I have no idea what this is about!

I was born during the depression. Actually in the year with the lowest birthrate of the 20th century. Looking back, I can tell many tales of poverty and privation. While my father and I were not friends, he worked his way up from a $19 per week job to owning his own restaurant. In a way it was a good lesson for me. I knew poverty at ages 4 to 6, (Don't remember much before that) with increasingly better environment as I grew into a 'teen. Your story is the American Story. It is the same story that brought people here by the millions. Like you, I have noticed some unwarranted negative comments about labor. I think most of those comments are because of labor unions, many of which are corrupt. Those who are part of the unions and make demonstrations against freedom as expressed in Objectivism are usually ignoramus moochers. If you have been down voted for expressing opinions about what you have presented here that's too bad. HOWEVER, as far as I'm concerned, The Points Don't Matter. I enjoy the Gulch for its repartee, its teaching ability and friendship. What a treat to find people who are in general agreement on important issues.

Up and down votes are to be ignored usually, personally choice, never use them. However, I do admire hard work, and that is how you rose. I grew up right after the depression, and my businessman father made sure I knew what it was like, and celebrated hard work. He worked three jobs to keep he and my mom going so they could save for a house. By the time I arrived, they were doing okay, but I grew up knowing work mattered, just as your did.

You have just outlined my theory on what is missing in American life today. In the 50s, my Dad was hired by a company to push a broom. After he had proved that he was capable of following directions and showing up on time, they taught him to properly load and unload boxcars. After a time at that, they showed him how to operate a punch press and press brake. These jobs paid a bonus if you could work faster than the rate (piece work). After Dad figured out some set up changes that made the work faster, the company decided to let him set up all the machines. From there he was promoted to the finishing department. He was climbing the economic ladder, the essential of the American dream. Examine the hiring practices in place today, and show me where that ladder is. I can't vote down your story of life, I can only applaud it.

+1 rbroberg , Congratulations to your career advancement and I hope a healthier self esteem.

Many of us in the Gulch grew up in an earlier time when everyone knew how to use his/her mind and hands to create a product.

Now: A college education is required for some of the most menial tasks because an elitist management mentality has sprung up in the ranks of most businesses.

If you still know how to use your mind and your hands to create a product you are permanently stuck at the position that you are "good at" ...
...and that is where you remain until you leave the company for another job.

You deserve kudos for both your accomplishments and for the management philosophy of your company.

Good Job...hoping it's the "Princes" anthem you reject.
It's been my contention that it is the value producers and creators that are the "elite" not those that fraudulently sit in ivory towers.

Just curious--the Daily Digest in my email gave the commenter's name as rbroberg, but now it's shown above as deleted. What gives? His last line would read better as "And you can down vote this for all I care." A real downer. Whom is he trying to reprimand here?

So somebody gave you a job cleaning meat for
believers in some sort of mysiticism (although I
don't think cleaning meat for its practitioners was
necessarily wrong, any more than my trying to keep
margarine products kosher in a plant whose
company was owned by Jews was); so you made money checking food for a government
agency that never should have existed? And you
were weak enough to take it?--Who wants to
build castles like a medieval prince? Not me and not Objectivists. Free enterprise workers
might want to build their own castles at their
own expense, but that is not like a medieval
prince, who did it by the forced labor/contribu-
tions of feudal serfs.

I might pity somebody who was reduced
to such straits, but that does not mean I am go-
ing to admire him, even when he expresses
himself in unpunctuated, unrhymed verse with-
out any meter.

Messy collection of themes; however, the point is obscured. Is this about an Oedipus complex for Hamlet?

Well said.
+1