Quite an inspiring story. As the young now say the boomers had all the benefits. But that was before most of the federal outlays became transfer payments.
When I was 18 years old I had the best job of my life. I worked in a machine shop, and I literally jumped out of bed every day to get to work. Eventually my father convinced me to quit that job and go back to college; and though I quit college as well I ended up in high tech, traveled around the world, lived overseas for a few years, made a lot of money. All that was fun, but the machine shop was still the best job I ever had.
I remembered it when I decided to get out of high tech and start my own manufacturing business that I've been running now for almost 20 years. Nothing is more gratifying for me than designing and manufacturing things you can drop on your foot. None of the products I was peddling back in the '90s were in use by any of my customers five years after purchase. Many of the parts I make and sell today will still be providing value long after I am gone.
Sometimes when I talk about stuff like this to young people they look at me like I have a third eyeball.
True story: back in early 2020 when our betters were dividing the population into "necessary" and "unnecessary" for purposes of health policy, I received a flyer from the state of Nevada with two lists of businesses, those that were obliged to shut down and those that could stay open (https://nvhealthresponse.nv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3.20-Emergency-regulations.pdf).
If you read it you will notice "manufacturing" does not appear anywhere on either list. Apparently, as far as most government drones are concerned (and probably most people in the media as well), manufacturing is something that's done by the Chinese or people like that. The products they use every day aren't manufactured by anyone, they are delivered by Amazon.
After a panicked e-mail to the state labor commissioner, I was assured my business could stay open, but I will never forget that slip of the veil, that reveal of what the elites, and by extension the younger people who hang on their every pronouncement, really think about the business of making things.
BTW, I understand your point about college funding. Tuitions are unaffordable because of the liquidity in the market caused by student loans and other government programs. I've been saying this for years to anyone who would listen. Believe it or not the first commentator I ever saw who repeated this idea back to me was Camille Paglia, in an interview on Reason's YouTube channel.
Quite an inspiring story. As the young now say the boomers had all the benefits. But that was before most of the federal outlays became transfer payments.
When I was 18 years old I had the best job of my life. I worked in a machine shop, and I literally jumped out of bed every day to get to work. Eventually my father convinced me to quit that job and go back to college; and though I quit college as well I ended up in high tech, traveled around the world, lived overseas for a few years, made a lot of money. All that was fun, but the machine shop was still the best job I ever had.
I remembered it when I decided to get out of high tech and start my own manufacturing business that I've been running now for almost 20 years. Nothing is more gratifying for me than designing and manufacturing things you can drop on your foot. None of the products I was peddling back in the '90s were in use by any of my customers five years after purchase. Many of the parts I make and sell today will still be providing value long after I am gone.
Sometimes when I talk about stuff like this to young people they look at me like I have a third eyeball.
True story: back in early 2020 when our betters were dividing the population into "necessary" and "unnecessary" for purposes of health policy, I received a flyer from the state of Nevada with two lists of businesses, those that were obliged to shut down and those that could stay open (https://nvhealthresponse.nv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3.20-Emergency-regulations.pdf).
If you read it you will notice "manufacturing" does not appear anywhere on either list. Apparently, as far as most government drones are concerned (and probably most people in the media as well), manufacturing is something that's done by the Chinese or people like that. The products they use every day aren't manufactured by anyone, they are delivered by Amazon.
After a panicked e-mail to the state labor commissioner, I was assured my business could stay open, but I will never forget that slip of the veil, that reveal of what the elites, and by extension the younger people who hang on their every pronouncement, really think about the business of making things.
BTW, I understand your point about college funding. Tuitions are unaffordable because of the liquidity in the market caused by student loans and other government programs. I've been saying this for years to anyone who would listen. Believe it or not the first commentator I ever saw who repeated this idea back to me was Camille Paglia, in an interview on Reason's YouTube channel.