Unions Discourage Higher Education?

While reading an article on the ending of the grocery worker's strike over at Master of None, this quote by the union hit me in the head:

the markets were threatening to destroy one of the last U.S. jobs available that could provide middle-class comfort without requiring years of higher education.

I was raised by parents who both grew up in very poor families, but managed to go to college, becoming the first generation in both families to do so. And through this education, they escaped the poverty they grew up in.

What these two hammered into my brain is that if I didn't get good grades, get into, and finish college, I would be no better than a street beggar. Maybe with hard work and no education I could aspire to a trailer home in the bad part of town, so hard work by itself wasn't going to work. By the time I was ten, it was ingrained in me that education meant a better life.

So to see our unions bemoaning lack "middle class comfort" for the uneducated is just...ridiculous. OFCOURSE people without advanced education have a harder time working their way up the economic ladder. The job the unions should be doing is to get their members better education and training to work their way up the ladder, not trying to strong-arm companies into artificially paying their workers more than their worth to society.

As Michael says in his commentary, Welcome to the Real World. We are now living in a global economy, meaning Americans are now competing with a few billion more people. Americans can no longer enjoy being 5% of the planet's population while enjoying nearly half of it's economic wealth without being better educated, better trained and working harder to keep the lion's share of the planet's wealth.

Hitting the Slopes

I'm outta here until late next week. Snow has been dumping on Mammoth and I am going to check it out.

Excellent

Let's hope this happens.

Government Considering Dismantling BBC

80s Memories

For us children of the 80's, there is a site that lets you play classic video games. However, this doesn't need all the emulation software and downloads, but just pops up a browser window with the game and you're off. I tried out Pacman and although the controls are a little slow, it's the real thing.

Hat Tip: Outside the Beltway

Vegas? Again?

I will be attending my third trade show in four months tomorrow in Vegas. Not a big surprise since it is the city picked most often for trade shows, but it is getting OLD. I have been to Vegas dozens of times on business and pleasure and the city has just lost that magic it had when I first started going.

I have stayed on every major hotel on the Strip and Downtown. I have been to all the casinos, most of the shows and many of the better restaurants. While I enjoy gambling as a form of entertainment, it is something I am simply not interested in doing for hours on end, so, in short, Vegas gets boring for me in about a day. The grand hotels and glitz just seem like the tacky, Americanized bastardizations of the real places I have been to (Paris, Rome, Venice, etc.). It's "been there, done that".

Anyway, the trade shows are interesting, and that is why I am going. I will post a report on PMA/DIMA (Photo Marketing Association/Digital Imaging Marketing Association) by Monday. I hope to see some interesting products and trends for consumer imaging products, sort of a specialized case of what I reported from CES.

Second & Third Day on Job - Win Over Sales

I have commented before about the epic battles between Sales and Marketing and how to avoid them. I am following my own advice and being very proactive about getting connected with the sales force and letting them know my strategy and plans, and getting their input and advice. This was very important to do immediately since I was already contacting potential customers I knew in this market and setting up meetings at an upcoming trade show. So here are the steps I took:

Step 1 - Contact VP Sales - I actually called him last week before I started, but he wasn't in, so I left a voice mail. I followed up with an email on Monday introducing myself and my desire to make sure we had "good sales/marketing coordination in this segment". I then listed the companies I was already in contact with about setting up meetings.

I received a "Welcome Aboard" email with the names of the salespeople for the accounts I named, and a thanks.

Step 2 - Contact Sales People - Dropping the name of the VP ("VP Sales gave me your name as the person to contact") I called and emailed the sales people, letting them know who I was, my position, and my desire to speak to them about their specific account. They all called back almost immediately and I had great conversations with all of them. They appreciated me getting their insight, account history, and their advice on how to move forward. In return I gave them my contact names and information, and my promise to keep them up to date on everything that happened at the trade show.

So now that I have included them in my strategy formulation and made them a part of the process from the beginning, sales and marketing can feel (and act like) we are on the same team.

Why Kirk is Better than Picard

Like you need a list of examples, but here's 100 (no permalink for the listing, so just scroll down to find the entry). A few of my favorites:

90. Kirk would personally throw Wesley off his bridge.
86. Kirk would never sing to children in a crisis.
66. Kirk says "Shoot first and wait for retaliation."
45. If Kirk finds a strange spinning probe, he blows it up.
26. Kirk plays god with lesser cultures, and then exploits them for resources.
6. Three Words: Flying Leg Kick

Of course Picard is better than either Janeway or Archer. I would put Archer at the bottom, BUT Archer is doing better this season, at least within the Zindi story line. Anyone who puts someone in an airlock and starts decompressing it in order to get info gets a big star in my book (I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at some wimpy decision by Janeway). I didn't watch DSN enough to judge Cisco Sisco, but he's disqualified anyway since he is a captain of a stationary barge instead of a star ship.

Hat Tip: Poliblogger

You Sometimes Gotta Wonder About People in Business

Business Pundit has a link to the 2003 Awards for 101 Dumbest Decisions in Business. It takes a while to read through them, but all of them are the familiar stories from last year that made you go "What were they thinking?!?!" when you read them with your morning coffee.

It's stories like these that make you think that one has to be REALLY stupid to get to be a top decision maker in a U.S. company, or that perhaps a lot of people just lose touch with reality once they get the brass ring.

Just Because Everyone Else Is Doing It

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide




create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide