Coping: With the Ugliest Word in Finance

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I’ll tell you what it is,  in a single word, too:

Depreciation.

It’s a complicated matter, but the bottom line is that in order to save the economic system we purport to love, it’s time for a serious rethink of what’s a business expense and what’s not.

(continues)

We start with a short discussion of what Depreciation is all about:  A Wikipedia snip is useful here:

“Depreciation is a method of reallocating the cost of a tangible asset over its useful life span of it being in motion. Businesses depreciate long-term assets for both tax and accounting purposes. The former affects the balance sheet of a business or entity, and the latter affects the net income that they report. Generally the cost is allocated, as depreciation expense, among the periods in which the asset is expected to be used. This expense is recognized by businesses for financial reporting and tax purposes. Methods of computing depreciation, and the periods over which assets are depreciated, may vary between asset types within the same business and may vary for tax purposes. These may be specified by law or accounting standards, which may vary by country. There are several standard methods of computing depreciation expense, including fixed percentage, straight line, and declining balance methods. Depreciation expense generally begins when the asset is placed in service. For example, a depreciation expense of 100 per year for five years may be recognized for an asset costing 500.”

The Positive Aspects of Depreciation

To be sure, business accounting is sometimes a bit obscure, so with the MBA hat on, let me run you through the basic idea:

I always like economic discussions (at least at this time of day) that involve a latte stand.  So let’s pretend we’re all baristas who have saved up the tips for the past 30-years and we can finally get our own coffee machine.

In conventional economics, you will be able to depreciation  (write off) the cost of not only the cart, the supplies, but also the coffee machine, the beans, the water, and all the legit expenses that go into the cart.

When you sell a cup of coffee to a fellow reader here, you base the cost of the cup on all these things:  Hot water, beans, cups, napkin, shake of chocolate, spritz of nutmeg, or whatever.  Then you back out some salary and something in the kitty as “retained earnings” for the owner.

And thanks to the magic of accounting, you get to write off some portion of the cost of the machine over some period of time.

There are some kinds of equipment (computers, software, and such) that might qualify for a 100% write off in the year you bought the equipment.  That is, if it qualifies under IRS Section 179.

To stay current, I’d refer you to two places:  IRS Publication 946 over here.  And there’s a marvelous website run by www.section179.org where you can find all kinds of business applications for the IRS rules.

Here’s where things can become complicated:  If you want to use 179 rules, it’s generally for the purchase of a quickly-depreciating asset.  Here, for example, I will update computers once every three to five years.  Same thing with printers, scanners, and software.  It’s done because these things a) wear out very quickly (or become obsolete) AND because they are a legit part of doing business.

Now your Latte Machine?  It may be – and you’ll be guided by a real CPA come tax time on this – that your machine may be acceptable for a 179 write-off, OR because it is one of those fancy high-end production machines, it may be a 5-year write-off.

Again, this is between you, your Accountant, God, and IRS, although there’s some confusion at times between ’em over who plays what role…

The good news is that in today’s fast-moving economy, you MAY be able to quickly write off some of your expenses and that should make achieving profitability quicker and hence you would (hopefully, from the government’s view) end up paying regular income tax on the payments you make to yourself.

Even if you don’t make a lot of money, the government will take its pound of flesh in the Self Employment Tax, and if you find a place where you can peddle a boatload of latte’s without a county health department, inspections, licenses, training, manuals, state sales taxes, and….well, you get the picture…Depreciation has its place, especially in the world of start-ups IF YOU KNOW SEC. 179.

Depreciation and Spendy Stuff

There are many areas where things like real estate depreciation, can be a very slow, long-term benefit.  Certain buildings and structures might be 20-years, or even 40-years before becoming fully depreciated.

And even  then, if you have written off a building to zero value, then turn around and sell it, you have to “recapture” (read: pay back) excess depreciation claimed.  Oh, shucks.

But there are many ways to “skin this cat.”

One of the cutest (from a business model standpoint) that I ever saw was a private vocational school outfit.

They loaded up their expenses with lots of real estate leasing expenses and (as an idiot) I called out this little detail to the people I was consulting for.

I won’t go into names and such, but the owners of the school had a separate LLc which was not part of the school, that was accruing ownership of the property.

And so, it turned out, the owners were not particularly interested in maximizing cash flow on  the school side of the operation, because they were making a fat slice on the real estate leases for the school and that (turned out) was where the real money way.

Now Let’s Talk Machinery

The same kind of thing can happen in just about any high-dollar, low depreciation rate, item you can think of.  I’ve got personal experience with jet airlines, as an example.

Again, just like with the school’s, you can have a case where an airline may seem to be doing no better than breaking even, but when you drill down you might find, oh, and offshore tax-advantaged lease, for example.

This is why whenever you’re in management of a business, it’s important to be clear on how much money you want to “take out” and how you want to take the payout in order to maximize personal income (we do love our long-term capital gains rates, right?) versus those terrible short-term gains.

Same thing works on Wall St.   A high end hotshot may get a one-year taxable income of $600,000, but the off shore options, worth perhaps $10-million held for more than a year, come home over the next several years at the artificially low long-term gains rate.

So yeah, this is how the one percent may appear to be in a higher tax bracket (on this year’s income) but when you zoom out, you see how they “crook the game” at the expensive of the rest of us.

The Dark Side of Depreciation and Long-Term Gains

The dark side is simple for long-term gains.  Originally, these were enacted to give a tax advantage to those people who were willing to put up risk capital for new productive industry.

Say you wanted to drill an oil well.  And say it took you more than the 120-days the physical drilling usually takes… Say you run it out 1.5 years.  Organizing the geology, leasing the rights, finding a rigs, putting together the money, drilling, getting the rig into production… Sure, I could make it longer than a year.  Maybe a second well as part of the deal to be safe.

Here’s where long-term gains are good:  People who might not otherwise take a risk, MIGHT do so under these conditions because there is a significant chance of losing theirs whole investment, so why not get something for the risk on the back side.

All fine, holy stuff.

But now let’s suppose you are a 28-year old quant and you’ve been gifted $6,000,000  of (can’t lose)stock options offshore.  Should that really come back to the n umbers twerp at the long term rate when the odds of him losing all his dough was approximately zero?

So that’s one reason the Swamp still works.  People who live in places like Greenwich, CT get money like this from offshore all the time in some social strata.  And they’ll tell you how taxes are too damn high in America.

Easy to do when you’re stuffing the sausage into the consumers for things like the roads your limo drives on.

And About Depreciation

We are quickly approaching a similar situation to where depreciation will be turned on We the Peeps like a new kind of WMD.

Only the way it will work this time?

New driverless trucks will be along.  And since they will be high dollars and lots of software, they willk be adjudged to be fast write-off units.

So fast, in fact, that they will likely have a significant price advantage over humans.

When this occurs, it will be – in effect – turning another Tax Gun on the working class.

My  late, late, late, grandfather Andrew N. Ure, was one of the key apologists for the British Factory Owner class – and he gained the wrath of one Karl Marx who never did a lick of real work in his life, sitting around Chicago street-organizer-like whining in Paris about the poor bourgeois.   All he missed was the slick jingoism like “Change!” but he got his revolution eventually.

As the great wheel of history turns, I am not going to defend sweetheart deals on depreciation for a reason.

Depreciation as presently embodied is a negotiated payoff to the ownership class.  Congress gets their speaking fees, campaign contributions, and the networks get slack for their Trump bashing and going along with the corporate agenda.

From the outset, Depreciation has been claimed because as the ownership class points out, machines do wear out.

But the larger reality (and where the social equation hasn’t been added due to payoffs at the top) is that the displaced workers – jobless because of machines – do not get paid for their displacement into the future.

My grandfather, more recently, was a lineman for Puget Sound Power during the Great Depression.  hard work driving a Dodge PowerWagon all over hell and yonder in the Washington Cascades and such.  But back then, the Teamsters were a strong union, so they set up a retirement system that did the family a solid.

In a sense, what the unions of the last Depression did was ensure that those who did the work not only got some now (present day) but they got a tiny (and boy it was tiny) slice going into the future.

That’s why the Second Depression will be such a bitch.

Not just because a bunch of grays like Elaine and me will croak (all around the same time with a properly timed flu outbreak), but we will have robots replacing the baristas, and the clown posse known as the Fools on the Hill (who are so tango -uniformed they don’t even know which party they really are acting like) will be unable to do anything other than be the jumping lapdogs of the rich.

And they are getting the Big Fix ready.  Censorship of social media, global tax scams behind questionable science of “climate change”  it’s all part of the social controls that will eventually lead to the Great Hunger of the 2020’s.

Could we fix it?

Oh, sure.  Easy:  make allowable depreciation operate like a T-Account.  The net of the benefits of the machine versus the potential income taxes which would be paid by the worker(s) it displaces.

This, my friend, is the most terrifying thing you can imagine for the One Percent.

North Korea, wars, pandemics, conquests and disasters…none of it is so dangerous as talk of genuine humanely considered tax reform of both long-term gains and depreciation allowed.

As luck would have it, it’ll never be changed until the whole system is collapsing and by then it will be too late.

But you, dear reader, will have a handy pocket guide to watching where the smell stuff will hit the rotating roundy-thing.

Woo-Woo: Significance of 468?

It means something, but I’m not sure what.

Last week in a single trade I made $468.90 in a five hour market trade.

Then last night, Elaine and I were watching Amazon and we selected a hiking documentary where a couple of San Francisco fellers walked from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.

Elaine, as I’ve told you, has a remarkable “artist’s eye” for detail.

“HOLD IT!  Back up to the cash register scene!”

Sure enough, as the two guys were check out of a store with supplies for the trip, the total shown was $468.72.

Here’s my question:  When an odd number – the ONLY number remotely in this range – pops up twice in four days…is it meaningful?

Ideas and input welcome on this.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net

48 thoughts on “Coping: With the Ugliest Word in Finance”

  1. George,

    I had a number related synchronicity the other day. I was paying for groceries and I accidentally punched the button to receive $20 is cash. Oops. No big deal…I needed some more cash, anyway. Once the groceries are loaded I proceed to the gas pumps and top off. When the tank is full and pump cuts off I look at the pump read out….$20.00 to the penny! I’ll be dipped if I could figure out what the significance was. Just one of those winks from the universe that I’m too dense gee-haw.

    MAJ-13

  2. It must have been 30 or 40 years ago when I learned through ‘The Hitch-hikers guide to the Universe’ that the secret of the Universe was the number 42. It is amazing how often you encounter that number or a multiple of it once you start looking for it. For example, what is the number of the president between BushI and BushII ? Of course the number 420 could have its own book. What is Adolph Hitler’s birthday ? I could go on and on, you get the idea.

  3. Those repeated numbers popping up in one’s life are, indeed, a curious thing. Mine is the number 243. I began taking notice of it a couple of years ago realizing its been in play in my life since I was at least 9 when I got my first deer – with my uncle’s .243. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and what time is it? 2:43. It’s been happening more frequently, too, but an explanation has, so far, eluded me as none of the occurrences seem related. It’s just a number so far.

  5. “the Teamsters were a strong union, so they set up a retirement system that did the family a solid.”

    Whats Missing!!!!

    Involvement….and Connection.. a sense of belonging..

    the old business owners were a different breed of men.. My father worked for a company.. a proud company the owner.. I only knew him by the nickname the colonel.. he was a nice guy.. met him when I was five.. he gave me a nice gift.. years later..( they had a no family in the same facility rule so I couldn’t work for him)
    I was offloading a trailer for the driver.. in walks the colonel… he sees me in the trailer. takes his coat off and helps me hand unload the trailer… all the while chit chatting about this and that and everyother thing.. .. time flies by.. my father is retired ( no one would quit the colonel he had an even up and out so they could get new employees in.. and was about to sell his company and retire himself..) my parents are about to have their fiftieth wedding anniversary.. my father had worked for him and his company that spans the globe even today from the depression on the colonel stood by his employees through thick and thin military etc..
    I am sacking groceries at a local store the colonel was walking through checking to see how his products were being displayed.. he once again sees me.. and starts to help sack groceries.. all the time asking me how my brothers and sisters were doing how I was doing.. then said he wished he could be able to step in and say hello to my father and mother on their fiftieth but wasn’t able to and to wish them a hearty congratulations.. Now.. My father wasn’t a department head his job was that of being a delivery boy for a company with thousands and thousands of employees around the globe.. and he knew who I was..
    Second Story involves a place I worked.. I was a janitor.. the old man would wake up on Thursdays and pick one of his stores come in and help us finish up our work so we all could go and have coffee.. and ask us how we were doing what he could do to improve our jobs etc..
    Story number three..
    An employee at the same grocery store that I was working one of the clerks quit to go to a new department store in our area.This is the story she told me over coffee the store was WALMART… she was a night stocker.. anyway she was a single mom.. the child would get sick or daycare was a pain in the butt.. anyway the store manager would ride her butt.. stressed to get the store opened.. one night after her daily butt chewing from the manager she is stocking and just started to cry.. this little old man standing next to her stocking the shelves asked her honey what is wrong.. and she she told him about what happened and how she felt.. the little old man said to her..Oh sweetie he’s not walmart quality.. the man Sam… he stopped in to see how his store was doing no fanfare no big celebration or speaches.. and she is still working there today..
    Story number four.. another company.. He is retired to.. makes a building product nationally distributed.. he bought a big screen tv loved it and bought everyone in the plant one.. he noticed that single parents had daycare problems employee daycare at no expense to them along with busing service to and from school.. one year he took the whole plant on a two week cruise because he did so well and a generous bonus to all his employees..
    story number five..
    the grocery store I worked at.. the christmas parties were to die for.. you got paid for the party and each store would get employees from another store in the chain to come work your shift.. open bar nice bonus great meal and entertainment.. and then the drawing.. all the perks that are normally distributed to the management of facilities.. are kept and a drawing is held everyone gets something.. my favorite and I didn’t get was a surrey from totino’s Pizza..although the new car or trip to Hawaii would have been nice.. what I did get was a Columbia team coat.. beautiful I still use it and that was in the middle eighties..
    The point I think I am trying to get to.. is corporate business has changed.. the old guys that built these companies and showed appreciation to their employees has changed to the ME group.. bonuses are no longer distributed and only a select few get them.. Medical insurance.. Oh.. the company my father worked for.. the colonel made sure that all employees that retired under his reign got a good retirement and insurance.. my mother had a one hundred dollar deductible.. she never paid more than twenty cents for a prescription I would get a huge thrill out of picking up her prescriptions.. those that retired after the colonel well they were pretty much taken advantage of by the new management..
    the older group took pride in their companies worked hard and took a smaller profit to make sure their employee’s benefited from their gain and success.. what they got in return was dedicated employee’s that would follow the old man into the depths of hell..
    today’s management rarely even knows the name of the person emptying their trash much less a delivery man thousands of miles away or his family..
    This next depression will be an interesting one since the change in attitude..

    • When Ross Perot was running for president I kind of liked him and his ideas. I rarely bother to vote as the whole game looks rigged to me. A friend of mine at the time had a brother who had worked at Perot’s company EDS, and she told me how he treated employees like a family – a good family, and gave me examples of his behavior. I made sure I went to the polls and voted for that man.

      I am over-the-hill, and I have NEVER worked for any company that treated people as other than disposable, easily replaceable, units. That includes several small, family-owned ones, all the way up to 4 Multinational corporations. Overall, it felt like ‘slavery lite’, to severely dysfunctional family dynamics.

      This crap takes a toll on one’s mental and physical health.

      • that is why I think.. The Donald is a good one.. if you do any checking he has a very very high retention level of employee’s.. the only one that I read of that had anything negative to say later on you find that donald stepped in and there was a huge change in management in that inn.. also the guy that had the negative comments is still an employee. he makes sure all employees have a meal from the way I have read it… he has fallen and picked himself back up off the floor.. and learned from it.. he is wealthy.. he doesn’t need the money.. he is a celebrity.. he doesn’t need fame or fortune.. he is at the twilight of his years.. I have to say.. I was a ross perot fan myself.. I think the donald seen the situation that the country is in.. needed some hard decisions and is willing to try and use what he has learned to help a country he loves..
        Just saying.. it is a big deal when your employees feel as if he is accessible to them in the time of need..

    • the colonel was a wonderful guy.. how many company leaders even take the time to say hello to the people working for them anymore.. yet this guy knew me the son of a delivery man and all my siblings.. the same thing with Sam Walton.. standing next to a woman stocking shelves.. those were the men of vision and faith.. they built our country strong.. knew that by building their wealth slow they strengthened the base of the company.. today they put it all on the top blocks and forget about the base of the company.. quick to change employees looking for the cheaper route to take.. I would have gone to hell and back for my boss that would come in and sweep floors.. one time I over heard him tell his son.. his kid drove in in an expensive car.. the dad was lecturing him that he shouldn’t drive anything better than what the highest wage earner could afford to drive.. the day after the old man passed on.. the kid drove in in full leather coat gold jewelry on and the fanciest car you could find.. needless to say the company was minus one employee.. the place dad worked.. he had thousands of employees.. yet I felt like I was family to him. the company picknics.. they were a hoot.. everyone played ball together no matter what their station.. the grocery store I worked at .. well I am still a loyal customer and tell all my grandkids that that is a great company to work for with a future.. .. you still see management working the floor..

  6. George,

    A couple of left-out historical points.

    In the beginning was cash basis accounting by business proprietors. If you had cash, you were making money. The value of the business equipment was whatever the proprietor said it was. It didn’t matter until it was sold or scrapped.

    Then came the industrial revolution and the need for investors, which drove the need for the accounting profession so investors could tell what they were getting.

    The accountants decreed that cash basis didn’t give an accurate picture of the enterprise. Hence, accrual accounting and it’s sibling, depreciation.

    Then came the income tax and investors beseeched Congress for capital gains relief because it wasn’t fair to treat capital gains as if they were all earned in a single year when they were earned over a longer period of time. (The Internal Revenue Code is, after all, a testament to “fairness” for various constituencies.)

    There evolved, of course, the game-playing you described. After all, we’re Americans and we’ll game anything. But I think it’s important to know that there were business reasons besides the games for the concepts you vilify.

    Thanks.

  7. Yea me kinda too. It not exactly the Fibonacci but it’s close and that’s what I’ve been saying I have a chicken tractor this 5 x 10 and so I’m making a surrounding area like the Fibonacci how it rotates around and as it goes to the next section to gets bigger and bigger except those aren’t exactly Fibonacci numbers so but it has a correlation in the mind for some reason anyway it’s not Fibonacci and it’s not a prime number so it would be as sphenic number which is a number product of three unequal prime numbers
    On the other hand 468.9 are all non primes. OR it is a cheerleading thing like four six eight who do we appreciate George URE. Lol

    • god.. your the first one to talk about the spiral. you know I see it in everything.. from plants to society

  8. Big-time woo-woo.

    My Lincoln turned over 222,222.2 miles on Feb 22 (2/22). I bought $2 lottery ticket for a drawing that evening and won $3. Unfortunately, I played $20 to win the $3. C’est la vie.

    • Interesting! Two to the zero power is one. You won one more than a $2 ticket. Maybe something was trying to say ‘play 22’ and that eleventh ticket would have won. Just noticing that all two’s were cited, no zero’s, as far as the portents.

      • I was going to ask if he really won $2.22 and Universe just rounded it up for ‘im

  9. Interlocate is what 468 means for you and your wife , now what the heck does interlocate mean

    • Did you put your bunker in yet underneath the Earth Ship so you can make a cool million

      • if I were going to California I’d have the bunker under the Earth Ship in California because it’s be worth over 10 million

      • I’ve got a friend that lives in Los Angeles and his place you know if you were to go into any other City wouldn’t be worth that much but it’s almost a million dollars there just because of the price inflation so what might be worth 100,000- $200,000 worth of million somewhere else yep so that’s why I say keep telling me I’m leaving go out to the country and buy a big place or a small place and have some money left over you know anyway that’s food for thought

    • Told you I’d make you rich George all you got to do is put a bunker or ship sail for the million go to California by a place for a million do the same thing their self 410 me and then you go anywhere you want you got ten million or close give or take oh well have a good day and may all beings be lovingly fulfilled so be it.
      Oh be careful what you wish for you might get it thoughts have wings Adios

      • The rich superwrench want security and if you can sell that to them Bingo you done made yours in life

      • Making money in real estate that’s what I do I’m no good at the stock market are you going to make that much in the stock market in that short of length of time

      • Real estate is what war is all about yes it produces things keeps things going but they went to overtake the real estate the CIA goes in Knox the price down makes it unlivable and then they come in and buy it then reproduce it and sell it for millions and billions like you say everything’s a money project so what happens when everything is been bought up they go to interplanetary and that’s what they’ve been doing for a big number a years trying to take over the planets and sell the resources as they do here and it’s a business model there’s a yin and yang you have two opposing forces and you always have those two opposing forces that’s the nature of God oh gosh I shouldn’t have used that word but anyway it fits so there’s a lot of people out there that that have a belief system of such me into the tree and air thing you remember the tree and everything we are all tree Inns of years old as we have been told and the two opposing forces keep us in line with religion a belief system anyway we won’t go there but anyway yeah the business model will work for you

      • It’s like planting a seed every day you find out what works
        And then when you get large enough you can plant a whole package of seeds every day but you’re still have the capability to fail but by diversifying your chances of success the greater the outcome

        Are you ready to plant the bucket load , whoa. That’s a big step , but you might be ready

  11. Today, the ugliest word in business is “uncertainty”. The billionaire/corporate oligarchy doesn’t make a move without complete certainty that they are going to make a killing at whatever they invest in, preferably at the cost of their workers – the little people.

    That’s why everything is structured for them to write-off expenses and maximize profits. There’s no incentive to keep money invested, the trick is get in, get out and get all the money while tax rates are a bargain. Now, we are being set-up for yet another tax cut for the rich/corporate at the expense of SS/Medicare. It never ends.

  12. Total insanity: Oregon lawmakers are now wanting to tax a businesses’ total receipts, not just their profits.

    • Which is why we’d opt for a place in Russia over a place in Oregon – at least they are money hgonest about statism in Russia

    • Texas Franchise Tax is a gross receipts tax, with deductions for either: COGS, wages, or a flat deduction. Biz gets to pick which calc is most advantageous.

      Oregon is pretty onerous on taxes, though not as bad as NY or CA. Yet.

      • @ CPA Prepper –

        And if you keep your business small and subdivide, you can avoid paying that pesky TX franchise tax as well…

      • @ oilman

        Maybe. The rules state that businesses with common ownership >50% and similar business lines must report (and pay) as a group.

      • Oregon has a very nasty income tax. I lived for about 18 months. I relocated there in April 2009 and when I filed my taxes for the next year I discovered that Oregon wanted me to pay over $250.00 in income tax and California only wanted me to pay $11.00 in income tax even though I earned more than twice as much in California during that tax year. My CPA told me that he could not believe how much income tax Oregon expected me to pay. Only advantage up there is that there is no sales tax, at least there was none when I was living there.

  13. 468 divided by frequency in Megahertz is approximate wire length of a resonant half wave dipole antenna. Maybe a reminder to get that ultra long wire antenna back in service?

  14. Jon I believe when you first posted I put on there that you were a political nightmare so you’re no good at politics but what you are good at is, you are a maker with a small m not a big M which means God but you are a producer that’s what you do you produce and you’re good at it so there you go, keep going and have a nice day and may all beings be lovingly fulfills so be it
    P.S. any company would be proud to have you because of those abilities that you have

  15. Just so you know, it’s much more than machinery that qualifies for 179 these days. I have a client in the restaurant business. New leasehold improvements to an existing structure can now qualify for both 50% upfront (bonus) depreciation AND Sec 179. Since 179 is limited to business income, it often gets suspended to year 2, but the bonus depreciation can create a big loss in year 1.

    Certain restrictions apply and YMMV.

  16. Wow I was getting a little worried there you know at the top of my web page it says urban survival but for a moment there I thought it looked like Jon survival does Jon trying to take over your website lots of laughs

  17. There’s a change in attitude when one goes from thinking in terms of “Personnel” to “Human Resources” (or from “Peace Officer” to “Law Enforcement”). “Human Resources” are quantifiable, replaceable, square pegs in square holes.

  18. don’t let this get you down but 17 means in your case you are the Sardine it means that you are the Young of the ones that are there that are going to be there so you’re new to what’s going on but like I said they want you you are a maker a producer so but 17 means you are a sardine which gets me back to a thing when I lived in France my sister’s name was Aldina they made up a rhyme Aldina Sardina a pickled pig feet back to vinegar and I never mind anyway yeah that indicates that you are the Sardine the other words you’re the young one and you like I said I going to make it good luck best wishes

    • It doesn’t mean that you’re young it just means that you feel like a sardine in with all the other fish with which is understandable I’m being how many people can go into an arena and grandstand the place you know oh so you want to know if you’re going to grandstand them it looks like you’re going to be a spinner so I mean if you’re into cells a spinner is one who spends it around good luck John May the force be with you also and and I don’t see anything bad so but you are a political nightmare I love to laugh that’s a joke I’m sure you’ll be able to use that for the rest of your life in your sales pitch that you’re a political nightmare and they’ll probably love that. Go like yeah me too so let’s get on with the deal

    • In Italian we have a saying:

      Question: “Che se dice?” (kay-say-deech)
      Answer: “E sardine e mangina leech.”

      Means: “What’s up? The big fish eat the little fish”…

  19. @ Nameofthegame…

    You aren’t alone in your experiences. The only companies I ever had cookouts, Xmas parties and such with employees were those I was a principal in. I made sure that I wasn’t chasing employees because it would eat up time training and replacing them.

    I liked most of them or would not have hired them. Very different from using resume’ algorithms and the crap they call ‘recruiting’ today. My experience is; if you treat others like cattle, then that is the kind of work product you get – which may be why so much is being automated with smart apps and systems.

    Employers consistently opt for warm bodies, cheap wages, minimal benefits and zero chance of advancement and they get exactly what they pay for. They do this because in MBA school it is taught that way – and it makes little business sense.

    Once these smart apps and systems get really rolling, the homogeneity will be astounding. Originality, flexibility and common sense will be formally removed from the work product. I doubt it will wind up costing much less, except for the eschewing of the ACA, SS and similar levies.

    Sure – you never bat 1000 when hiring employees. They each come with their own unique set of circumstances, blessings and problems both. But when you replace people with software, you are hard-wiring solutions, responses and behaviors. This means the app or system requires upgrading, tailoring, maintenance and constant revamping. Watch the IT budgets climb – so is it truly the less expensive option?

    I have watched this several times in the last 20 years. The truth of it is that you cannot replace good people with software – there is no end to the software expenses.

    We tried going to a V-mail system for the phones – the net result was a 20% drop in expense of the receptionist. A single lost customer, fed up with trying to navigate the V-mail system, easily obliterated that savings. We hired the receptionist back – and had customers comment on how they preferred it over the V-mail.

    There is a reason that hotels have receptionists and concierges, and it is directly related to customer service and profits.

    New is not always better. Let me repeat – new is NOT always better…

    • and the trump industries have over a seventy five percent retention.. that says a lot about his company..
      the places I worked had that huge of a turnover.. come in today and see someone different than you seen last week..

  20. There’s a special place in Hell for the Greedheads and Crooked Politicains. They will have to take Bryce’s Lazy Porch Garden arguments point by point and reply with cogent responses.

    • but to require anyone to decipher the mumbo jumbo of laziness’ would add another 25% of content to G.s’ site in addition to the 25% laziness’ spews now

  21. The only reason to go to a Starbucks is to hit on the cute baristas. If they become robots, then there’s no reason to patronize them at all.

  22. “When an odd number – the ONLY number remotely in this range – pops up twice in four days…is it meaningful?”

    No. It has to be 3 times in 3.82 days, or 3.82 times in 6.18 days, or… Just glanced at my clock. OMG it is 6:18. snicker

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