useful for thousands of companies around the world. But when I hear Bernie speak, I feel like I’m the problem with America. I’m one of those millionaires he mentions who should pay more taxes. I’m the bad guy. I’m the white male who is only successful because everything was handed to me. I don’t deserve the money I made. All the things I sacrificed don’t matter. The additional stress I was under doesn’t matter. The risks I took don’t matter.
According to Bernie, the world needs fewer people like me, and more people like the smart Yale student who majors in something useless, travels the world, and then graduates with $100,000 in debt that people like me should pay off via higher taxes.
Yes, the economy is rigged. Any economic structure will favor some at the expense of others. But the wonderful thing about America is that if you are willing to make the right sacrifices, you can achieve whatever you want. Unfortunately, we’ve come to believe that achievement should be easy. Changing that attitude is the first step towards making yourself more successful.
I know it’s worn a little thin, but it’s still fabric right ?
Bernie Sanders Verified account @SenSanders
Almost everything FDR proposed – Medicare, a minimum wage – was called socialist. Yet these programs have become the fabric of our nation.
“I missed out on a lot, because I worked so much.”
Yeah, see, no- no you didn’t. You gained a lot because work- not mindless slave wagery, but real labor for the sake of productivity as a human being is like eating well or exercise, the benefits are subtle and pay back over the course of a lifetime. What you think you’re missing when you work isn’t worth what you think.
And almost all of FDR’s solutions were supposed to benefit an extremely thin layer- the blind, orphans, elderly widows without family. Social Security was NEVER presented as a retirement plan for every last swinging dick. They were also supposed to be a stop gap measure during a very bad time, not something to be expanded in perpetuity until it was “a right”.
To understand history, you have to know history.
“Almost everything FDR proposed – Medicare, a minimum wage – was called socialist. Yet these programs have become the fabric of our nation.”
And the one causing the currently ongoing failure of it as well.
A lot of what Bernie says is correct. Unfortunately where he goes wrong, he goes completely off the rails.
He has so many flaws in his economic logic that it would take a 900 page book to cover them all.
And he’s promising so much free shit, to so many people. The man will absolutely get elected. Hillary Clinton has dead eyes, and Trump is not in it for the Presidency, he just likes attention.
Oh, and its not millionaires that he’s going after guys, its everyone that is productive.
His supporters claim that only the “rich” will get hit, and then cite 250k household income as the ones that need to start paying more.
Everyone I know making that kind of scratch either has advanced degrees/experience and decades worth of experience, or they have started their own business and work more hours than three normal people.
Of course, the cutoff isn’t 250k. Its more like 120k. Under his plan you gain a shit ton of “income” until 35k, then a bit until 50k or so, then break even until 120k, then you lose a few more percent each income bracket until 250k, when the hammer drops.
Who will start businesses? You are crushing the business owners.
Who will be hiring? Your want corporate taxes to sky-rocket, and also want to increase corporate liability until the point the individual has no more personal responsibility.
Who will pay for the free college? If you hammer “wall street” then they will move their money into safer, non-US locations.
How will you bring money in from overseas? You are increasing cost-of-production across the board, and throwing up ever more barriers to entry.
Where are the reductions in government spending? Our national budget is already 2/3 benefits for the people.
He thinks that because it works on the small scale for certain peoples it will work well on the national scale, and he’s so dead wrong that its terrifying. Its taken decades for these pyramid schemes to begin falling apart in Europe, it will take much less time in the US, with our gigantic borders and completely heterogenous culture.
Of course, when unemployment continues to get worse, and the number of job creators dries up it will be chalked up to corporate greed, because lord KNOWS people won’t admit responsibility for their own situation.
After that will come even greater numbers of government run “job creating” businesses, because clearly the people can’t support themselves.
American Civil War, 2086?
Owning a company can be hell.
I recall a week in 1993 when out of 7 days I got to spend 4 nights in a bed. Three nights were lost sleeping on aircraft. I left my home in Hong Kong on a Sunday morning for Singapore, then on to Frankfurt, New York, Florida, back to new York and Frankfurt and home to Hong Kong Sunday evening, ready to hit the office Monday morning.
When I got back to my apartment I was so knackered I walked into a glass balcony door in my rush to water plants neglected for a week.
To a liberal, all those companies, jobs, and products will start or create themselves regardless of how high taxes are or how hard they make it or even in the absence of any real savings in society. That explains all the fallacies and disasters that follow.
Spike Lee endorses Bernie Sanders, saying senator ‘will do the right thing’ as president
By Robert Schroeder
Published: Feb 23, 2016 10:53 a.m. ET
‘He is not on the take,’ director says about Sanders
’When Bernie gets in the White House, he will do the right thing,’ says director Spike Lee
Spike Lee thinks Bernie Sanders got game.
On Tuesday, the director endorsed the Democratic presidential hopeful, cutting a radio ad to air in South Carolina. Sanders, a Vermont senator, is facing Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s primary in the Palmetto State, and is trailing the former first lady by more than 20 points in recent polls.
“Bernie takes no money from corporations. Nada. Which means he is not on the take,” Lee says in the ad. “When Bernie gets in the White House, he will do the right thing,” says Lee, invoking his 1989 movie of that name. Lee also directed 1998’s “He Got Game” and last year’s “Chi-Raq.”
The ad could help Sanders in South Carolina, where African-American voters make up more than half of the turnout. Clinton leads 68% to 21% among black voters but her lead shrinks to 52% to 35% among black voters under 45, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Clinton, meanwhile, can tout the endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. The Democrat is the highest-ranking African American in Congress.
Lee endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008.
And at the start, SS wasn’t supposed to take $200,000 from a workers pocket over 40 years so that he had nothing left to save for his retirement. And thanks to government, there is less and less opportunity to start or keep a small business (government motto was get big or get out but became Minorities on the in, White Males on the out). There will be a dollar reset caused by all the fiat printing that will slam working Americans to their knees. Then TPTB are going to kill cash and force The Mark of the Beast and their e-money; that will slam the average American a lot more but by then the 99% will be slaves and hopeless. Get some farmland, get right with God, and pray Trump and others have a Come to God experience. AMEN.
Bernie….The later years
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I was in solo private practice for a while, which meant I was the owner of a company. I had eight employees and they all got paid before I took home a dime. I remember a month I which I worked my ass off, seeing up to 100 patients a week and doing surgical procedures, and my take home pay for that month after all expenses were paid (as a rich Doctor) was 236 bucks.
Margaret Thatcher was right.
Socialism isn’t an economic system, it is a political system that destroys economic systems.
rhs jr–FDR’s plan was how to raise money (taxes) in a depression for his second new deal? Why we will sell the American people the idea of an old age retirement plan. We will call it insurance. However, you pay into it, but can’t draw on it for 4 years. All the money that was collected over the years was spent by a spendthrift congress. There is no money there only worthless, non negotiable pieces of paper with gilt edges issued by the Treasury. What a scam. There will be means testing, higher taxes on your supposed benefits so you really get less, higher ages to collect and government IOUs that can be used against your taxes, but no cash, then it all goes Kaput. hahaha! What suckers! hahaha The government took more than they ever gave back.
rhs jr–How does Obama raise more money in a tight economy (actually a depression)? Why we will sell the American people on a healthcare plan, called Obama Care. hahaha On and on it goes.
rhs jr–God gave humans a vestige organ, at least vestige for most Americans, called a brain. Too bad most Americans don’t use it.
I is 04:45 here in Oz. I have been up awhile because I still own a business. Hope to resolve that little problem soon. But til then, I do what has to be done.
Fuck the Bernie Sanders of the world.
Rob May–Socialism is a political philosophy that makes everyone equal. A laudable idea? More like a Procrustean Bed. Ya! Equal in poverty and misery.
Socialism redistributes wealth. Who’s going to produce the things that you need if the producers have the gains of their hard work, innovative thinking, and time stolen from them. Just be a marginal producer, they will think, just enough for you and your family to survive.
I’ll tell you who will be the producers, it’s you, no more playing your guitar on the beach while living off others. NO, at the point of a gun you will be forced to work on collective farms and in collective factories. For the good of the Mother Land, of course. Your misery will be compounded. This is the history of Socialism. Is this going to be your history, America’s history?
Vote for Bernie or Hillary if you think that redistribution of wealth is a good idea. Ya! That’s Bernie, the benevolent Socialists.
Its like Margaret the “Iron Lady” said:
“Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money”.
homer drove the point home well. i was self employed for over 30 years, you live it and then take it to bed. vacation, no way because you never knew what may happen in your absence, plus with a farm more to be concerned about. i only barely made it yet the sense of freedom of choice made it impossible to work for others. the bullshit upfront costs finally wore me down, paying for phantom employees etc. some of the competition not even legal, the system is rigged.
Never owned a business but can empathize. Damn good article!
fear&loathing–We must as a nation get back to ‘Free Marketism’, where the production and sale of goods have the least government interference.
We must take back our money. Money use to belong to the people. The people controlled their money.
Today we don’t have any money. It was taken (stolen) from the people, and today we use ‘Chits’ issued by a central bank as money. This is the same as what the Company Store used to take advantage of their workers. Americans gave up their freedom when they allowed their money to be taken from them.
Real money that you own is freedom, Chits (Federal Reserve Notes) are slavery. Now, they want to take even the Chits away from you. America went from freedom, to slavery, and will go to total control if this ‘cashless’ system is put in place.
You had better start thinking about your future and your families future because it is looking more and more that you don’t have any.
I don’t think that’s what Bernie Sanders is saying at all, and I’ve founded, owned, (and currently own) several successful companies.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that corporate welfare is just fine & dandy, only it’s flowing to companies that don’t need it, like the major oil companies, instead of entrepreneurs who are the backbone of this country.. Meantime conservatives want to slit their own throats under the mantra of lower taxes, no benefits. That might work out fine if you’re a millionaire, but most of us aren’t millionaires.
Really! Ask yourself what benefits you derive from the taxes you’re paying. I got a clue for you, it ain’t much. And the GOPers would like to sell off and privatize roads, bridges, parking, prisons, etc. that you’ve already paid for with those taxes, only now, you’ll need to ante up each time you use them. Isn’t that a load of bullshit?
Don’t vote against your own best interests.
I haven’t posted in forever but I still read daily. Had a chunk of time this afternoon so here goes:
The inherent problem with socialism/collectivism,/communism, IMHO, is that real wealth cannot be redistributed. Real wealth consists of intelligence, ambition, family, ingenuity, etc. Those are the qualities that enable people who have been driven to their knees to still end up back on top. They end up as successful people because of who they are and how they behave: their financial success is just a byproduct, correlation and not causation.
This type of person is driven to work even when not working for monetary gain. This is why their homes are neat and clean and organized and their equipment is maintained (all of which adds to their success and adds value to their assets or saves them money because they aren’t replacing things needlessly due to neglect). It is why when “retired,” they spend massive amounts of time doing charitable works, pursuing hobbies, or educating themselves through books, travel, etc. Sitting still and vegetating is EXHAUSTING to this kind of person, the ultimate torture for them would be to put them in an empty room and force them to do nothing. These are the people who do not lay on the beach when traveling, but rather go hiking and explore the different terrain, try local food, learn a smattering of the language and visit museums and other sites to soak up as much as they can from the experience. Their brains simply do not have an OFF switch.
People like this are the border collies of the human world. They MUST behave this way. Try to thwart their efforts and you end up with a disaster on your hands. They may fold their tents, withdraw from a corrupt system and give the appearance of having surrendered, but even in doing so they do not give up their true nature. Thwarted in positive progress, they will turn their attentions to undermining and to toppling the system so that they can get back to being productive again. So long as this kind of person breathes, they will work at whatever task is at hand. It would kill them not to. Arbeit macht frei, indeed.
These qualities explain why European and Asian immigrants have hit these shores with nothing but the clothes on their backs and ended up being some of the most successful people in the history of the world. It is why my great-grandparents came here after the Potato Famine and within 1 generation had their kids in college. Curse them all you want but it is these qualities that take a group like the Jews from ghettos and puts them squarely on the top of the heap every damn time (intelligence+ambition+tribal behavior= success).
You cannot redistribute these qualities. You either have a tight family or you don’t, and no amount of societal coddling will replace the bond of blood and the concept of self sacrifice for the benefit of the tribe. I quit my STEM career to homeschool our daughter. A solid, no BS education is what is required for her to succeed, either in a career or as a well educated woman who can properly rear her own offspring (or possibly both). The success of my progeny is more important than more money in my coffers for cruises and bathroom remodels. You cannot buy behavior like this, it is motivated by gut animal instinct and by love, and there is no substitute for either.
You either have brains or you don’t. You either are hardworking, driven, and competitive or you aren’t. These qualities also often come from family, bred in by centuries of like breeding with like.
Being middle or upper class is NOT about the amount of money you have: equating class solely with financial status is foolish. Class is an attitude about life and labor and it is a level of intelligence. The Potato Famine, for example, reduced my Irish ancestors to poverty but it did NOT remove their intelligence or their philosophy about life. When they emigrated to America they hit the ground running, finally finding the fertile ground in which to sow the carefully preserved seeds of their nature. Finances wax and wane, character does not.
For a brief time post WWII, the paradigm shifted and manual labor working class was elevated to a higher status. That period is now ending because it simply isn’t feasible to spend $25 an hour plus lavish bennies to get somebody to put a screw in a piece of metal. As that world dies, those people will largely be reduced back to what they came from, which is the lower class. Water seeks its own level. Three generations of good jobs and comfy lifestyles have still not taught them what it takes to be a success. When the largesse of the successful is withdrawn from them, they will revert to what they have always been, damned by genes and upbringing to a life of chasing scraps. Same goes for the parasitic leeches in the public employ, producing nothing but red tape that hinders the truly successful. The middle class is the province of skilled tradesmen and entrepreneurs, not bolt bangers and low level paper pushing bureaucrats.
Becoming hugely wealthy (Bilderberger or Davos type status) is typically not realistic for middle class types either because doing so usually requires a lack of ethics and willingness to indulge in truly dirty deeds. A person can become a multimillionaire through hard work, sacrifice and ingenuity, but becoming a 1%-er takes more than that. The middle class entrepreneur is logic driven and might be willing to ruthlessly cut costs and wages to stay profitable, even to offshore their business, but I VERY highly doubt they’d be willing to drone the innocent or start a war to boost their stock options. Middle class types might be ambitious, but they are not Hillary or Soros and they never will be. The man with 10 million in the bank is VASTLY different from the man with a billion. Unfortunately, Bernie-ites lump them together and damn them as the same.
I think that this inescapable reality of human nature is the source for a great deal of the underlying rage out there propelling the Bernie-ites and Obamanites. Those who are not successful understand WHY, deep down. It galls them no end that the middle class is a club and they ain’t in it and they never will be. They simply do not have what it takes, and so they try to take it from us. When that fails, they try to exterminate us. See Mao for details.
The 1% ers are no different. It galls them no end that we dare call them out demanding honesty, integrity, decency, lawfulness and a sound monetary system based on value and not fraud, and that we are able to create wealth through talent and not corruption. Our collective conscience is their mortal enemy and they too seek to cripple us (vengeful IRS audits, anyone?), and, failing that, to exterminate us (see Alexander Hamilton and his financial and then physical war on the self determined mountaineers of PA in 1792 for a vivid example).
In the care of a conscientious, success-oriented person, manure turns into compost which then turns into luscious ripe fruit and nourishing veggies. It is a unique kind of alchemy that not all are capable of performing, requiring careful husbandry, intensive labor and forethought. That careful care will yield a bountiful estate that will provide employment and opportunity for an entire community.
Give the same manure to a Bernie-ite and it will remain as excrement, with no improvement, its potential benefits slowly leached away by the elements until nothing of use remains while they argue in a church basement about how to use it “fairly,” how it might impact the environment, global warming, race relations and the common cold, and take vitriolic stands about how using manure is unfair exploitation of animals.They’d imprison the farmer for ‘owning” the cow (clearly a case of the patriarchy oppressing females), the cow would die of starvation and they’d end up wondering why their dinner table was empty and the stores barren of provisions. They’d determine that their self made misery was all the entrepreneur farmer’s fault (driven by white privilege, patriarchy and racism, of course), they’d ban farming to fix the problem of no food, set up safe spaces to discuss the effect of no food on their gender identity and psyche, and hold a parade to celebrate their victory over oppression.
Give the manure to a 1%er and he will so twist and pervert it in exploitation of its resources that it will turn to poison that kills instead of nourishing. They’d price it as a commodity, hypothecate and rehypothecate it until they priced farmers out of farming, buy their farms for pennies on the dollar, replace the farmers with illegals, plant only one kind of seed (the source being owned by themselves, of course), and then wonder why unemployment is skyrocketing, why food prices are soaring and why the farmer is buying bullets and boiling rope. Their answer, of course, is to start a war so that the farmer’s sons will go off and die and stop being a problem, to import more illegals to buy what the farmers aren’t buying any more, and to pump billions of imaginary money into the market to juice the price of the produce that isn’t there. Ask Yellen and Bernanke how that works.
So it has been, so it will be: the middle stuck between the mob on the bottom and the monsters at the top.
“People like this are the border collies of the human world.”
I like that.
Great rant, Rose, you should comment more often.
Westcoaster, “Ask yourself what benefits you derive from the taxes you’re paying. I got a clue for you, it ain’t much.” That’s a truism. The people who pay taxes get less from government than they pay in. The people who don’t pay taxes get more from government than they pay in.
Bravo Rose–please post more often, or better yet, contribute the occasional article.
Rose says “Becoming hugely wealthy (Bilderberger or Davos type status) is typically not realistic for middle class types either because doing so usually requires a lack of ethics and willingness to indulge in truly dirty deeds.”
Rose – I do not know how many exceedingly rich folks you know, but I know a few.
And NOT ONE is lacking in ethics or willing to indulge in truly dirty deeds.
I appreciate the rant, but being a billionaire does not usually require the person to be as you describe , at least not in the West.
Well I guess the joke’s on Rob May. He did all that work and they’re just going to take it away from him. He might as well have been dating and watching ‘Game of Thrones.’
Let me add my plaudits to the others, Rose. What is so damned incredible is a common American like you is able to write at length, cogently and compellingly, in a way that most of us have NEVER heard our “representatives” speak in living memory…and mean it. You know the system is doomed when the man and woman in the street is able to so clearly see and articulate the problem…and our political system bligthly ignores it.
Burn it down. To the ground. Salt the earth. Start again.
Where else on the internet can one read powerful prose (from Rose) and a lover of the Jew Jokster (from Westcoaster) all in the same thread.
“Don’t vote against your own best interests.” —– Westcoaster
You’re annoying as fuck. As if only YOU and Bernie Buffoons vote in their “own best interests”.
Stuck – he is way more annoying than that. But I like the sentiment.
Rose–A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. Rose that was quite a comment, but I read it all the way thru and some of it twice. I’m thinking maybe you have too much time on your hands or maybe you’re getting caught up for all the comments you didn’t post.
OK, [Rose] let’s get one thing straight.–Tom Hanks in Castaway.
Wealth in an economic sense is not, I say NOT, “intelligence, ambition, family, ingenuity” and real wealth is REAL and can be redistributed, it’s tangible. ‘Intelligence, ambition, family, ingenuity”, may be attributes that may enable one to gain real wealth, but, again, they are not real wealth. Try and put intelligence over your head to keep out the rain or eat some ambition to stay your hunger. Good luck with that.
Rose, I have the same gripe with people saying that a person with a million dollars in the bank is wealthy. NOT SO, Grasshopper! I know that people are speaking idiomatically when they say that, but it confuses reality. A dollar isn’t wealth in it own right, but merely a coupon to trade for wealth. Wealth is REAL things. Your ever faithful government states that a Federal Reserve Note’s value is what another person will give you for it. NO more and NO less. Sorry, but definitions are important and how you use words are important.
The central bankers wants you to believe that FRNs are valuable and are wealth. They want you to hold them. They also say that they want you to spend them. That the problem with the economy is that people aren’t spending fast enough, they say, so that we have to have ‘Negative Interest Rates’ to encourage you to spend because if you don’t spend you are loosing money in the bank. But, if everyone spend their money, we would have hyperinflation, price controls, and Bail-ins. WHY…you ask? Because, Grasshopper, there isn’t enough goods [real wealth] to balance out all the coupon that the Federal Reserve has printed. Obama’s administration has added 8 trillion dollars of debt to the economy. Real and unfunded liabilities of the US is trillions and trillions and trillions. 230 trillion dollars! If that doesn’t get you to choke on your Foie Gras, I don’t know what will.
Look, the government and central bank aren’t schizophrenic, they say the things that they say to extract [steal] more coupons from you. The coupons and the goods must balance, just like a teeter totter must balance. There are three ways that the government can balance the coupons and goods, inflation and hyperinflation, deflation and devaluation, and pointing a gun at you and stealing it, bail-ins, reneging on the debt, taking your IRAs and pensions.
If nothing is done, it will mean rationing and price controls and that is what Socialism is all about, RATIONING. Of course there is the forth possibility, too horrible to contemplate, kill off all those old people demanding things. Maybe a good war.
” … we have to have ‘Negative Interest Rates’ to encourage you to spend.”
Low – let alone negative interest rates – have the opposite effect on me. They make it that much harder for me to live on my savings when I get too old to work, so I just spend less now.
Pirate Jo–Ya! But they are still eating you alive now thru inflation and confiscation [Negative Rates]. so when you get ready to retire it will all be gone. You are truly between a rock and a hard place.
PS maybe not all gone, but you can’t buy anything with it.
Rose, you are a gem. Excellent post at 4:08 pm. It really hit home with me, because I am also one in the “middle”.
The only thing I could take issue with is that I do sometimes prefer to lay on the beach when traveling, albeit, with an intellectually stimulating book and a margarita.
In any case, I am fanatic when it comes to doing the right things, at the right time and, in order. I also eschew intellectual and physical laziness because it feels like death to me. Striving for excellence is a never ending journey and there is an inherent gratification in doing things well and all within the construct of a moral worldview.
This is going to sound silly, but maybe consider it from an allegorical point of view. In our family, we always try to eat healthy, natural food. However, from time to time we do enjoy the occasional indulgences, like ice cream, donuts and macaroni and cheese. But not all together!
Through the years, and through trial and error, one learns the correct way to do things in order to achieve the best results.
Even when it comes to making macaroni and cheese.
First, you boil the noodles to the desired tenderness. Then you strain them, put in real butter (because I’m told margarine is one molecule away from plastic) and mix in the hot noodles until the butter is spread evenly. Then add the milk, stir that evenly, then add the cheese mix and stir until perfectly blended.
Any other way is inferior and I will debate the merits of this procedure until blue in the face with anyone who challenges it.
It’s been said that: “All excellence is equally achieved”.
I believe this applies to everything we do. Even in something as minor as making macaroni and cheese.
Through trial and error one must never give up on finding the best way(s) to get the job done.
Most 2nd or 3rd generation billionaires would not appreciate this because they either have personal chefs or can afford to eat at fancy restaurants three times a day.
And, many Bernie Sanders supporters would never understand this because they would rather use their government issued EBT cards to buy processed frozen macaroni and cheese (for three times the price) that they can microwave because it’s easier.
Just my two cents. 🙂
Unappreciated – your way is good if you are in a hurry.
However, the best way by far is to create a cheese sauce by heating the milk, mixing in the cheese until you get a sauce, then adding the butter until it melts into the sauce, then adding in the noodles. There is never any undissolved cheese mix then, and there is an even coating.
Same technique applies to making Nestle Quik – put the chocolate in the glass, then just a tiny bit of milk, mix into a sauce, then add the rest of the milk. Smooth with no lumps.
Plus you need to under cook the noodles to al dente at most, for the best sauce coverage.
Administrator says: Lee endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008.
Dat nigga also tweeted Zimmerman’s address, saying, feel free to reach out and touch him, Fucking asshole.
OK llpoh, since it’s you advising, I will try it. It’s how my mother in law also has advised me to make it. Sometimes, I get set in my ways but I’ll give it a try. When more than one person tells me the same thing, I always try to listen and keep an open mind.
BERNING FOR YOU!!!!!
Unappreciated- If you take my advice, it will be first time on TBP that that ever has happened.
My heart may not be able to stand the shock.
Mostly I use your way, as it is easier, and almost as good. Any other way is a distant 3rd place.
nothing wrong with the economy that a few crossbow bolts wont fix ))))
I am not advocating violence ,but um the walking dead just wont leave peeps alone lol!
If you been up since 4 this morning OZ time, you gotta’ be runnin’ on fumes, bro. You still kicked ass here today tho. I think you’re too modest. Your fan club is bigger here than you might think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipqqEFoJPL
Unappreciated – thank you.
And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.
That is my favorite poem. Here it is in its entirety:
By Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
One of my favorites too. I also enjoy Dylan Thomas and W.H. Auden.
Rock on…
Unappreciated: I totally dig what you are saying. In fact, I had homemade cheesecake for breakfast today, left over from a family celebration. Not my typical fare, but the occasional indulgence in that which is purely for pleasure is balm for the soul:)
Homer: Try and keep shelter over your head and food in your belly without intelligence and/or hard work. IMHO, the only real capital we have is ourselves. Our minds and our characters cannot be counterfeited, watered down, stolen, or destroyed as transitory physical possessions (or even worse, fiat currency) can. If you took every possession he has from Llpoh, he’d manage to regain it all by utilizing the capital of his own brain and work ethics.
This reality explains how billions have been stolen from taxpayers and given to ghettos like Detroit and Baltimore and yet they still are dead broke ghettos. Redistribute all the physical assets you want, it is impossible to make a silks purse out of a sows ear. They can ration all they please and they will still never make it all come out even.
Any attempt to make equal that which is not equal will end in failure. The only solution is to eliminate the superior, which is what Mao, Lenin and Stalin tried to do. It never works, because to do this, you jeopardize your entire society and end in collapse, having eaten your seed corn. Even China has realized this and it is why they are now, in many ways, more capitalistic today than we are in the USA. Apparently the Bernie-ites have not yet glommed this lesson and so if they gain the reins America is likely to experience its own Great Leap Forward (the forward, in this case, actually meaning backward a la Orwell’s war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength) before reality is allowed to reassert itself here.
Rose, great post! I welcomed you and encouraged you post more often many moons ago. I’m glad you’re back!
I guess I never thought of it in the terms expressed in your first post above. You pretty much describe me (and many others here) to a T minus the financial success part. I do alright financially and despite this economy continue to get ahead. Funny thing is that money or being rich is rarely on my mind when it comes to work. Don’t get me wrong, I have financial goals but I just sort of steer my ship in the direction I want it to go and things just sort of fall into place over time. My income last year was the highest it’s ever been in my life but the work itself is the fun and the reward. My friends and family think I’m nuts when I shun vacations in favor of working. Vacation just stresses me out.
My brain never shuts off……..running down half a dozen different ideas or projects all at once……..before taking them on mostly to see if I can do it or master some task just for my own enjoyment. I just wish I had realized the scale to which our various systems have been rigged earlier in life. I don’t dwell on it but I can’t help but think I’d have lived a much different life.
Anyway, thanks for the comment and do post more often. Our admin is a sharp fellow and I’ll bet he sees fit to post your comment here as a stand alone post like he does with HSF’s erudite missives. I hope so anyway. Cheers!
IS says his brain never shuts off. Why would it when it runs on 0.1 watts of power.