"Powerful" pictures of poverty in America

Jon

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Feb 22, 2002
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you should have taken a business trip down to porsche hq ;)
actually was supposed to go to an event there a few weeks ago but I had to go to Austin TX instead. I am planning an event there for early fall

just got my travel budget for this quarter and got an unexpected bump so I will be going to NYC this summer at some point
 

Jon

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Feb 22, 2002
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Atlanta 'Burbs
That is not how it works in my company.
must work in a smaller or private one. I've been in sales for 20 years and we always get huge upswings at the last month of every quarter and even larger in Q4 because most business do exactly like mine. Typically we can count on 25% of our sales in month one, 25% in month two and 50% in month 3. Same for quarters 50% Q1-3 and then 50% our year in Q4 with the final month being the biggest. In fact a sizable portion of my time is spent trying to figure out how to do demand gen activities that will normalize these spikes. We always end up running campaigns to "capture remaining budget" towards the end of every year because as hard as we try people spend to their budget and will blow the rest on things they kinda/sorta need rather than have anything remaining.

Use it or lose it budgets are not exclusive to Government
 

92tide

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May 9, 2000
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East Point, Ga, USA
actually was supposed to go to an event there a few weeks ago but I had to go to Austin TX instead. I am planning an event there for early fall

just got my travel budget for this quarter and got an unexpected bump so I will be going to NYC this summer at some point
cool. be sure to check out beer girl (growler shop) and arches brewing in hapeville while you are down here. arches does brewery tours/tastings every thursday 4:30-7:30 and also on saturday afternoons. there is also a great cuban sandwich shop, mami's, that just opened up near beer girl

beer girl facebook page

arches website

eta: arches has a great event space. delta and porsche have both held private events there since it opened last month
 
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Tide1986

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Nov 22, 2008
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Birmingham, AL
must work in a smaller or private one. I've been in sales for 20 years and we always get huge upswings at the last month of every quarter and even larger in Q4 because most business do exactly like mine. Typically we can count on 25% of our sales in month one, 25% in month two and 50% in month 3. Same for quarters 50% Q1-3 and then 50% our year in Q4 with the final month being the biggest. In fact a sizable portion of my time is spent trying to figure out how to do demand gen activities that will normalize these spikes. We always end up running campaigns to "capture remaining budget" towards the end of every year because as hard as we try people spend to their budget and will blow the rest on things they kinda/sorta need rather than have anything remaining.

Use it or lose it budgets are not exclusive to Government
At the highest level, spending is controlled by allowances that are accounted for in our product pricing. Thereafter, budgets are formed based on sales projections for the coming year, and budgets are dynamically adjusted up and down based on actual sales results over the course of the year.

Headcount is controlled by staffing models which are tied directly to sales results.

Budgets are reforecasted every quarter with money being "moved around" among various functional/business budgets to account for changes in the business environment. Needless to say, we have no kingdoms with absolute discretion over their budgets.

We will selectively begin some project investments early if we are running a surplus going into the 4th quarter, but any such expenditures go through an approval process.

Expense management is one of 4 components of the incentive structure, and incentives are maximized when actual expenses are favorable to budget.
 

bama_wayne1

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Jun 15, 2007
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At the highest level, spending is controlled by allowances that are accounted for in our product pricing. Thereafter, budgets are formed based on sales projections for the coming year, and budgets are dynamically adjusted up and down based on actual sales results over the course of the year.

Headcount is controlled by staffing models which are tied directly to sales results.

Budgets are reforecasted every quarter with money being "moved around" among various functional/business budgets to account for changes in the business environment. Needless to say, we have no kingdoms with absolute discretion over their budgets.

We will selectively begin some project investments early if we are running a surplus going into the 4th quarter, but any such expenditures go through an approval process.

Expense management is one of 4 components of the incentive structure, and incentives are maximized when actual expenses are favorable to budget.
What are you trying to do? Make money?
 

Bodhisattva

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Aug 22, 2001
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Use it or lose it budgets are not exclusive to Government
Of course not. And everyone wastes money - individuals, business, governments - to some degree. It just that most of what government does is waste.

An individual who wastes money will be punished by their bad decisions because their funds are very limited. And since they are wasting their own money, I don't care.

Businesses who spend money poorly in relation to their competition could end up losing market share to a more efficient competitor, or they could see their stock price damaged as investors flee to better alternatives. Business are wasting their own (or stockholder) money. I may care (if I'm an investor), but I have recourse.

Government has no such competition to keep their wasteful tendencies in check. And the taxpayer has no recourse. Bureaucracies just keep spending and then get rewarded. And the debt just keeps getting bigger.
 

alabama mike1

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Jul 12, 2013
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Ohio
I have no problem helping someone TRULY in need of help. Some of the families I deal with are 3rd-4th generation poverty. Minimum wage jobs and welfare WAS NOT set up to sustain a family of 3-4 over the long haul.There is an expectation of a handout or give me. Many DO and Will NOT work minimum wage! There are several homeless men who frequent the dumpster at Tim Horton's I stop at every morning. I have personally offered work and without fail, I have been turned down every single time. I have even offered to buy them breakfast and only one has accepted the offer. Why? IMO, they would rather have the handout and do nothing.

I have deep admiration for those who have worked hard and made their way out of poverty.It is a hard row to hoe but it can be done. As someone mentioned in an earlier post, Jon I believe, his father made that move. My 84 year old dad did the same thing and was viewed by family members thinking he was better than others. He did not graduate but served in Korea and went back to get his GED after coming home and served an apprenticeship as a machinist. He worked for what he got and instilled the same values in me and my brother.
 

Tide1986

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Nov 22, 2008
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Birmingham, AL
Here is a better perspective on poverty in the United States today:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/why-the-very-poor-have-become-poorer/

According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in poverty is higher today than it was in the late 1960s. Last year I argued in these pages that these “official” poverty statistics are extremely misleading.1 When the United States first explicitly defined an official poverty line in 1969, it was supposed to be adjusted every year to ensure that it represented a constant standard of living. However, two problems arose and were never fixed.

First, the Consumer Price Index, which was supposed to be used to adjust the poverty line for inflation, turned out to have flaws that made it rise faster than the cost of living. Second, the official measure uses pretax money income to measure families’ economic resources; but anti-poverty measures enacted since then, such as the expansion of food stamps and then the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), made low-income families’ total economic resources increase faster than their pretax money income. As a result of these problems, roughly half the families now counted as officially poor have a higher standard of living than families with incomes at the poverty line had in 1969.

In $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer argue that what they call “extreme” poverty roughly doubled between 1996 and 2012. If they are right—and I think they are—the reader might wonder how I can still claim that poor families’ living standards have risen. The answer is that inequality has risen even among the poor. Half of today’s officially poor families are doing better than those we counted as poor in the 1960s, but as I learned from reading $2.00 a Day (and have spent many hours verifying), the poorest of the poor are also worse off today than they were in 1969. $2.00 a Day is a vivid account of how such families live. It also makes a strong case for blaming their misery on deliberate political choices at both the federal and state levels.
That was just the introduction. More details can be found in the book review.
 

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