Does anyone really need to be a billionaire?

I spent 30 years writing code. I doubt there's a line of it in use today. A bricklayer's work lasts for generations. But I didn't want to be a bricklayer.

I'm about the same way. Most of my 401k was in fixed fund. I tell people that I worried about making my money but don't want to worry about keeping it.

What's the difference between a 401 and a "stodgy old traditional IRA"? I've got both, and they're both in a diverse mix of mutual funds.

Was your buddy day-trading individual stocks in his 401? That's just dumb.

Cindy Hamilton

You might have been writing the wrong sort of code. I know some aircraft companies still using 30-year-old Fortran code (or older). If it ain't broke....

Cindy Hamilton

So it's now a crime to offer a better or similar product at a lower price than a competitor? WTF?

Show us the examples.

Sounds like more sour grapes and attempts to rewrite history. More likely Walmart gave them a big deal, they expanded, more competition showed up, so Walmart like most other businesses could obtain the product at lower prices. If company A wanted a long term commitment from Walmart, then they should have required that in the contract or not taken the new business. But again, if you have specific examples, I'd like to look at them.

That's more BS. Were guys like Rockefeller and Carnegie tough competitors who built huge businesses? Yes. But they also built the US oil and steel industries and like Gates put out great products at low prices that helped advance and transform America. And they did it within the laws at the time. Since then the laws have changed and some of what they did would now be illegal, but that's a long way from stealing. They were smart, shrewd entrepreneurs.

Working people trade their labor for money.

The stupid ones waste their money on booze, drugs, cigarettes etc. The intelligent ones invest which creates wealth for themselves.

And it's not like M is doing extremely well. They are struggling today in a crowded field of competitors. With govt in various states and cities raising the minimum wage, almost doubling it, to $15 an hour. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they are trying to squeeze pennies out of volume commodities wherever they can. One cent a package doesn't sound like much until you multiply it by the volume that M pushes.

What complete BS. There are rich people all the way from Bezos down to the local auto dealer or supermarket owner that have created a tremendous number of jobs. And even the rich who inherited it and just sit on it, where is it "sitting'? Typically in stocks and that capital is helping to create more jobs. You sound like a bitter old fool who's envious of other people's success. And Gates isn't the only billionaire that has contributed a lot to charities, most have. Even the ruthless turn of the century titans like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon contributed enormous amounts to charity.

From performing an economic service.

You can't be that stupid.

If a person made a billion selling umbrellas, maybe the

If they are overpriced then people would be buying the competitors umbrellas. Free markets see to that.

Most traditional IRAs are in stocks.

You're confused again. A traditional IRA can be invested in stocks too and most are. One poor period doesn't negate the fact that the stock market has returned about 8% over the long term, which is what people should be looking at for an IRA. What's the alternative? Put it into a bank or bonds earning 3%?

Absolutely, what an absurd question.

What

Actually, as I recall, some companies were taken over by other companies back in 2008 when they failed. Do small businesses come to the aid of their competitors or any other business for that matter? The local baker is failing, does the auto dealer come help him?

It means that stock buyers are more aggressive than the sellers, that they believe in the companies they are buying. And overwhelmingly they are right and have been right, through most of history. The economy is growing, GDP is growing, corp profits are growing. What planet are you on?

A few years ago I shifted to bonds. I'm more concerned about avoiding steep loss than the benefits of a big gain.

If the following hapened to you would you call it stealing or just good business practice.

I keep harping on this.

I worked for a large company. The Kochs bought it. Changed the retirement. When I first started , the retirement rule was you could retire anytime after 55 years old. The company would pay 80 % of your insurance and you would get 100 % of your retirement.

Koch bought it. Recended the 55 age, you had to be 62 to start getting your reirement money and no medical insurance. Another company bought the company. The then proceeded to change the retirement and cut out 2 weeks of vacation for those that had been there over 20 years and had been getting 6 weeks of vacation. In all, I had to work an extra 2 years from my planning and even at that it cost me $ 500 a month in retirement money.

I say they stole 2 years of my life and $ 500 a month.

Sure, that's typical too, you're retired. But over a worker's lifetime the logical choice for most of the working years is to be in stocks. And there are a lot more people working than retired.

There are villains of the corporate world. I had to retire early when the company started going down the drain. Got reduced pension with medical insurance but later they made us retirees pay half of any increase. Retirement papers guaranteed pension but had no mention of health care. A lot of employers have done this and been sued but win.

If you work and retire from the company now there is no pension and no health insurance. I think you are better off because more is put in your 401k and when you are retired you alone are responsible for your welfare. Problem would be people that spend these savings before they retire.

I think the main thing about a 401k is that if a company matches some of the money you put into it, it gives a good reason to do so.

Had the company I worked for not started the 401k , I doubt that I would have put anyting in on my own. I was almost 40 years old at the time. I was so strapped for money at the time it started up, I only put in the minimum ammount we had to to get it started. About 6 months later we got a raise and I put that into the 401k to max it out.

I hit it lucky and 2 times when the stock market started down, I moved the money to a money market type of account. Then as it started back up I went back to stock, which in the 401k was sort of a mutual fund. Worked out very well. The third time the market dipped, I had so much on my mind that I let it slip by. The money dropped to almost half,but in a few years, it came back up and more. Lost a lot in the last dip , but it is now more than it ever was. You just have to have a way to ride things out for about 2 years if the market does go south.

Being retired I plan on staying in stock of some kind. I will probably keep about half of the RMD for a year in cash/money market just incase the marked does tank for a year or so.

As I told the man that handles my IRA, I have enough pension and SS that I can get by. I may have to eat beans instead of steak for a year, but can get by just fine as all is paid for.

Ralph Mowery snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote

Not exactly a great way to run a business.

Arguably a sensible approach if the competitors in that industry had a similar deal with their employees.

Clearly the original employment conditions were overly generous.

We'd need to know why that was so and whether it was done at a time when those employees were hard to find and if that later changed significantly so there was no longer any need to offer such attractive working conditions to attract enough good enough employees and to get them to stay.

Clearly not theft, you were free to work for someone else who offered better wages and conditions if you could find one. And a lot better than losing your job entirely because it was a dying industry like with newspapers etc currently.

And better than the entire operation going bust because like GM they had been stupid enough to agree to unaffordable benefits in retirement for so many of their employees.

You'd be wrong when you say that.

They had to offer good wages and benefits to get workers to stay.

The jobs was easy and clean for the most part. It was the hours that made for a large turn over. The plant had to run 24 hours a day and no shutdowns for anything 365 days a year.

Most of the jobs were on rotating 8 hour shifts. You worked 7 of the 3 rd shift off two, worked 7 of the 2nd , off 2, worked 7 of the 1st and off 4 days, and repeated. There was a preferred crew that worked Mon, Tue, wed on 2 nd and Fri, Sat on the 1 st to take up the slack in the hours.

That went on from around 1965 to the big change in the 80's or so. There were plenty of jobs in the area up to that time . They did not pay nearly as much. The company went out of business about a year ago.

It made polyester material from the raw chemicals. Made 3 products. One looked like a bale of cotton. ONe looked like an unbraded string that mainly went into tire cord. The third and smallest was called chip. Pieces of plastic that were about 1/4 inches long and 1/8 inch square that things like the 2 liter soft drink bottles are made of. That is right, the same thing the drink bottles are made of is 99.5% of what people wear is made from.

Stuff went mainly overseas.

Even with some some of the better pay in the area, for many years they would bring in about 20 new workers almost every month and be lucky to have 5 of them to stay over a month and even some of those would leave in less than a year.

There were about 2500 hourly workers and another 500 salaried of which about half of them worked a regular day shift.