Market Philosophy: What You Got?

I don't feel anything.  I asked a question twice and you ignored it both times.  I jolted you...still never got the answer to the original question.


What you see is the trend for businesses right now.  Scale scale scale profits will come later, hopefully!!

I dont remember the question.

It all boils down to — we all spend our own money the way we think is best. That's what I do and that's what you do too.

Harvey wrote

Send me 100k if you want, so I can afford another month of payroll.

Sure, just let me know what you (and your business) made over the past 10 years (including equity increases in your building & home(s), including any profit from your recent home sale).

At a certain point, if you “government debt is a problem” people are to be believed, then “someone is going to have to pay for” the massive stimulus that we are giving to companies like yours.

It’s only fair that people who own profitable businesses & multiple houses pay for the stimulus, not working stiffs like me.

MC2 5678F589 wrote

At a certain point, if you “government debt is a problem” people are to be believed, then “someone is going to have to pay for” the massive stimulus that we are giving to companies like yours.

It’s only fair that people who own profitable businesses & multiple houses pay for the stimulus, not working stiffs like me.

..... But, if we’re finally gonna admit that money is fake, and it’s value is a construct to uphold an increasingly fragile society, then we should start bailing out poor people & middle class people, along with small businesses, instead of rich people & giant corporations (who will also benefit from a massive increase in consumer spending).

Our business isn't profitable.  We're down to 14 employees from a high of 40, 20 years ago, and I make 40% less than I did 5 years ago, less than some of our employees.  We'd be at 7 employees (counting owners) without the govt help. We haven't had any profit sharing or bonuses in over a decade.

Not proud of that by any means.

I have no idea if money is fake (or what that means) or if govt debt matters.  I guess I assume it does, but I have no idea.  My idea that it might is based on applying my own personal experience to the govt. That could be BS.  I don't spend too much time thinking about it because even if I knew the answer, not sure it would affect me.  I wouldn't stop paying my bills or change my behavior.

My question was what do you think of the PPE and was it helpful.  Never thought it was any of my business about the details of your company.

Fu with your get the other guy pay for it.  Same line as I'm young and the virus wont effect me.   It your generation that is sending the virus numbers through the roof and you want my generation to pay for your subsidy?

Government debt wont be a problem until countries stop buying it.  

I've invested time and money in the Northeast Faceshield Project. But I think you are asking about PPP.

I think I've said most of this before:

I'd say it was excellent for employees, except that some have been forced to come back at lower pay than the expanded unemployment was paying. Now that the extra 600 has been extended that has made the problem worse.  When we originally applied I didn't understand that I'd be putting them in the position of taking less money than unemployment.  I mistakenly assumed they would be happy that we were included in the program. Some understand we weren't trying to screw them, others not so much. Our health insurance is good and those who prioritize that, are glad to be back, even if only temporary.

For the company, time will tell. I don't really know because I'm not sure how much will be forgiven.  There is a lot of "guidance" out there but I don't really know how it will go down in the end.  

Let's assume they forgive all of it.  Then the upside is that we've had more employees for about 13 weeks. While we don't need that many employees to do the work, some of the people we let go have skills that those who remained didn't have. So in that way it was good.  The 13 weeks has postponed the remaining employees learning the jobs of those let go. Not sure if that is good, bad or neutral.

Personally, for me, it has been a lot of extra work.  I don't really mind because my "paying" workload has been reduced. My own clients aren't spending. Still filling out paperwork, especially govt paperwork isn't very satisfying.  I spend my days writing checks, making ACH payments, paying taxes, depositing checks and doing accounting.

Hope this answers it, I wasn't trying to blow you off.

We sold our house for more than we paid for it (in 1988) but we used the money to buy our new house. Let's pretend I didn't need another house and I did make money selling the old house. That was a savings account that resulted from years of paying my bills. I don't see why I should burn through that to employ people for a month or two, when they could go on unemployment.

You can call our 200sf cabin a second home if you want, but I'm not the fat cat that you imagine.

tjf1967 wrote

Government debt wont be a problem until countries stop buying it.

Well we’re in luck then because it seems like there is always a market for US government debt. Austria just started selling 100-yr bonds at 1% and they’re selling like hotcakes.

Harvey wrote

We sold our house for more than we paid for it (in 1988) but we used the money to buy our new house. Let's pretend I didn't need another house and I did make money selling the old house. That was a savings account that resulted from years of paying my bills. I don't see why I should burn through that to employ people for a month or two, when they could go on unemployment.

You can call our 200sf cabin a second home if you want, but I'm not the fat cat that you imagine.

Yes, you can spend your money the way you want, but I just thought it was weird when you (jokingly?) asked the forum members for $100k to keep your business going.

As I said, it’s good that we have an unemployment system that we all pay taxes into.

But the best thing the government could do now is say: here’s $6,000 for everyone to get them through the next 3 months and then we’ll see where we’re at with the virus. If it’s eradicated by then, great, we all got a (small) portion of our taxes back. If not, another few thousand.

This virus is not our fault (as much as tjf wants to blame my generation), and governments should not allow 15% of their populations to become unemployed because of it.

They have the tools to save the economy. They should use them.

Harvey wrote

 

I'd say it was excellent for employees, except that some have been forced to come back at lower pay than the expanded unemployment was paying. Now that the extra 600 has been extended that has made the problem worse.  When we originally applied I didn't understand that I'd be putting them in the position of taking less money than unemployment.  I mistakenly assumed they would be happy that we were included in the program. Some understand we weren't trying to screw them, others not so much. Our health insurance is good and those who prioritize that, are glad to be back, even if only temporary.

 

I don't think any employer knew what to expect. Heck, I didn't even know about the extra 600/week until it actually happened. I was prepared to run with the 504/week all the time wishing I was still working. I will admit that the added 600 made it a heluva lot easier to be home. After 2 months I was def ready to get back at it, and we are killing it. Our company will have the best month we've ever had. That said, it will most likely be hero to zero status come next month. Inventory is dwindling.

Nothing worse than having eager customers and no product.

It certainly is, it's extremely frustrating for everyone involved.

Campy
Are you selling new or used cars?  Isn’t the Hertz bankruptcy flooding the market with used cars?

I looked at the auto mkt as a place to invest but it didn’t seem good once it did my analysis

Seemed like MC was out of line attacking Harv on his business.  Par for the course pushing his political agenda.  Agree with TJF that MCs generation are the super spreaders.  They were spoiled and weren’t Spanked as kids so they won’t sit still or play by the rules and wear their masks while protesting or packing in bars.  Let’s hope they as a generation can get their $hit together before we all retire and leave things to them to run or god help us.

I feel for Harv the marketing service biz is tough and with trade shows basically dead for now if you count on them pretty hard to keep going.  I was in a long meeting yesterday talking about how do we generate leads in this environment as we were a big trade show company globally.  

Z wrote

Campy
Are you selling new or used cars?  

 

We have both. Personally I'm out of sales, took a different position with the company June 1st. As someone who doesn't like change it was a tough decision but I'm very happy with my new job.

Z wrote

  Isn’t the Hertz bankruptcy flooding the market with used cars?

The lack of new cars has driven used car pricing through the roof. I'm actually trying to buy cars/trucks right now. I couldn't buy one today and get back what I had to pay for it.

Z wrote

 

I looked at the auto mkt as a place to invest but it didn’t seem good once it did my analysis

 

Used cars are nothing more than a stock. To give you an idea of the current market, 2 months ago we were buying 2019 trucks for what 2017's are bringing. In my 30 years in this biz I've only seen it like this once before. It's crazy.

Not that this is any better but we are in the travel business, not tradeshows per say. One of our big clients (we have ~5) is the largest group/meetings tradeshow in the world.  They have two shows a year and they just cancelled the second one and cut our retainer drastically.

We know travel is vulnerable. It got hammered in 9/11 and 2008.  It's what we do and we love it.  I don't see us changing our specialty.  We do take other business if it comes our way, but it is much easier to sell something where you are recognized experts.

I don't really get the criticism. We're not fat cats.  We offer really good health insurance and pay for it in full. What is the average CEO pay to worker pay ratio in the US?  My partner is the CEO, her pay is now equal to our two highest paid employees.  The idea that if you own a company you must be rich, is bs.

EDIT: according to this article it was 270-to-1 in 2018:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/heres-how-much-ceo-pay-has-increased-compared-to-yours-over-the-years.html

The criticism was from your “give me $100,000 to pay my employees for the next month” comment.

I’ll address Z’s dumb post later, but I think he should look at who is actually doing the spreading and where the spreading is occurring.

MC the latest wave super spreaders have been identified as being from the 20 to 34 cohort that are protesting and rioting without masks as well as  going out and partying like nothing ever happened - $hit for brains move guys - as everything we gave up is for nothing.  More than half of all new cases are under 35 years old and they are spreading it to their parents and coworkers.  

The issue now is that it is hot down south so people are partying inside instead of outside.  The transmission rate is dramatically lower outside than inside in AC.