[Jay_Gatsby]

Quote:

Amen, Charlie! We hire lots of local hispanic workers and they are a great inspiration in terms of their talent, work ethic, diligence and great attitude. May be the salvation of our good ole American dream, or at least a strong support under it. Wish our city would send more outsourcing their way -- instead of our full-time, full-benefits COLA-pensioned, unionized lawn- cutters or leaf blowers etc.

I don't want to derail the thread too much, but I agree with the essence of the foregoing that there is way too much of a sense of entitlement on the part of American workers. They want a big paycheck, low hours, fully-paid for healthcare and a retirement pension. Unfortunately, the reality is that economic success is built on a solid foundation of high-quality productivity, not simply showing up for work.

As for stock market valuations, numerous experts have stated that the stock market is overvalued. Many of these experts turned out to be correct in 2001, when the dot-bomb implosion hit the American economy full force. It is well-known that Buffett refused to participate in the tech market, since he couldn't understand the valuations assigned to tech stocks. Turns out that he too was correct, and was doubly-correct by investing in "value" stocks with long-term track records of profitability and brick-and-mortar operations.

Today stock prices are dictated by a whole host of factors too numerous to list here. There are a wide range of indicators that assign different values to various aspects of publicly-traded companies. Notwithstanding these factors, the best one that I know of is a long-term track record of profitability, coupled with a degree of stability in such profitability. I understand that such characteristics don't make for an exciting stock that will double or triple in a year, or even five years, but slow and steady usually wins the race. In terms of acquiring such stocks, they are often whacked in any market sell-off. For example, when the economy took a nose dive in 2001, I started buying value stocks, and a few growth stocks that were probably on the verge of becoming value plays. Today, I'm up 50%+ on several of these, whereas many of the high flying stocks of the dot-com era still haven't recovered even half of their value from that time.