It makes me feel really stupid. It is like I couldn't even do well on an old Atari and see 5 year olds play X box games today.

But still, I am so glad I got over that fear, and I think I did it because I wasn't under any pressure, pluss Bob is a friend and not an athoritarian like a teacher so I was able to stop him when I was confused and ask qustions to clarify. 

It really is a big deal for me emotionally. I spent far too much time as a kid worrying about what others think I should do or how I should do it and never understood myself at that age to the point of knowing that it is ok to be different and that it simply amounted to environment and processing information differently. Since last night I have had a couple of moments of crying because I finally understood something I thought I never would understand.

I knew the molecules of DNA prior, but now those things have more clarity because I know the parts of the car. It is an awesome feeling.

I get that part, I don't remember even most of whatwa I learned in college, but science however was the one thing I really was jealous others picked up quickly. I am just thrilled that one of those things that wanted to understand I finally do understand.

It still teaches you time management, deadlines, and research, and even working with others depending on the assignement. Plus you get exposed to more of the world because of subject matter and or the diverse people who come to that college.

The great thing about numbers is that they are universal. Even more universal than language. 1+1=2 whether you want it to or not, whether you deny it or not, whether you know it or not. 

Really? Who is paying the salaries? If it isn't me, then I must have a shitload of money I misplaced and when I find it, I'm headed to VEGAS BABY! A job is nothing more than demand for a type of labor. 

The buying public creates demand for a product or service. Many businesses (most when starting out) consist of a single person fulfilling part of that demand. It is when that person decides they don't want to or can't do a particular part of the work that THEY have demand for someone else to do it. The end user doesn't give a shit if the product was made by one person or a million people, just like you didn't stop to think how many people worked to mislabel that pork. If one person personally raised the pig, slaughtered it, butchered it, carried it to the store and mislabeled it, you would neither know nor care. YOU created demand for pork (well actually probably just meat in general, if you saw a better deal on say beef you probably would have bought that instead) you neither knew nor cared how many employees got jobs to provide it to you. If the grocer raised his own hogs and slaughtered them out back, it wouldn't have changed your purchasing decision.

A very simplistic approach to a complex economic system, and one that was thouroughly debunked by the failure of GW Bush. That was his theory, hence the tax rebates, low interest rates and stimulus pushed by GW, which has obviously not resulted in a thriving demand. The amount of demand is not solely determined by the amount of money in your pocket. Nor is there a such thing as a vague "demand". Demand is for something specific, eg "I'm hungry I want food". The amount of money in your pocket merely determines how much you are willing to satisfy your demands. "I won the lottery and am hungry, lets try some caviar on a whale bone spoon" or "I only have $5 in my pocket and I'm hungry, Ramen isn't so bad if you cook it right..." Swings in an economy usually occur because demand drops (or was overestimated all along) in a particular industry- most recently housing- so workers who were skilled in that industry and supporting industries have to move to different jobs to satisfy different demands. There is always demand, the question is simply WHAT do people demand. The problem is that often the consumers themselves don't really know what they want (such as you in the meat section didn't know you wanted pork until you saw the deal). The person who can identify and satisfy demands will make money, the one who identifies incorrectly loses money.  

I don't particularly concern myself with unemployment numbers. I want the number of employees I determine I need for my business, what other people choose to do is their business. I can't grasp the concept of being unemployed. I've been without an employer many times in my life, but I have never had a situation where I was unable to find someone willing to pay me for a product or service. A week or two of not having anything else to do is a really long time to find customers. 

Where are they going to get the money? Businesses don't print money you know, only government does that. If expenses rise, the money has to come from somewhere. Walmart, for example, had $16 billion in net profits last year. If they distributed that equally to their 2.2 million employees, that would be $727 per employee. Of course, that means that they would have $0, which means no investors are going to be interested (why would you invest for $0 return?) and the company will be unable to borrow money, build new Walmarts or even renovate old Walmarts. In short, the company would go the way of Kmart pretty quick. 

And yes, CEO's make a lot, but if you divide their pay into the other employees and pay them $0.00, the other employees get a few pennies a year. Rarely do large corporate CEO's take a sizable percentage of the companies overall salary. Small businesses like me take a much larger percentage, because I can't live on $1 per employee- I don't have that many employees. The CEO of Walmart for example, makes roughly $1.59 per employee per year. So while paying him nothing and distributing it equally among the workers might make you feel all moral, it makes no difference to the employees themselves. Even a Walmart employee would probably recover if they lost $2 in the laundry.  

Go ahead, do the math. It isn't so different from the periodic table. Pretend you owned Walmart and tell me how much of a raise you would give your employees and explain where the money would come from. 

Only if those employees turn around and put their pay raise right back into your company, which most won't. Whatever your company is, there is only so much any person wants to buy from you, and since the vast majority of businesses offer discounts of their products to employees, you are not making any profit even if the employees do spend their extra money in your establishment. 

It really pains me to see people call themselves socialists and not have a clue how the system works. It means they don't have a clue how much would change if socialism were broadly instituted. I'm very much a socialist, and it's quite ironic that whenever Beyond and Brian argue, 99% of the time I agree with Beyond. The remaining 1% of the time I disagree with both of them. sigh