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skeptictank's comments:
on Creating Sustainable Jobs
The American Dream has moved to places like China and India.
Of course, as we Americans learned, the American Dream isn't sustainable on many levels so in some sense it's probably good that the dream has died here. Maybe a more sustainable dream will take its place.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
A 50,000 square foot pizza shop? With 200 employees?
That's downright scary. Sounds very California.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
Back when there was an unwritten social contract between company and employee - back before about the early 80s - companies would invest in growing their employee's skillset. They would often determine that they needed some set of skills for a new project and then grow some of their internal employees into that project. Now companies don't want to spend the time or money - they'll layoff employees that don't have the skills they need anymore and hire new employees who posess these desired skills fully formed.
It's nice to hope that the business community would want to invest in educating their local talent pool again - but given the short sighted corporate vision these days, I'm not going to hold my breath. Yes, there are some enlightened companies out there who will contribute to these sorts of efforts, but even then there's not enough of a commitment to really make a huge difference.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
That is to say: "Just as the idea that a company would take care of its employees for life died in our parent's generation, now the idea that you get a series of "permanent" jobs is dying."
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
Increasingly there is no such thing as a permanent job. We'd best get the idea that we might have a job for several years with one employer out of our heads. That's not the way the world works anymore. Just as the idea that a company would take care of its employees for life died in our parent's generation, not the idea that you get a series of "permanent" jobs is dying. We're turning into a nation of contractors.
As such, it is important (as Tom D Ford says above) to have enough savings to ride out those times when you don't have a paying job. Those are the times when you'll need to retool your skills to prepare for your next paying job.
Yes, a lot about this new normal absoulutely sucks - especially the instability. But there are benefits as well if you're able to plan and save when times are good - the main benefit being a greater level of control over your own career. Used to be we were admonished to save for retirement but now we need to save for those "in-between" times.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on A Good Place to Work?
I noticed that the Elemental Technolgoies guy said "We want to attract young" employees. Why not attract employees with all levels of experience and different ages? Smacks a bit of agism.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on A Good Place to Work?
What about the role of offshoring? Isn't that what is holding down incomes for the higher end jobs at this point? Jobs such as engineering, for example. You can get 4 or 5 engineers in places like India for the cost of one engineer here. That makes it kind of tough for engineers to go to their managers and ask for a raise.
It also means that more education is not the answer. I've got about 20 years of experience and a fairly recent Masters degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and yet my engineering job was sent over to Cairo a few months back (how's that plan working out Mentor Graphics?). I did manage to find work in a small startup. It's a lot more fun, but the pay is less than 1/2 what I was making.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on A Good Place to Work?
The elephant in the room is health insurance. Thats' what tends to tie people to their corporate jobs and makes them hesitant to go off on their own. Let's say you've got a family - chances are someone in the family has a pre-existing condition that could either preclude getting insurance or make it very expensive (and insurance companies these days look at just about anything as a pre-existing condition that'll jack up rates. Every had a stomach ache - pre-existing condition!).
I think that if we had greater healthcare security we'd see more entrepreneurship. That could be a single payer plan or maybe something like Germany which only allows insurance companies to be non-profit. There are plenty of models out there - the Swiss plan, Taiwanese, etc... unfortunately, I do not think that ObamaCare fixes the problem.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on A Good Place to Work?
As discussed on a previous thread, we could produce things that are bought outside of the area. That would bring money into our economy.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on A Good Place to Work?
Have you considered that maybe Hood River isn't the right place for finding the kind of talent you need? Perhaps you should consider relocating your engineering operation to Beaverton or Hillsboro? Lots more engineers in those areas. The problem is that as an engineer, if I move to Hood River to work at your company I'll be in trouble if your company folds or if I decide it's time for a change. Why? I'll have to move - how many other companies like yours are in the area that employ engineers? Also, what if I want to persue more education to stay current? PSU would be the closest option and that's a heck of a commute.
That's why engineers like to be somewhere where there's some critical mass - other potential employers should something go wrong, and educational opportunities.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Homeless in the Suburbs
I wonder if some of the fear we feel when we see or hear about homelessness is a deep down feeling that we could easily end up in the same circumstances.
It's sobering to realize that all it would take is an illness, accident, layoff, or any number of events that could push any of us into homelessness. The homeless are not the other - they are us.
Plenty of middle class people are now becoming homeless now.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Homeless in the Suburbs
She said something about six children total which sounded like perhaps like it was a blended family - children from previous marriages.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
If environmentalism is a "religion" of sorts as you suggest, then why isn't consumerism also a religion of sorts - I would suggest that consumerism is the current state religion, in fact, as it is encouraged by the state.
I'm simply suggesting that we look at the way things were prior to the time when we bought into this consumer religion - this happened in the post WWII period according to the documentary "The Century of the Self", but I digress. I can recall my grandparents living very contented lives in what would now be considered a very small house (probably about 900 sq. ft, 2BR 1Ba) and with a very ancient car. Yet they were happier than most people I meet these days. They lived simply and always had a huge garden and they were gleaners. I think part of thier secret was that they came of age before the advent of that consumer religion (and as such, they had vivid memories of the Depression) as well as the fact that they lived in an area that at the time had no TV reception - so they didn't realize they were missing out on anything as they weren't constantly being reminded of what products their lives were lacking.
So you're saying that the current way is normative, but I'm saying that prior to this epoch of consumerism there was another way. And may be people were actually happier then with less.
(oh, and WallMart is not the type of frugality I've got in mind)
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
You can’t sustain a city with consumers who don’t want to spend money.
Really? Why would buying "expensive clothing" sustain the city? What about sustaining the city with producers who are frugal and save money? The things they produce may be bought outside of the region. They may not even be physical things - software, for example. Sure, in recent years (decades?) we've been brainwashed to think that it's all about consumption, but that wasn't always so and now we definitely need to be more focused on production as well as saving (to rebuild the capital base). Growing your own food in your own yard can be part of that production as can developing your own ideas... and it's not all about money. Living on less is good not only for the environment, but also affords us more free time to do things we actually want to do instead of slaving away just to keep the consumption machine running.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
Replace Starbucks with Stumptown.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
Before I moved I was warned that Portlanders are tired of Californians moving here and that I might face a negative attitude. Almost 4 years later I have yet to encounter this.
Probably because most of your neighbors moved here from CA within the last 10 years?
I remember when I was a kid and our family moved to Coos Bay (It's in Oregon, on the South coast) from Texas in 1976. We had just driven into town with a U-Haul in tow and two different motorists within about 10 minutes shouted "Go Home!" at us... Us kids were a bit concerend, but my parents had gone to college in Eugene said something like "Yep, we're back in Oregon!" and dad explained that it's so nice here that people want to keep it that way. Fortunately, I was young enough to be able to lose my Texas accent within a short amount of time (and after some ribbing from my classmates).
Oh, and my parents moved (back) here in 1976 without having jobs lined up ahead of time. Dad figured he could substitute teach and mom figured she'd be able to find work in a hospital as a nurses aid. It was a tough couple of years including all of us picking ferns in the forest which we sold to a florist wholesaler as well as digging clams at low tide so we'd have some protein. Tough, but memorable.
When I moved back again in 1990 I made sure that we changed our California plates as soon as possible. My wife (a California native) didn't understand why I was in such a hurry to do that.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
And yet you've got companies like Oregon Steel that are moving their HQ (and executives) to Chicago because they don't think we've got good connecting flights from PDX to the rest of the country...
Yes, Portland has been the hip, cool place for hipsters to move to for a few years now, but remember, what' hip today probably won't be in a few years. And then there's Bend with it's 50% growth, but that was prior to the real estate bust. You've gotta wonder if a lot of this touted growth is being viewed in the rear-view mirror.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Who Are Your Neighbors Now?
Very well said Mark Solarprophet. Just to add to your remarks on Gov Tom McCall: it's difficult to imagine now that a Republican Governor would fight to ensure that all beaches in Oregon should be owned by the public and that there should be no private ownership of beaches. And this in 1967. That's why we can have access to any part of the beach in Oregon. Try that in California where they've got fences that go down do the low tide zone to keep you from walking through. Same in most other coastal states. Oregon stands alone in allowing complete public access to beaches. And this was done by the "natives".
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Portland's South Waterfront
It would be interesting if we could use the river more for transportation. How about a river bus that goes from somewhere down by Sellwood all the way up to St. Johns with stops along the way?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Portland's South Waterfront
It's odd that this is a dog-owner mecca. I just can't imagine having a dog in one of those high-rise condos. Maybe a very small one. Seems like a cat would be a better choice of pet in that kind of enviornment.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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