Who will be the next US President?

Jamie, since you are a university professor (albeit long retired) you should know that ‘ignorance’ can never be funny. It’s alwasy dangerous. It’s actually you who is insulting me by suggesting that I was trying to inslut Bush by calling him a cowboy. It’s common knowledge that many cowboys are very well educated (some are even believed to hold Harvard degrees).[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Commercial offering special prices on mens’ suits[YSaerTTEW443543]

What do you mean by ‘had’? Did Bush have to give his Harvard degree back?[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Customer is inquiring about cleaning services through voice mail message[YSaerTTEW443543]

Torsten, you’re getting messed up with English verb tenses. “Had” here means he had it when he was president and he still has it.

It’s similar to the mistake a German lady made when someone said a woman “had a baby”. This means the woman gave birth to a baby and still had the baby, but the German lady thought the woman’s baby had been taken away.

Apparatenly, you are the person who doesn’t know much about the subject you are talking about. Who told you that the European Union has been runied? That is wishful thinking by, Jamie (K). Neither the United States nor the European Union will be ever ruined. Not economically, politically, socially or in any other way. For some reason, you use all your expertise and knowledge to wag a war on Obama and the European Union. Now, that is what I call funny. Despite all your academic accolades and your age you still have not learned to comprehend some very basic principles. Now, this actually not funny but rather sad.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Radio news update including flooding rescue report and government financial support plans[YSaerTTEW443543]

It’s far from wishful thinking, Torsten, because the majority of my income comes from the European Union. I don’t want the EU to collapse, and I especially don’t want its currency to collapse.

Several EU countries have come close to financial collapse and are being propped up mainly by Germany. Their unemployment rates are beyond Americans’ worst nightmares even in the midst of the recession Obama has prolonged. The reason for this is mainly that they have instituted systems that Obama craves for the US, including draconian taxes and rules on businesses that suppress employment, bizarro regulations that suppress free enterprise (remember when they tried to put the correct size of tomatoes in the constitution?), and tons of “free” stuff for everybody.

As Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is that after a while you run out of other people’s money.” This is the situation in southern Europe, and Obama is trying to take the United States there. If the voters are smart, they’ll get rid of him.

The reason why these countries have such great unemployment rates is not because of their “draconian tax laws” and rules that supposedly suppress employment. The reason is that companies hire the least amount of people to get most of the work done. In Germany, we have that silly saying, “Geiz ist geil” (stinginess is great), which seems to be the motto most employers go by. It is all about efficiency and profit. And as far as the Euro is concerned: the reason is mainly corruption. For example, Europe’s major belly ache, Greece, has gotten itself into so much depth because employees received 15 or more paychecks a year (instead of 12) and bribed themselves out of paying taxes at all, they either didn’t have laws regulating and bringing enough income into their coffers, or simply ignored them. If they had payed these oh so draconian taxes, they wouldn’t have these troubles! Greece has so many natural resources, yet none of them are being touched. So, the money press keeps producing money and the Euro loses its worth.

Claudia

Claudia, leftists want you to believe that employment is suppressed by rich people’s “greed”, but it’s generally government (particularly leftist governments) that really suppress employment. The leftists play that same game here, and Obama’s the most prominent practitioner of it now.

It’s the nature of business to try to do the most with the smallest number of people. That’s called efficiency. Companies in every country do it. It’s not greed and it’s not cruelty, because it releases workers to do something useful, rather than sticking around in a make-work job. It also helps make everything more affordable to ordinary people – and ordinary people aren’t willing to pay higher prices just to keep unnecessary workers sitting around.

There are laws in various countries in Europe that definitely do suppress employment. Take the laws in France that make it almost impossible to fire a permanent employee almost no matter what he does. This makes employers hesitant to hire people, because if the employee doesn’t work out, they can’t get rid of him. The result is that you have people working one internship after another even into their mid-30s, and France has nightmarish unemployment. (There are laws and regulations in the US that cause similar problems for black workers, and I know there are businesses who are afraid to hire blacks, because it will be almost impossible to fire them if they don’t work. Since those laws are not applied to whites or Asians, those people don’t have that obstacle.)

Some countries require employers to pay for insurance for all employees, even for employees who already have insurance from some other source and don’t need it or want it from their employer. That needlessly raises the cost of employing someone.

Another good one: A court in Spain recently ruled that if you get sick on your vacation, your employer has to give you a second paid vacation. How nuts is that?! It just brings the basic cost of employing people farther up, so employers don’t hire. Spain has outrageous unemployment as it is.

In the US or Canada, or an Asian country, if a product suddenly gets extremely popular, the producer merely adds a second shift to meet the demand. In some European countries, you can’t get rid of those second-shift workers after you hire them, so instead of producing enough product to satisfy consumer demand, the product just gets scarce. I’ve particularly noticed this with Scandinavian products, if they’re not outsourced to China.

Then there are such hurdles just to starting a business. One of the MBA interns from Germany at one company told me about how he and his brother tried to start a business. He enumerated all the obstacles the government put in their way, from the huge amount of money they had to fork over just to incorporate (instead of $50, or whatever it costs here), the forced payments to the chamber of commerce, and other obstructions, and he said they finally realized they couldn’t afford to do it. Here they’d have been up and running – and employing people – very quickly.

There’s also a strange habit of many Europeans to refuse employment that they think is below their station, rather than take some kind of job to stay busy. So they stay home. Recently, an engineer was scanning my groceries. He didn’t want to rot at home, so he took that job. He’ll be an engineer again after the recession’s over, I’m sure, but he refuses to stay idle, so he’s not counted as “unemployed”. Many Europeans would consider what he’s doing to be humiliating, so they stay unemployed.

Jamie, you are the one who is misled by the media and your own twisted view on things. You can rest assured that neither the EU nor the euro will ever collapse. On the contrary, it will grow bigger and stronger. At some point in the near future the euro will be the only currency in the entire EU which will have more than 30 member states.

We will have an EU citizenship just as you have a US citizenship. Will you live to see that? Well, I would guess that your age is somewhere between 60 and 75 so it might be challenge for you. Knowing you and your political background, I’m sure that on an academic level you will keep bitching and moaning about the Europeans and their crazy socialist ideas but will that change the course of time? Of course not. You can only make an impact if you think positive thoughts and use your mind constructivley. You clearly don’t.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Lecturer is starting a new of the training program[YSaerTTEW443543]

I’m definitely not between 60 and 70, Torsten. Wrong guess. Younger.

You don’t know my political background anyway. When I was younger, I was a far leftist, bordering on communist. Then reality forced me to realize that communism and socialism don’t work, and actually damage people, and I began purposely reading lots of things I knew I’d disagree with (and I still do that). You probably think I was born with the opinions I have now.

My political background is the reason I could detect very quickly what Obama’s problem is. He has a similar background of political belief, and it is easy for me to detect a former Marxist who is not completely “cured”. I was listening to him with an open mind in 2008, and then he let some opinions slip that were right out of the communist playbook of the mid-20th century, like forced volunteerism for students, a militarily trained civilian national police force, etc. Since then, his speech and behavior have completely borne out what I thought I realized about him. I don’t think he’s an actual communist, but he’s got the characteristics of former student Marxists who never grew up philosophically and never started looking at the world empirically.

Since we’re making guesses about people now, Torsten, based on things you’ve said, my guess is that you admire “elected” gangster dictators, such as Putin. Obama violates the US constitution, violates people’s right to free speech and free exercise of religion, seeks out and tries to assassinate the character of people who donate to his opposition, and even worse things, so I suppose these Putinesque qualities are some of the reasons you admire him. You’re a partially unreconstructed East German, is my guess.

Jamie, I don’t admire people who constantly harp on about negative things and don’t use their minds constructively for positive things. It doesn’t matter whether you are a ‘leftist’, a ‘communist’ or ‘conservative’. If you use most of your mental power to talk about other people’s faults you will never inspire anyone. As for my political believes, to me there has been only one true leader in the world: Napoleon Hill.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Commercial for home financing[YSaerTTEW443543]

And again, Torsten, I don’t wish collapse on the Europeans. I don’t want the EU to collapse, I don’t want their currency to collapse, and I don’t want it to shrink. (In fact, if I didn’t believe in the future of the EU, I wouldn’t be so heavily invested in some of its companies.)

However, I do think that its problems won’t be fixed without a lot of pain for some people, and a lot less socialism. There will still be socialism, but it will be less irrational, and a lot of the government-supported leisure class will have to get off their butts. Some of the East European countries are going to advance beyond the southern ones, simply because the people there aren’t so spoiled.

Remember, Torsten, you were the one baiting me this time.

You were the one expressing naïve belief in Obama and speaking nastily about what you perceive to be Romney’s faults (basically his teeth and his looks, because you seem to know nothing else about him yet). You even resurrected George W. Bush.

A couple of us living in the US gave our opinions of your beloved Obama, and then you started getting nasty. I was responding.

OTS, this clip is not funny but just poorly made. It won’t hurt Obama. It simply won’t attackt much attention because it doesn’t contain any new or useful idea. Just primitive Obama bashing won’t cut it in this race.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Announcing next speaker at local city council rally[YSaerTTEW443543]

Jamie, what it comes down it is how to create the conditions for small and medium size business to thrive. I did read some of your thoughts on that question here on the forum but as far as I understand you have been in business yourself. You have bought some stock in a couple of companies as many Americans do but you have not been able to create a compan and run a team. So how do you know that Romney is the right guy for American businesses if you have never had your own business yourself?[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, talks: Job candidate is explaining why company should should hire him[YSaerTTEW443543]

Yes, Torsten, the video Torty put up was a bit embarrassing. These make the same point more effectively:

youtube.com/watch?v=4Lr49t4-2b8&feature=plcp

youtube.com/watch?v=CylDvgsrBxA&feature=plcp

youtube.com/watch?v=sfn6axtWH-I&feature=plcp

On another subject:

youtube.com/watch?v=Gf_TjkvcWZY&feature=plcp

I have and do now run teams in other contexts. (I’m supposedly good at it, because I leave people free to do what they’re best at in their own way.) I have deliberately chosen to stay with what I’m doing – that is, “owning my own job” – rather than take the next step and start a company. I have more autonomy this way, and I don’t have to do sales, among other things I don’t like. I also avoid a lot of government red tape that way.

Like the current – excellent – governor of my state, Romney has been a successful venture capitalist and CEO. He has brought quite a few companies back from the dead, and he’s helped some startups achieve great success. Some of his risks didn’t work out, but most worked out well, and some worked out spectacularly.

One of his more famous achievements is that he was brought in to run the Salt Lake City Olympics when it was at the point of failure. They almost didn’t happen. He fixed the budget, eliminated a lot of corruption, and the Olympics went off successfully, which looked impossible before he came in.

Note that before he became president, Obama had never managed anything. He’d never managed any sort of business, not even the common experience of managing two slightly less-experienced coworkers at a Burger King as a teenager. (In fact, I don’t think he ever had a job at all until he finished his education at a ripe old age.) He doesn’t understand economics, he doesn’t understand business; he only understands politics.

Compare him to Clinton, who deeply understood economics and was pragmatic.

Jamie, I assume you don’t mean me personally, but still, rest assured that I don’t believe what leftists or rightists “want” me to believe. I have lived in both, the US and the EU, long enough to know how their governments and media work.

Correct, and that’s exactly what I said.

No, it annoys customers being forced to run around in a store, spending at least half an hour just to search for a salesperson or assistant. It annoys patients to sit around in the waiting room for two+ hours to finally see a doctor. And it annoys people having to demonstrate so they finally get a raise while politicians can raise their own income however they see fit. THAT’S what annoys ordinary people.

And yet France is doing very well in the EU, apart from Germany. Their economy is one of the strongest. Their unemployment rate is high, that is true. However, it is mainly caused by their extremely low wages rather than wonderful social structure.

Please name these countries. In Germany, employers are required to pay half of the health insurance, while the employee pays the other half. The amount of the monthly cost is waged by the amount of what the employee earns. An employee can choose whether (s)he wants additional coverage, which is private coverage meant to fill a few weak spots in the required coverage and paid by the employee. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

So, why aren’t they? What’s keeping them to do it in the USA? The green card? Ah, nah!

I wonder how you arrived at that conclusion. How can you say that Europeans refuse to work a job that is beneath them, as you put it? That is a statement based purely on your opinion, and it sounds rather prejudiced. Have you ever asked a cashier what he or she had actually learned? Or a relief waiter?

Claudia

P.S. US companies moved and still move their work to Mexico and South America. Why? Because the taxes in the US are so low, their social system so beneficial for employers, and their laws so lax and great for businesses?

I think you’ve missed Jamie’s point entirely.
Jamie has a legitimate gripe with certain laws that make it impossible for an employer to lay off some of his staff. And that is wrong. The employer should not have government-created hurdles in his way, that keep him from running a successful operation. If I am shorthanded at the moment and I hire a temp then I should be able to let him go when the business is slow.

If a business had a surplus of workers that slack off or idle most of the time, but get paid nonetheless, then the business will go belly up pretty soon, because money doesn’t grow on trees, and the employer can’t conjure up his employee’s salaries. The employer must get the proverbial bang for his buck. That’s why it’s in employer’s best interests to keep his staff to a minimum - to get the most bang! Would you hire ten people to renovate your house, when two would be more than enough to do the same job? I rest my case.

If there’s a shortage of staff in a clinic or a store, then the person in charge, or the owner, will simply take on new help. That’s all. If they refuse to do that, then they will get less and less customers and eventually go out of business and clear the way for other, more shrewd business owners. It’s called competition. Businesses are in fiece competition with each other to provide a better service, vuying for consumers. That’s how capitalism works.

Did they intend to drive a GmbH? If so they had to store a certain amount, sure. Driving a GmbH prevents people from being in charge of breakdowns. It´s just the amount they stored their debtees can require when entrepreneurs fail not private properties. The storage mustn´t be bank accounts or such but also stocks of the company can please the storage. Often it are cars founders like to drive and register in the companies name. Furtheron people founding a company or start selfemployment can delay the tax salary for two years and often enough such companies get bankrupt after two years and not even are able to pay their subontractors or purveyors and thus often bring subcontractors to their financial limits. Aren´t that reasonable matters for hurdles?

On the other hand there are societies that support founders of companies with credits. Members of such societies are experienced business people who give their own money - not politicians or officials. Of course they require interests from their loans. The applicants for such loans indeed have to develop a plan of business and prove the success and they have to vouch for the business plan with their private property. Belive it or don´t if only the members of the societies see a good chane for success they give the applicant the loan.

Plus there is a special bank here , the KfW bank (creditinstitute for economic support) that also has a fund for support of businessstarters they even offer low interests. It´s the same with them as with the private loan givers. The problem with the KfW is that you have to apply for their loans at private banks and the private banks try to refuse to work for them and rather give the loans themselves - of course with higher rates of interest.

As to me it´s not the law that denies people run a business. Even though there are some salaries looking useless. It´s sort of good business to find a market for the products one provides. And the lower the merrit of the good is the easier is it to start your business.

Btw, I do know at least three people having started a business successfully the recent 5 years. The one is floor tiler, the second is mechanical facturer and the third one provides security plants. They all had to cope with the mentioned scary obstacles, too. Of course, they started slowly but have employees nowadays. So what are those two mentioned MBA´s complaining about?