Zen - Only In America!
My Dad's parents were tenant farmers in Livingston County IL. They worked through the depression and WWII and managed to buy 40 acres of land. My Mom's folks lived 14 miles down the road and manged to buy 200 acres. They breathed plenty of grain dust and chemicals and they worked their way up from dirt poor.
My Dad was the first person in the immediate family to ever complete college at IL. He started his career as a feed salesman in cenral IL. He went to work for a wood paneling company, selling their by-products. He quit that job and started his own agricultural commodity marketing company, learned to fly his own plane, and flew around the midwest selling barges and railcars of feed and fertilizer products. He invested in oil/gas drilling programs, got in the ethanol business, and then micronutrient zinc for the animal feed and fertilizer markets. From dirt poor son of tenant farmers, to successful American Entrepreneur!
I have 2 brothers and Dad let us stay home until the summer we turned 15, then we had to find somewhere to work away from home for the entire summer. My older brother went to a farm in Southern CO, then 12 years as a Coast Guard aviator, he is now a Delta Airlines Captain flying overseas routes. My twin brother pounded nails in Alaska and then went commercial fishing in Kodiak, he went into new home sales and road that horse until it died out from under him 2 years ago.
I went to Kodiak, AK and worked on a charter boat for 2 years, then 6 years of commercial Halibut and Salmon fishing. I never crab fished because I decided to go to college and not risk my life in the Bering Sea. (Watch a few episodes of Deadliest Catch on the Discvovery Channel) I completed college and got in the family business. We built a new facility in Wyoming and lost $950,000 the first year. I had to borrow $58,000 from my home equity or face being diluted. We were successful in the following years and sold the business in 1999. I worked for the Corporation that bought the company for 3 years, they spun it off and now we are private again. I manage the sales and marketing and we have taken the company from $16 million to over $60 million in feed and fertilizer sales. We provide 65 people with good jobs, health benefits (HSA accounts, and a 401k. We compete with Chinese labor and their distorted currency and export subsidies. The Chinese have millions of people cleaning chemical tanks every day, they could only dream of working at my plant for what we reward our employees with.
I invest in stocks with my fellow VMC'ers with part of the money I have earned. I "donate" over 60% of my annual income to various local, municipal, county, state, and federal agencies. Some of that money finds it's way to the poor, under-employed, jobless, under nurished, abused, and down-trodden around the world. My comments were made based on the manipulation that is going on thanks to governments, financial institutions, politicians, reserve banks, etc., etc. I think most individual stock market investors feel the same way!
I am not going to be guilt tripped by you or any other person for what I have, all of it has been made possible by a system designed to reward competition. Capitalism works, the current blend of socially engineered economics, public/private partnerships will fail. The entitlements, and something for nothing policies being put forth have already bankrupted the nation. The current system is unsustainable, and we are broke as a nation.
For those of us who have worked our asses off all of our lives and lived the American dream, keeping our wealth has been extremely challenging/frustrating.
Yours Truly,
Arrogant Greedy Capitalist American Dreaming Putz
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