If All The Wealth In The U.S. Were Divided Up Equally ...

I'm pretty sure I paid ten years in dues (without regret) while others were receiving handouts at birth. Get your facts straight.

 

If you're suggesting I'm black, you'd be wrong

 

I realize that you paid your dues with 10 years in prison. I also realize that some kids are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. None of that changes the fact that In your case, greed was clearly the motivation. You lived in an affluent area while not being affluent. You wanted what everyone else had, but weren't willing to pay your dues in order to acquire the same things. You knew the risk, took the gamble, and lost. You started out with petty crime, and somehow got it into your head that what you earned committing crime, was your market worth in the legitimate world. To blame society because you cant earn in the legitimate world what you can earn committing crime, is a colossal cop out. Society wasn't your problem, YOU were.

I am not sure if by "without regret" if you mean committing the crimes or spending 10 years in prison. Whichever your meaning, that is a bizarre statement that shows you lack remorse for what you did to your victims, your life, and your family.

 

So what? Were you born with a tattoo saying "Life is Fair"?

 

How did you make that leap?

 

You're repeating the same statement without understanding why I have no regrets. That tells me two things; 1) you would have had to learn the hard way, and 2) you don't have the skills to teach someone else a smarter way. So basically you just took your own privileged income (which you admitted was gained against the system) and expect that your personal experience is an example that everyone else should recognize yet you fail to see that I did the exact same thing you did.

 

You just said that my experience was only true within the black community, yet I'm not black

 

I repeated myself because you were throwing out a strawman acting as if my statement was denying that you had spent 10 years in prison and that some kids are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Since I made no such denial, I reposted the same words to display that I had said nor implied any such thing.

A person that has no regrets for committing a crime out of greed and subsequently spending 10 years in prison clearly doesn't care about the crime they committed, or how their actions have hurt victims, themselves, or their own family. Its not so much that I don't understand somebody not having regrets, its more that I am not going to hold that person up as a paragon of virtue as you seem to be describing yourself when you talk about mentoring kids. Plenty of people have sociopathic tendencies where they lack a recognizable conscience, I get that. There is nothing mysterious about that mindset. I do find it interesting that you have no regrets about your prison time, but you certainly have done a fair share of whining about your lack of income opportunities after your incarceration. Many people would lay the finger of blame upon themselves for that state of affairs, but you instead are laying the blame on society. The problem for you in that situation is that YOU are the one losing out, NOT society. It doesn't matter how much lipstick you try to put on that pig, it is STILL a pig.

When did I "admit" that my "privileged income was gained against the system"? I haven't the faintest idea to what you are referring.

 

Well some of us do pay our dues, while others live by the law of affluenza. I hardly see the comparison. Success is measured by overcoming something. You never had to overcome anything. Instead you just kept asking people to make an exception for you because without that exception you might have had to endure the same thing as everyone else. I never asked for any exception or expected one. And I made the most out of my costs. Greed doesn't even enter the equation until you are seeking something beyond your minimal necessities. That's why Robin Hood was so popular. Please don't talk to me about victims when you are supporting exploitation that leave people destitute. The US currently houses 25% of the global prison population, are you proud of that? Because we house them at a cost that exceeds our inflated college tuition rates while we rank 27th in education (alongside third-world nations). One day you'll wake up and understand what's wrong with your thinking. My guess, is that'll be a day to late.

 

I kept asking someone to make an exception for me? Are you referring to me as a 16 yr old asking if they hire people under 18? That's not asking for an exception, it is asking if they hire people under 18. I think the term for that is COMMUNICATION. If you don't understand how to communicate, no wonder you had such difficulty finding good paying work.

I didn't have to overcome anything? Like you, I did not come from wealth. I had plenty of obstacles along the way. What I didn't have to overcome that you did was a 10 year prison stint. That's not my fault. It is yours. You had to overcome yourself and your bad decisions. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you, ESPECIALLY with your unrepentant attitude. To listen to your words, you seem to not recognize that you did ANYTHING wrong. Everything according to you is society's fault.

I support exploitation? Do you mean because I understand the principles of supply and demand? If you hadn't spent your 20s in the pen, perhaps you would have taken an economics class and this wouldn't be such a mystery to you.

 

I'm not at all concerned about my time spent in prison so I really don't understand why you're so hyper focused on it. Everything that I'm talking about was during my teenage years that occurred before ever going to prison. As far as prison goes, I'm glad I went. I don't blame you for it, I don't blame anyone for it. Yes I know "you" didn't have to overcome anything, because you asked for an exception and it was granted to you. The only difference between you and me is that I didn't bother asking. Everyday, people "don't ask". And "no" I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me (because I surely didn't and don't feel sorry for any body I took advantage of), you're correct (I have no remorse) and I told my probation officer that when they asked me. I never hurt nobody that didn't have their backside in the wind already. One day (apparently not today) you'll understand what I'm talking about. It really makes no difference to me how long it takes you to realize that. The facts are already in and they're undeniable.

 

-If you don't ask for a job, you certainly are not going to get that job. Asking a stranger if they hire people under 18 is NOT asking for an exception. According to you, the only difference between you and I is that I asked for a job and you did not, hence you ended up doing a 10 year prison stint. You aren't making any sense. I can assure you if I did not get that job selling shoes, I would have gotten another one. I most certainly wouldn't have turned to committing crimes that could get me 10 years in prison.

-You say that you are glad that you went to prison, but then you have spent almost this entire conversation whining that you could not find a good paying job and thus employers should be required to pay a living wage. You are displaying an obvious disconnect from reality.

- Its a cop out to explain away your lack of ability to justify your position by simply saying "one day you'll understand". I understand your position clearly. I simply find it revolting. That isn't going to change. I don't find the fact that you were in prison revolting, rather it is your lack of remorse that is disconcerting.

 

I'm not sure what you are referring to. I have held a legal job since I was 15 years old (on a work permit). I have never not been able to find employment. Aside of my criminal activity and my entrepreneurial endeavors, I have always been employed every time I wanted to be (with the only exception being the two months following 9/11). I always rose to the top of every industry I have been in (so, so much for lack of experience), but every employer exploits. I never whined about anything, in fact I'm only saying that nobody should be complaining (whining) about crime, when our society promotes it. I'm trying to stop these desperate youths, not because I feel sorry for you, but because I think that they deserve and can achieve better. But please don't come crying on my shoulder because some kid robbed you that you never offered an opportunity to. I have no sympathy for that.

 

Yes and those who were rich would make the 300k grow into wealth again and we would be back to where we started. Those who weren't rich nor poor would use the money to survive as long as possible. So what good would it do to redistribute it.

 

I said nothing of the sort.

 

I was referring to your following quotes....

"Then I got a work permit, tried the legal way for a change, working for somebody else as a dish washer at $3.75 an hour (plus tips if people felt like leaving one). That came out to about $35 a day, but I had to buy three company shirts (at $15 a pop), a few khaki pants (I don't even remember what that cost me), round-trip bus fare ($1 a day), and pay their full price for my lunch ($7.50 a day)."

" Now I wanted to do honest work, but their was little incentive to work for someone else."

"So I went back to work for someone else that was already established (this time at $5.50 an hour) with the same overhead as before. I was practically paying for the privilege of working despite ever job I worked at they considered me their most valuable employee"

"Other companies promoted me into management positions (on salary) where I ended up working longer hours with more responsibility and earned less per hour than minimum wage workers that were under me"

"I had to moon-light between 4 other companies to make ends meet"


.......feels like whining to me, especially when put into the context that you were arguing that without a minimum wage our society would devolve into mass chaos replete with a collapsing of our water supply.

I believe that you said you are approximately 40 yrs old. Since you got out of prison at age 28, that doesn't leave a whole lot of working years (from your above description, many of them were down years). I know that you feel like you are describing yourself as J Paul Getty, but I don't get that from your self described curriculum vitae. It sounds like a fine work history for someone that spent 10 years in prison and for that you should be commended, but lets not get carried away. Just because you say "I was more knowledgeable than every CEO I worked for", doesn't really mean a whole lot. Weren't you working in construction contracting? Lets not pretend like you were rubbing elbows with Fortune 500 CEO's. It doesn't take much to have the moniker of CEO in small start up construction companies. Taking you at your word, I'm sure that you did a fine job in whatever construction niche your employer served, but that doesn't make you Elon Musk.

 

Now who's getting carried away? I never claimed to be the next Albert Einstein, I wasn't exactly reinventing the wheel or anything, but I did have to customize the product to fix with the customers existing environment. I was not a simple sales clerk just pulling a product off the shelf and handing it to a customer. Believe it or not it does require a few brain cells to do what I was doing. If you think its all plug-and-play you'd be mistaken. Even sales designers with $quarter million in the pipeline every month asked me for my input on their designs. Many of our customers were in Fortune 500 industries, some were Senators, and Federal Judges, I worked with very wealthy people in homes averaging several million dollars. One guy that had worked for Freddie Mac (or Fannie Mae, cannot remember which) started his own company and hired me as his sole employee (because he didn't know what I did) so don't flatter yourself. Just because I don't sit in boardroom surrounded by lawyers or have dinner with the President does not mean just any old Joe off the street could do what I did. If you think you could do it then you should try in because it is a very profitable industry (if you know what you're doing). Most of these start-ups begin in the owner's personal home garage, with a pick-up and a trailer. Then they expand into commercial warehouses (between 500 to 1000 sq feet), with a sales office and a shop. Even a small company has at least three or four trucks or vans, half dozen installers, half dozen shop workers, half dozen sales people, at least 8 industrial saws, and edger, a boring machine, a staining booth, a laminate table, a cabinet station (and that's just in the shop) each of which are operated by specialists. Just because someone can read a tape measure doesn't mean they won't cut their thumb off (I've seen it happen several times). Even sales & design requires a skilled talent in this industry because their pay is purely commission based and every customer wants the buddy-price. Our customers were not required to tip, but they often did (a couple hundred dollars to each installer), which worked out great because installers were responsible for buying their own tools and our product was and is life-time warrantied. Chuck Brown just gave me an autographed CD, but the owner of the Nina's Dandy tipped me with two tickets on her dinner boat for my wife I to use on our anniversary, and one kinda expensive criminal lawyer waived his ($20,000 retainer fee) to represent me just for doing one reach-in closet in his home. Gravier Densa invited my daughter over to ride her horse as a simple thank you. Don't underestimate the people I've rubbed shoulders with just because you think CEOs of Fortune 500s are the only thing impressive. When I worked out in Colorado my company was leading in a $2 billion dollar industry, we set their industry standards and we started the industry in Colorado, with roots from California, to Canada, to Texas, to Washington DC. I have partied with Hollywood celebrities and shared Thanksgiving dinners with politicians. I have dated daughters of foreign diplomats. I don't get stopped by club bouncers at the door. I'm not saying any of this to brag, but you brought it up via your own misconception. Nor did I ever suggest that I'm the smartest know-it-all in a room, but I have always been good at whatever I do and I do get along with people that have drastically different backgrounds and lifestyles.

 

I thought that I was pretty clear that I am not trying to denigrate your work experience. I have no reason to do so. I have taken your word on every claim that you have made, even though some of it does seem a little dubious. Not the least of which being the timetable involved considering that you have referred to at least 8 different jobs, working 4 at one time in order to make ends meet, multiple situations where you were working for minimum wage or below, in addition to retirement an unspecified number of years ago... all in an approximately 12 year time period. But I digress.

Now you mention that a criminal lawyer waived his retainer. Why did you need to retain a criminal lawyer?

Even with an unspoken skepticism of your stated timetable, I do fully believe that you were very successful in whatever construction niche that your employer served. I am not saying that "any old Joe" could do what you did, and I have made no such implication. Nor did I say that "CEO's of Fortune 500" are the "only thing impressive". I was referring to your statement that you were " more successful than know it all CEOs with those degrees" and how you were "more knowledgeable than every CEO I worked for". With those statements as a backdrop, it is important to differentiate between a Fortune 500 CEO versus some guy who started his company in his garage, incorporated, and thus puts "CEO" on their business card; and then in your words went back to "working seven days a week for someone else at minimum pay" after his company failed. If this guy is such an impressive CEO, why is he having to work 7 days per week at minimum pay? My point was that working with "that" type of CEO is FAR different than working with the CEO of General Motors. This is an apples to oranges comparison if ever there was one.

Its great that you worked with wealthy clients and got some perks from doing so, but don't confuse that with being a titan of business. Your implication has been that an education isn't important in business, and on the level of business that you dealt with, that statement is possibly true. On the highest levels of business with large publically traded companies, an education is absolutely imperative to be a successful CEO.

 

Maybe my confusion regarding what you are suggesting stems from you repeated claim that you're taking me at my word while simultaneously questioning the validity of my word. If you currently think I've already made an excessive amount of claims (over such a short time period [over 30 years]) then it might blow your mind if I actually listed everything. I'm not even sure if I could write a full resume of my entire work history without missing something. But I will say that I didn't stop doing legal work when I was also doing criminal work, and it really wouldn't make much sense to fabricate things that are negative reflections about myself. A liar always presents themselves in the best light, honest people tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. But this topic really isn't about a d-measuring contest between me or you. This conversation is about radical capitalism verses socialism. Just because I draw from a few personal experiences to explain my view point does not mean that either of us are right or wrong, it only explains why I think about this the way I do. I have had many different experiences in my life that have given me certain opinions on a variety of subjects, but I have not experienced everything. The difference is that I do not try to have conversations about subjects I am not personally familiar with. So conversations that I do have, I generally highlight my personal knowledge of the subject.

But you did stress that I was no Elon Musk, and you're right because I was never the privileged white business guy born and raised the the apartheid State of South Africa. And you did also belittle my experience with criticism that I was not rubbing elbows with Fortune 500 CEOs, as if I'd ever be that Fascist. I simply said I was more industry-knowledgeable of the CEOs that I worked for regarding the industries that I was working in. I did not work for every CEO that operated in a particular industry, I only worked for the CEOs that I worked for. Nor did every job I worked only pay minimum-wage, just because I happened to comment on the relevant examples that did. Nor did I ever suggest that my experiences were the same experiences as everyone else. Fortune 500 companies do employ quite a few people, but they don't employ the majority of the working class. My point is that it is not required to be a titan in business to be successful attaining a living wage. It's those "titans" that you are so proud about that are either importing cheap foreign labor or shipping jobs overseas to operate with cheap foreign labor. This is how they achieved their success but doing so is starving our economy. It's the "good for them, too bad for everyone else" scenario. But Socialists consider the entirety of a society, not just the interests of a small few. Fascism needs to be put on a diet, but my prediction is that the bubble will burst long before the greedy submit to fixing the problem.

 

There's a reason that 70% of lottery winners are bankrupt within 5 years.

 

You made reference that you are somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years old. You also were in prison from age 18 to 28. How does that add up to a 30 year career ? I couldn't care less about your minimum wage dishwashing job before you were 18, and so that means for all intents and purposes you have had approximately 12 years for this career, minus however long ago that you "retired".. You referenced at least 8 different jobs since prison, with you having to work 4 jobs to make ends meet, and several positions where you were making minimum wage and at least one where you made less than minimum wage. What am I missing ? Having that many jobs in that short time period and having that many of them paying you minimum wage isn't exactly a sign of career stability and success. Something in that description strikes me as amiss. I am not doubting that you had that many jobs, I am doubting the characterization that this represents a stellar career. I doubt that this is a work history that enables someone in their 30s to "retire". There must be an external source of income. If you had owned the business, I could believe if you had sold that business and made enough to retire, but you were an employee. Since you had so many jobs in that approx. 12 year period that were minimum wage and even had to work 4 jobs to make ends meet, exactly how long could you have possibly been doing well? 5 years maybe? Lets say you were making $750k for those 5 years which is probably on the high side, especially considering that you willingly quit this job and it would be colossally stupid for an ex con without a college degree to quit a job making $750k. That's not NEARLY enough for a 30 something to retire, especially considering that surely you would have spent some of your newfound dough after struggling to survive for so long and didn't save every penny. In fairness, you have not claimed to be wealthy, but you have implied as much by referring to your retirement at such a young age. The way I see it, if you are legitimately retired, you would probably either have to have inherited money from your grandfathers business, or you are collecting disability or something of that nature. 5 years of success as an employee is not enough for a 30 something to live on for the rest of their life.

FWIW....My last post was the first time that I made any mention of questioning the validity of your word. While it is true that your timeline has given me pause this entire conversation, I have proceeded in that conversation as if everything you have said is 100% correct, which is why I have said repeatedly that I am taking you at your word. I do believe the gist of what you have said regarding you having success in some type of construction contracting, but the timeline to me has never added up. SOMETHING in your description is amiss. Are you 40 years old? 40-28= 12. How long ago did you "retire"? you need to subtract that number from 12 in order to arrive at the length of your career as explained by you in this thread.

You also never answered my question.... Why did you have to secure a criminal lawyer?

 

Because my work history started when I was about twelve years old, and even though I currently consider myself retired today that doesn't mean that I don't still do jobs. It only means that I'm not employed by a company. And I don't know why you assume that my ten years in prison was a subtraction from my work history. I only had two jobs after prison that even fall into the same category of minimum wage earning (the rest were all before prison); the first was that theater projectionist (@ $8/hr) because I was only working 25 hour weeks, and the second was as a shop foreman (where I was making $40,000 a year) because I was on salary working 100 hour weeks (which is like not getting paid for 12 weeks [3 months] out of the year). If you worked 52 weeks (totaling 5,200 hours) and were only receiving $40,000 a year with nothing to show for it but a home you only got to see when you were crawling into bed, you'd consider that minimum wage also. Particularly if the guys under you were working half the hours and earning double the pay. Because where I live the living wage is $60,000 a year. The teen years that you think "doesn't matter" is the only part that does matter, because when I was encouraged to resort to crime to supplement the minimal legal earnings (to pay for college) that's the part of the system that promotes crime, cost taxpayers more to house me (instead of me being able to house myself, pay for my own healthcare, contribute to society in a positive manner). Teenagers that have opportunities in their community don't typically resort to delinquency. And students that can afford to go to college without graduating with 20 years of debt are more likely to go to college. And people that graduate college are more likely not to commit crimes and more likely to vote and pay taxes, instead of receiving welfare. You see when you experience the worst you understand what's better, but when you never experience struggle you don't understand why people are struggling or how that harms society if someone is struggling, because you're living in a bobble. When Ben Carson tried to use your argument claiming to have grown up with my history, he lost the vote of anyone making less than 6 figures a year.

The sad reality is that there was once a time in the US that a family of four could survive on a single income that required no college education and we were putting people on the moon. But now that our nation is so much wealthier we're expected to work from the cradle to the grave and most of our children are just going to be inheriting their parents debts. Forget affordable college, affordable healthcare, affordable housing, clean water, affordable living. That's suddenly unimaginable. But if you're not receiving a handout please feel free to join the military and run off to fight for people that took you American dream and sold it to win elections.

 

To me, the term retired means that you have stopped working for good. I don't consider a private contractor to be retired, simply because they aren't working for a particular company. Nor do I consider someone in between jobs to be retired. At any rate, this explains a lot of the confusion. What you described didn't add up in my mind to a career that made you independently wealthy, which is what would be required to legitimately "retire" in your 30s. I sort of suspect that you were trying to give that impression, especially given the context of when it was said, but whether it was intentional or not is irrelevant.

If you want to count your work history back to when you were 12 years of age, I suppose you can do so. I was talking about a career that at the time I thought you were claiming to have made you independently wealthy, and you are talking about work history. Those are two different things. As a professional, one only counts their years since college working in a professional job towards their career experience. I don't consider any job that I worked prior to graduating college as part of my career. I think we simply have a semantical misunderstanding.

Again, if you simply are talking work experience, sure, you can count working in the prison commissary as work experience. As experience in a career?...not so much.

Again, the teen years don't matter in regards to career experience. If you want to talk about those years as to what led you down the path of crime, OF COURSE it matters. Context is everything. So you are honestly trying to tell me that you were stealing newspapers when you were 12 in order to pay for college?.....cmon.

Of course more affluent teenagers are less likely to turn to crime. There isn't a grand revelation in that concept. Didn't you say that you grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood? While I am sure you had some struggles, lets not pretend like you grew up in Compton. The fact of the matter is that all any of us can do is play the hand that we are dealt to the best of our ability. Life isn't fair. The sooner you come to that realization, the better off you will be. Some people are born with movie star good looks, while others are butt ugly and couldn't get a date to save their life. At least with income, the individual has a chance to turn that around. With looks?....ugly is for life. The better looking person has a far easier time getting good paying jobs. Life is inherently unfair. If we were to make minimum wage $100 per hour, you would accomplish absolutely nothing in regards to lifting people out of poverty. All you would do is create runaway inflation, and the people in the ghetto would still be in the ghetto. They'd have a lot more money, but it would probably cost $50 for a Big Mac so it would be the same.

The loss of our manufacturing base is what has caused so much problem for the middle class as a whole. After WW2, the industrial revolution was in full swing, and with war torn Europe's manufacturing base laying in ruins, we were the ONLY game in town and we had huge quality advantages over what other manufacturing capability did exist.. We could charge what we wanted, and the rest of the world would pay. We paid extremely high union wages and we could simply factor that into our prices and the good times truly were rolling. Eventually, the rest of the world slowly began getting back their manufacturing capability, and while it was very low quality, that quality eventually caught up. Today, we are on an even playing field with the rest of the world and we cannot afford to be paying bloated American manufacturing wages and still compete. The days of paying high wages for low skilled labor are gone. They are not coming back. Just because you harken to a bygone era doesn't mean there is anything you can do to make that return. Youd have just as much success arguing that we need to bring back the Buggy Whip industry. If one wants to live an upper middle class life going forward, they would be well advised to get an education. There are obviously exceptions, but those exceptions are few and far between. A big government program is not going to change this state of affairs.

 

I have lived in Compton before, but I grew up in Fairfax Virginia, and if you're only talking about career work then I've never worked a day in my life. I certainly don't consider putting on a suit and sitting in an air-conditioned office, work. Btw the Big Mac is not priced according to minimum wage rates but if the minimum wage was $100 an hour then a $50 Big Mac would be a steal. We are just as capable of bringing back our manufacturing today as we were in the 1950s. No one "caught up" with us, we just sold out. Don't you remember the Baby-boomer generation? You should because you are one. The Civil Rights movement flooded the job industry at the same time feminist started hating men and wanted to be independent, suddenly the next generation (my generation) was left to fend for itself. Woodstock got all those tree-huggers denying responsibility. Vet of Vietnam were returning to get spit on by flag burners, all messed up in the head, hooked on morphine. Grandparents were forgotten in retirement homes, and Rick Ross was being assisted by the CIA to import cocaine to flip into Crack, while Oliver North was working the Contras. Oh the Glory days of the New Free Market. Bill Clinton just wanted to lock everyone up and prisons were popping up left and right. At least the music was still good back then. We were an ADD nation in denial that everything could come crashing down, until it did (in 200 and life saving got lost over night. Don't fool yourself into believing that just because your kids are in college that your generation has left them with a bleak future because when they come out with 20 years of debt to start a family and buy a home they'll be wondering where they can find a descent school district to send their kids that still has safe drinking and bathing water.

 

- Considering that minimum wage is around $9 and a Big Mac is maybe $3....I am not so sure why you think a $50 Big Mac is a steal when minimum wage is $100. Do the math.

- I think it is safe to say that your work in contracting can be construed as a career seeing that the definition for career is "an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress."

-If you don't realize that international manufacturing has caught up to our capability both in quantity and quality, I am not sure what to say because that is an unassailable fact. We now have to compete, and with the low wages being paid in emerging markets like China and India, there literally is not a legitimate means of being competitive with products manufactured here in the overwhelming majority of industries. If you don't understand this dynamic, it is nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion with you on this subject. It would be like trying to have an intelligent discussion about the moon with someone that insists that it is made of cheese. The factors that you mentioned have NOTHING to do with the situation, but it does help to explain your confusion and subsequent policy position.

- I am NOT a Baby Boomer. I am solidly in the category of Gen X, just like you.

-My kids will be leaving college with Zero debt, because we diligently saved, and my daughter is a Resident Assistant whom is reimbursed with free room and board. For kids that do have to take out loans, I just heard that the average student loan debt is $48k. That is about the price of a moderately nice new automobile. Paying off the price of a nice new car in exchange for the lifetime income opportunities and life enrichment that comes from going to college is a SMALL price to pay. As the old saying goes "it takes money to make money". EVERYONE is capable of getting student loans, so this opportunity excludes NO ONE. With all that being said, a child would be well advised to take a practical major that has direct application in the real world, as opposed to taking something useless like women's studies or art therapy.