On Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:04:28 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Wed, 06 Sep 2017 15:05:20 +0700, John B wrote:
On Tue, 05 Sep 2017 17:01:31 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:49:06 +0700, John B
wrote:

Apprenticeship used to be a method of learning a trade. Abraham
Lincoln, I believe, "read for the law" which was realistically an
apprenticeship program.

It eventually became a term used to describe a learning period for
the manual trades (one might call them) and then the manual trades
became obsolete. Does anyone get up in the middle of the night to
knead tomorrow's bread? Or dig a ditch by hand?

Yes to people getting up early to make tomorrow's bread. We have
dozens of bakeries around here with people doing exactly that.

Ditches seem to be dug with mechanized equipment rather than a shovel
these days, and that's probably just as well. That kind of labor ends
up being destructive to the laborer.

Destructive? Exercise? Swinging a pick for eight hours a day. Or doing
any other manual labour. How so?

Seriously? Have you only had desk jobs? Hard labor jobs like digging
ditches, swinging a pick, repeated heavy lifting, etc., routinely cause
damage. Back problems, arthritis, etc. In my career I have seen
thousands of people disabled by the long term toll their careers took on
their bodies. The taxpayers, BTW, are paying for their nursing home
placements.

No, as I wrote in another post, I was raised on a small farm in New
England where just about everything was done by hand. Run a water
line out to the barn" You need a six foot deep trench to get below the
frost line. My father used to pay someone to mow the field and the
rest of the haying was done by hand. You want a new barn? Well get a
hammer and saw and build it.

My paternal grandfather raised chickens, in 3,000 chicken lots. By
himself, no help. He also cut wood, by hand, for the month of
September, to heat his house during a New England winter.

My mother's father broke his leg at 70 years of age, fell off a loaded
hay wagon, pitching hay up into the mow.O.K. the family considered it
a "dam fool thing to do" but he did it.

My Paternal grandfather died at 87 and my maternal grandfather at 92.
No disability. No Charity.

Back in my days of working in a produce warehouse as a lumper, every
Friday two of us would carry 36,000 pounds of bananas out of the semi
trailer in their boxes, stack 'em on pallets, pull them across the
warehouse into the storage rooms (bananas are kept relatively warm; if
chilled they won't ripen properly) with a manual pallet jack. Even
though I was 22 and strong as an ox in those days, I was damned sore
after that. Watermelons were worse, they weren't in boxes. Back in
those days I could toss a 100 lb bag of spuds on my shoulder and lump it
upstairs, with 50 bag of onions I could run upstairs. Now I probably
couldn't get the bag of spuds up off the floor.



I completed an apprenticeship to be a "Machinist", although I
subsequently went to an engineering school, but I can remember as
early as the mid-late 1960's that very little work for a qualified
machinist existed. One or maybe two in a big shop and the rest were
machine operators.

My apprenticeship, as such, was as a glazier which was my father's
trade. I did that for 7 years during high school and college. But
even in more technical fields like medicine, nursing, etc., there is a
period of apprenticeship by another name.

I know that The Donald talked about apprenticeships, and increasing
employment, and increasing minimum salaries, and reducing costs,
and, and, but I haven't seen much progress being made.

Well, he's made plenty of progress in being a douchebag.

Now there is an exercise in logic. (1) Increase wages which
certainly contributes to higher sales prices, and (2) reduce costs?
-- Cheers,

One of the many knots in capitalism. It's a system we're dedicated to
but doesn't really work that well- even though it works better than
all the alternatives tried thus far.

Yup, that paraphrases Winston Churchill, who actually said " Indeed it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except
for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

But still, the basic problem with democracy is the politician gets up
and says, "Vote for me." The audience says, "Why?"

As for capitalism.... what else is there?

Good question. Russia and China's attempts at communism didn't pan out.
But capitalism depends on inflation to provide the illusion of growth,
as well as a constantly growing population to provide an expanding
market. If the population stops growing, the economy collapses.
However, we've reached a point where further population growth is
rapidly becoming unsustainable. The massive increase in wealth
disparity over the past 50 years is also unsustainable- top heavy
structures do not stand long. Those who ignore the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat them. Buckle up for deja vu!

It isn't only Capitalism that seems to have to grow. A good friend
grew up in Hungary under the communist system and while I never
questioned him specifically, he did mention improvements in the life
some enthusiasm. Bicycle to motorcycle was one example I remember.

As for wealth disparity, I can remember when a doctor made a house
call.... for $2.00 :-) To be honest I never paid a doctor $2.00 to
make a house call but I remember being sick and the doctor coming and
my folks talking about $2.00. Granted, I was just a kid but my salary
was eleven cents a week for milking the cow six evenings a week. And
slopping two hogs.

But in a more serious vein, what is "wealth disparity"? Is it that you
make more money then I do? I'm fairly sure that you do as you seem to
be still working and I'm retired. Should I be rushing around waving my
arms in the air shouting Unfair! Unfair!

The concept that a bloke who starts a business selling bootleg records
out of the trunk of his car, for example, is not entitled to
everything he can make, or the guy, not even a collage graduate, that
starts up a little two man business that grows because they can
provide a service, is not entitled to his earnings, seems wrong to me.
--
Cheers,

John B.