Stocks only go up!XtremeJibber2001 wrote:Never. Index funds ... buy and hold.KingsFourMan wrote: ↑May 11th, '21, 12:17At what price would you call it a buy? I still think it has a long way to go based on nothing other than a hunch which means nothing.
If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 11th, '21, 12:46 Tell you what, if I had Doc's Delorian and I could go back five years and put all my money into Vail, I'd be sitting pretty right now. But not as pretty as if I had had gone back three years and put all my money into Tesla.
Looked to add Vail to my Roth back when it was $85 per share. Decided that it was over priced and passed. My advisor talked me out of buying AMD at $2 and it is $76 now. Still sitting pretty even without buying the one stock that could be turned into a trail side condo.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 11th, '21, 12:46 Tell you what, if I had Doc's Delorian and I could go back five years and put all my money into Vail, I'd be sitting pretty right now. But not as pretty as if I had had gone back three years and put all my money into Tesla.
I think it's a matter of balancing the advice of Gordon Gekko, Peter Lynch, and John Bogle:Guy in Shorts wrote: ↑May 12th, '21, 07:37Looked to add Vail to my Roth back when it was $85 per share. Decided that it was over priced and passed. My advisor talked me out of buying AMD at $2 and it is $76 now. Still sitting pretty even without buying the one stock that could be turned into a trail side condo.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 11th, '21, 12:46 Tell you what, if I had Doc's Delorian and I could go back five years and put all my money into Vail, I'd be sitting pretty right now. But not as pretty as if I had had gone back three years and put all my money into Tesla.
What really matters is what stock can you buy today that will leave you sitting pretty years from now.
you cant talk about stock prices without talking about the exploitation that underlies that stock price. im sick of the boomer lecturing, all the numbers show that all they're doing is gaslighting an entire generation. and they have the nerve to call us entitled.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 4th, '21, 16:18Sure, but before the thread turned into an episode of "let's lecture the millenial" it was about raising the minimum wage. That's a pretty easy thing to change.Mister Moose wrote: ↑May 4th, '21, 13:40 Of course anyone has the right to stay. However it is completely unrealistic to think you can bring about effective change in a short period of time. All of us are fish in the ocean. The decision is to stay with the associated compromises, or leave for better opportunity.
Of course before that the thread was about Vail stock until Asher derailed it into a discussion of exploitive labor practices and minimum wage. But hey, if you don't like how this thread has gone, you can leave.
i knew about bitcoin when it was worth pennies and somebody used it to buy pizza.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 11th, '21, 12:46 Tell you what, if I had Doc's Delorian and I could go back five years and put all my money into Vail, I'd be sitting pretty right now. But not as pretty as if I had had gone back three years and put all my money into Tesla.
i disagree on the construction wage, the work i was doing was incredibly dangerous. dangerous work should be paid well, and $17 isn't well. if you can easily lose a limb or your life doing work, you should be compensated for that risk. the fact that others do it for less is irrelevant - some people are desperate, and desperation leads to bad decision making.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 4th, '21, 07:43 I don't disagree with anything you've said, Deadhead. The mentality I'm talking about though is this notion that if you don't like the way things are, you should leave. I believe that if you don't like the way things are, you should have the right to stay and try to make them better. If someone argues that wages are too low in Vermont, and someone else responds that if you don't like it you should go somewhere that wages are higher, that's really not an on-point response, it's a dismissal. If we treated every problem that way, we'd never solve anything.
That said, I think I stated that I don't think wages in Vermont are too low. I agree that it's a place with limited economic activity, so if you choose to live there, you choose to accept a lower standard of living relative to Boston or NYC. But if the minimum wage in VT was at the Federal minimum, I'd be arguing that wages are too low and the law needs to change. What's absent from my argument is, "well if you don't like it, you should leave" because that's a non-sequitur.
There shouldn't be a place in the United States where the lowest wages paid aren't something you could survive on as an individual at 40 hours per week. If you worked for the Federal minimum wage at 7.25 an hour and worked forty hours a week, you'd be below the Federal poverty guideline. That's frankly absurd. At the VT minimum, you'd be well above it.
If you want me to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing Asher's comments on wages, I'll do so. I don't think $17 an hour is an unfair wage for construction work. I've seen people do it for far less. Skilled construction workers, even those in VT, can make a lot more. But $17 an hour equates to $34k a year full time salary, which I'll agree isn't great, but I don't see that as exploitation. You can afford all the necessities plus a few small luxuries on that salary, especially in VT. If Asher was working 70 hours per week, with overtime, she'd be making well over that $45k figure she cited. I don't think $12 an hour working for Killington is exploitive either. I think you'd barely be scraping by on that wage, but it's a living wage, meaning you could afford basic housing, food, clothing, car, etc on that if you worked full time.
What I do think is exploitive is that Killington gets to leverage the H2B visa program to import what are effectively lower-wage workers from overseas. If Killington can import workers then they can artificially increase the supply in the labor market instead of raising wages to attract workers. That seems not only unfair, but contrary to basic principles of capitalism.
you should read up on the technology behind those cryptocurrencies. if i remember correctly, bloomberg had a great article on them a couple years ago. long term, i think ethereum has a ton of promise because its essentially a platform one can build off of. it reminds me of the early stages of the internet, like mid 90s, where everything was super technical but underlies everything we have today which is far less technical and more what you see is what you get / no coding necessary.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 13th, '21, 18:12 Some of it is absurd. Tesla is right now worth more than many of the major car companies combined. There's no way that makes sense, even if they do have a good product. Cryptocurrency is an excellent idea, but while i think we will all be using a digital dollar some day, I also think the current markets for bitcoin, etherium, etc. are just clever ways of separating people from their money.
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not to mention that some people simply can't move - they have kids in school, or in my case (when i lived in NY) a dying parent to take care of. no matter where you are in the country, you should be paid enough to survive and not worry about basic necessities. otherwise, why not just be 50 independent countries?!easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 3rd, '21, 16:36I think this mentality needs to change. Just because you can move doesn't mean you shouldn't have the right to stay put and improve things where you are. Not everyone can move easily, and those that can shouldn't have to leave their home if things can be made better where they are now.
That said, I think the $12 minimum wage in Vermont isn't unfair given the cost of living. It's not good money but it is a living wage. I wouldn't oppose increasing it a dollar or two, and I think ultimately that would be good for the economy in VT overall. But it's a far cry from the federal minimum.
deadheadskier wrote: ↑May 4th, '21, 06:25I very much feel wages for numerous jobs should go up and the minimum wage should be a liveable wage. If a company can't afford to pay someone enough working full time to sustain themselves without public assistance, then they shouldn't be in business.easyrider16 wrote: ↑May 3rd, '21, 16:36I think this mentality needs to change. Just because you can move doesn't mean you shouldn't have the right to stay put and improve things where you are. Not everyone can move easily, and those that can shouldn't have to leave their home if things can be made better where they are now.
That said, I think the $12 minimum wage in Vermont isn't unfair given the cost of living. It's not good money but it is a living wage. I wouldn't oppose increasing it a dollar or two, and I think ultimately that would be good for the economy in VT overall. But it's a far cry from the federal minimum.
I very much disagree with your first point that people should have the right to stay where their birth or chosen home is and expect decent work. I went to high school and college in VT. I and a very high percentage of my classmates, especially college classmates, left VT for greener pastures. And I had a degree in hospitality, which is one of the industries that does have some opportunity in VT.
After college I stayed for two years in Stowe and looked around the landscape at the average age people were achieving a decent enough job in hospitality to afford their first home in VT and they were typically mid to late 30s. So, I looked for a new job in a location that paid better and was cheaper to live. That took me to Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland. Each move was to a place I knew no one, but the job moves were all well studied regarding earnings vs cost of living and included a promotion. I found my way back to VT and got a pretty good management job in Burlington, but still saw even better financial opportunity in Portland Maine and left again.
Eventually I got tired of working 60+ hours a week in hospitality and bored of operations work and looked for an exit. I just happened to host a number of medical trade shows and started talking with the sales reps about how lucrative it could be. I had no idea. Tough field to get into though. They said get some sales experience in an industry you know, prove you can sell and maybe you'll get an opportunity. So I started selling fine meats, did very well at selling and made a decent enough wage to buy our first home here in NH.
I still wanted to get into medical sales though. After a couple of years in meat sales I started applying to medical sales jobs like crazy and could barely even get an interview, nevermind a job. This was 2007-2011, which Asher points out was very tough economic times. I thought that maybe if I started working in a hospital, a medical device company would finally give me my shot.
So, I looked at fast medical degree programs that would still pay me decently if I still didn't achieve the medical sales career I wanted. I saw that two year Community College degrees in numerous disciplines would pay $50-60k+ right out of school. (There's an answer for you Asher). I took a gamble and at 36 years old went to a Community College to get an X-ray degree. My parents and friends thought I was crazy. My wife probably did too, but will never admit it and was supportive at the time. It was a hospital based program. I was in the hospital from 7-4 then went straight to a restaurant three school nights a week and double shifts on weekends to wait tables to pay my bills. The commitment between school and restaurant work for two years was 80+ hours a week. I sacrificed almost all social life and only skied 15 days a year. Part of that sacrifice also included putting off having children until I was 39.
Anyways, long story, longer while working OR cases while still in school I networked with the medical sales reps and got names of their recruiters and started firing out resumes. Come graduation all of my classmates got $50k starting X-ray tech jobs. Pretty solid for only two years of College. I was about to join them, but got a call back from a recruiter and after a six week, one interview per week hiring process got a job in medical sales. This was 2014. It was a "bad" medical Sales job "only" making $90k a year. Did that for a couple of years and got a good medical sales job. It has blown away every expectation I had when setting out on this path in 2007. It took 9 years and massively hard work and sacrifice to get there. I won't say how much I make other than it has afforded us the ability for my wife to be a stay at home mom and my one income has been well above the threshold of being eligible for any Pandemic stimulus.
I'm sharing this story because it demonstrates that if you are nimble and move around, sacrifice and reinvent yourself, you can achieve great things. Not everyone can do what I did, but most people can find a career somewhere that affords a higher standard of living. It might not be exactly where you want to live, but you can find that balance if you work hard and sacrifice. Hell many on this board are retirees now living in VT who slaved away in NYC or Boston for 35 years before they could afford to live comfortably in VT. They most likely would not have been able to achieve that had they moved to VT in their 20s like Asher chose to do.
Good luck Asher. You can figure out a way to live comfortably in VT someday with hard work and figuring out what fields have the jobs in VT to do so. If not there right now, go somewhere else and then come back as a retiree.
to the don't be in business if you can't afford to pay a living wage.Oh I agree, the technology is amazing and has amazing promise. But without a government or bank reserve behind it, ehtereum is just a high-tech form of monopoly money. Dollars might be fiat currency, but they're backed by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. government that will do what needs to be done to maintain its value. What does Ethereum have to maintain it's value or regulate inflation? It might be fun to speculate with but as a means of exchange it is terrible, especially with it's wild fluctuations.