The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Government Bailouts-Part II
I think about the recent chain of events and it forces me to wonder where this type of behavior manifests itself. What gives people the idea that they have a right to FAIL and to still be REWARDED?
We look at the Wall Street/Citi-Bank/Auto Industry bail out and somehow believe that it is or isn’t a government problem. But I think that it is a behavior/societal problem. Or at least, that’s where the expectation originated.
Ever since parents decided to give their children the “things that they never had”, we have been sending the signals to generations that we are going to “give” it to them, because we didn’t have it. If our kid wasn’t getting enough playing time in a game, we would bitch at the coach until the kid got more time. If a teacher expected our kid to study more and improve their grades, we accused the teacher of picking on our kid. That is case and point one.
Then, our schools introduced such cutting edge ideas like “no cut” activities. If you go out for an extracurricular activity? Congratulations; you made the team. No, no, no; you don’t have to work hard to be the best you can be. You have made the team photo. That’s good enough.
We have people in our country today who have a job, consisting of perusing the phone book for their five contacts so that they can write them down on their “job search” form. Then, they turn it into the Unemployment Office so that they can continue to receive unemployment benefits. If they are given a job offer, they will provide a litany of excuses for not taking it. They have no intentions of getting a job and why should they? We are paying them NOT to!
And between the lawyers and the unions, how in the hell can someone RUN THEIR BUSINESS? You have signed a contract that has basically taken all of those employee conduct issues and given it to a “grievance” procedure. Why? You screw up and your employer doesn’t have the right to fire you? In fact; you have an automatic 5% increase every year for the next three years. Whether profit is good or the employee is meeting company goals, they get their five because the contract says so.
Yeah; I know. There are those business owners who skirt the laws, treat their people like crap, steal the pension money, live lavishly and close up and move to another state. But they are the exception and not the rule.
We have spent so much time developing artificial intelligence that we have created a certain “artificial reinforcement” for “artificial accomplishments”. We have become a nation where status quo and lowered expectations have taken root. Look at what we are doing in the fire service!
We don’t want to invest a lot in the search for new firefighters. We couldn’t hire them if we knew the whole story. So, we get into “degrees” where crime in their past is an issue. No drug test, either.
I’m telling you loud and clear that the bail outs are a direct result of Society accepting less than our best, spoiling our kids who are now in positions of leadership, promoting mediocrity through our schools and forcing companies to take on added overheads because we don’t think that they can run their own company.
And besides; can some economist in our group please explain to me how we have the money in the first place when we are gazillions in debt to begin with?
Is there a reason why we can’t get a better common sense approach to the financial “crisis”?
And since we are going to allow people to live off of unemployment benefits, can we at least have them clean up our streets and parks? We are paying for it!
Is it any wonder that we are losing industries in this country when we are paying people more money for less work, giving them more days off basically incentifying them to MISS work, allowing them acts of misconduct because turnover is high and putting out a crappy product in the end? Don’t believe me? How long has it been since you went to a sit down restaurant? How was the service? Was your glazed orange chicken worth the 55 minute wait? Yum!
We need to get back to the basics. We need to re-establish goals. We need to reward accomplishment. We need to get back to positive/negative reinforcement to maintain/change behavior.
And most of all, WE NEED TO STOP REWARDING FAILURE WITH “BAILOUTS”!
TCSS.
Art
We look at the Wall Street/Citi-Bank/Auto Industry bail out and somehow believe that it is or isn’t a government problem. But I think that it is a behavior/societal problem. Or at least, that’s where the expectation originated.
Ever since parents decided to give their children the “things that they never had”, we have been sending the signals to generations that we are going to “give” it to them, because we didn’t have it. If our kid wasn’t getting enough playing time in a game, we would bitch at the coach until the kid got more time. If a teacher expected our kid to study more and improve their grades, we accused the teacher of picking on our kid. That is case and point one.
Then, our schools introduced such cutting edge ideas like “no cut” activities. If you go out for an extracurricular activity? Congratulations; you made the team. No, no, no; you don’t have to work hard to be the best you can be. You have made the team photo. That’s good enough.
We have people in our country today who have a job, consisting of perusing the phone book for their five contacts so that they can write them down on their “job search” form. Then, they turn it into the Unemployment Office so that they can continue to receive unemployment benefits. If they are given a job offer, they will provide a litany of excuses for not taking it. They have no intentions of getting a job and why should they? We are paying them NOT to!
And between the lawyers and the unions, how in the hell can someone RUN THEIR BUSINESS? You have signed a contract that has basically taken all of those employee conduct issues and given it to a “grievance” procedure. Why? You screw up and your employer doesn’t have the right to fire you? In fact; you have an automatic 5% increase every year for the next three years. Whether profit is good or the employee is meeting company goals, they get their five because the contract says so.
Yeah; I know. There are those business owners who skirt the laws, treat their people like crap, steal the pension money, live lavishly and close up and move to another state. But they are the exception and not the rule.
We have spent so much time developing artificial intelligence that we have created a certain “artificial reinforcement” for “artificial accomplishments”. We have become a nation where status quo and lowered expectations have taken root. Look at what we are doing in the fire service!
We don’t want to invest a lot in the search for new firefighters. We couldn’t hire them if we knew the whole story. So, we get into “degrees” where crime in their past is an issue. No drug test, either.
I’m telling you loud and clear that the bail outs are a direct result of Society accepting less than our best, spoiling our kids who are now in positions of leadership, promoting mediocrity through our schools and forcing companies to take on added overheads because we don’t think that they can run their own company.
And besides; can some economist in our group please explain to me how we have the money in the first place when we are gazillions in debt to begin with?
Is there a reason why we can’t get a better common sense approach to the financial “crisis”?
And since we are going to allow people to live off of unemployment benefits, can we at least have them clean up our streets and parks? We are paying for it!
Is it any wonder that we are losing industries in this country when we are paying people more money for less work, giving them more days off basically incentifying them to MISS work, allowing them acts of misconduct because turnover is high and putting out a crappy product in the end? Don’t believe me? How long has it been since you went to a sit down restaurant? How was the service? Was your glazed orange chicken worth the 55 minute wait? Yum!
We need to get back to the basics. We need to re-establish goals. We need to reward accomplishment. We need to get back to positive/negative reinforcement to maintain/change behavior.
And most of all, WE NEED TO STOP REWARDING FAILURE WITH “BAILOUTS”!
TCSS.
Art
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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By the way, I posted it over here to get discussion.
I have blogs on three different websites discussing this issue.
Let er rip.
TCSS.
Art
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Permalink Reply by Trainer on
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Lets talk bailout; First off I’m a small business owner who is currently affected by the sagging economy, no fault of mine, don’t I deserve help? I don’t except it. I admit to wanting my kids to have it better than I did, but to be honest I did not have it to bad, but that’s not why I posted. I got an email the other day in regards to bailout and insentive checks, and I have tried to confirm it but can’t find a calculator with enough digits, that ought to tell us something, government conspiracy? A billion dollars is hard to relate to, so on with that email. There are around 200 million, note I spelled it, not sure how many 0’s, US citizens 18 years and older, if we take what they gave to AIG and distribute it to these citizens you would receive about 400,000, after taxes you will have to spend around 300,000. Now what you going to do with it, pay off mortgage, debt, buy a house, car??? Would that not solve the problem?? If they want to issues incentive checks, make it big enough to do some good. Yea it’s a Gov handout, but better to me than to some ex who makes 8 figures anyway.
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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on
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As far as I am concerned, people who are getting unemployment benefits should have to perform a certain amount of community service hours to get their money. I agree there are blood thirsty leaches who have NO plan of getting a job until their "free money" expressway ends. It is a shame. I can't go a week without working without losing my mind, how can these people go a year+?
Having a community service stipulation is a win/win situation for the economy and the towns. It will decrease the burden faced by organizations seeking volunteers and since they are going to be sitting at home collecting, where is the wrong in it?
The only people that would be against it would be the people who are lazy and don't want to do a damn thing but collect.
No proof of service, NO MONEY!
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Permalink Reply by Jay on
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Isn't capitalism survival of the fittest? I think it's funny the media uses words such as "socialism" when the government tries to do good like buying the rights to home loans so families don't loose their houses. But when big companies who have pissed their money away and go begging to the government for multi-billion dollar loans, it's not "socialism", it's a bailout. What I think is crap is that the millions of small businesses who are in trouble won't see a dime. Why? No lobbyist power. Personally, I loved it when the house stuck it to the auto industry when they basically told them, why should we bail you out when you flew here today in private jets. Great for the government to stand up and say something and put them in their place, but go to places like Citi-bank. Look at the money they are blowing on advertisement, bs salaries, and investments that they don't need to. But the government wants to "bail them out"
The way I see it is that if one company bites the dust, another will take up all the business that they free up. That's capitalism. That's how our countries economy works. Don't spend my tax money paying these fat-cats. Use my tax money to hire more public servants, hire more teachers and build more schools and put in the money they need. Pay for universal health care, so people don't have to file for bankruptcy just cause they had a baby, or broke their leg. Make hunger not exist in our great country. Send those extra supplies to the troops so they don't have to rely on relatives and friends to send them. Give tax breaks to companies so that work stays in the states.
When is the bailing out gonna stop? They've already spent 700 billion and now another 800 billion? WTF????? 1.5 TRILLION is what we're looking at???? Absurd. When will it stop???
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Permalink Reply by anne potter on
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The goverment should give each american $40.000.. That amer ican in return will put back into the system.. Paying thier morgage,car off,bad credit... or what ever to help . Therefore putting back into the economy.. Instead the big boys get alot of the money we have to pay for the bail out with higher taxes.. We still lose our homes and cars,still not paying the credit card debit off.. In return the corporpate big shots get a vac ,and well a raise.. Yea for us...
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Permalink Reply by Kimberly A Bownas on
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Art, you are so right. When I worked in the kitchen for a food service that was hired by the private school, I would be laid off for the holidays and summer break. On these breaks I would collect unemployment and that was only until the kitchen reopened. That was 4 times a year, but I always went back to work . I hate the people that collect the unemployment and don't do anything to find a job. The only thing that is a plus is that they can't be on it for ever.
Unlike Welfare. Welfare bothers me cause you collect on it and collect on it for how ever long you basically want. What happened to making these people go out and get a job and earn the money instead of my hard earned money going to them while they sit on their butts and keep having kids and not doing a damn thing. This bailout plan I think is not a good idea at all. Make the Wall street big wigs give up their raises and give up everybody else paying for the extras that they have. Why do we have to struggle and give up even more just to get by, and the lazy people are getting by cause they aren't made to actually have to work for their money.
That is a good idea also Mike about the communitee service idea to be able to collect the unemployment.
Well, I said my peace and I am sure there are going to be a few who might disagree and hey they have that right.
Nice post Art....
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Permalink Reply by Rebecca on
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This is exactly what I wish would happen. And to make sure people don't just waste the money, the government could find a way to send the money to our biggest lenders, like debt consolidation loans. When you go for debt-cons, they don't give you the money, they pay off the credit cards, cars, and whatever else you specify for the loan amount.
And yes, that WOULD help everybody. It would get US all out of debt, free up creditors to create new loans, and yes, encourage us to take what's left over and maybe buy a few more "things" pushing consumer spending a little further. It would be great for the Big Three if I decided to buy a new car. Better for them than a bailout.
But, I'm not holding my breath for any of that. The government helps those who annoy them the most, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The Big Three and AIG etc are up there bugging the crap out of people in DC, but there's nobody with enough money and influence asking for a bailout on OUR behalf. There don't appear to be any demonstrations in DC demanding that legislators pay attention to us.
*Sigh*
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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I heard the same thing from another wise person like Art! The way I see it as if people truly had the money needed to get out of debt, it would then revive the system.... imagine being mortgage free, and take the free'd up money to pay the other bills. But it takes money to make money. I agree it sucks to see 24 yr old CEO's and other high executives asking for the bailout money, then see them rolling in a ferrari, or two or even three to the resort for a EXEC MEETING?
It really pisses me off to see big brother give them all that cash and we are lucky to get a lousy grand as a stimulus package...
WTF
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You are so right and what about the raises and the bonuses that they get and wont give up. If they gave that stuff up for a couple of years then they wouldn't need the bailout...
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It would help, thats for sure but probably not going to fix the problem. Citibank got the first bailout and it lasted what a month? It was a band-aid with perks.
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Yup, that is the problem it is a band-aid and it isn't going to solve the problem at all....
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Permalink Reply by Eric on
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Well said. I have to say that the very little that I have, I have earned. That being said, any debts tha I have, I have earned. I don't see the government bailing me out and I am not asking them to either. It comes back to accepting responsibility for what has been done. Unfortunately, many big business executives don't have to deal with responsibility and their response to being in trouble is asking for a handout (or should I say bailout). It is like dealing with a spoiled child that tells mommy or daddy no. When punished, they cry and cry and cry until they cry their way out of a punishment. That being said, The government can be like the mommy or daddy that caves to the crying. Many may disagree with what I say here, but everyone has their own opinion. Obviously there are good people out there that are doing the right thing, they get page 3 in the paper next to whoever wins the local pie eating contest. It's the bad ones that go front page with their troubles and we get to see just how much they are given for whining enough.
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