AT LAST YOU HAVE A GRIP ON THE REALITIES of the situation.

Bravo, couldn’t have put it better myself.

The part about “clever manipulators…etc…etc.” is bang on. You cannot calulate GDP based on consumption, it must be based on productivity.

Yes Ken will win, cause he has skills and does real work. He probably fixs other things and makes them last and saves his money, without jumping out for the next shiney thing that comes along.

Ken is my kinda guy, practical and steady an example for others. At one time he was your typical American, now he is on the endangered species list.

too hell with save the whales, SAVE the Kens of the World.

I never thought about it but this downturn may bring honor back to the US blue collar worker. Growing up, there was always a stigmata placed on manual labor. With a father who never graduated high school and 30 years in construction, he always made it seem that there was no honor in manual labor. With every B I got in school he would reply with the same anecdote…”The world needs ditch diggers too…” Now that the brains of the Street have lost face, skilled labor may make a come back and represent a better, more stable life…

My father was a highly skilled machinist all of his life. He didn’t run an automated CNC machine using a computer, but dialed it in by hand and eye. He was also an outside machinist (putting machines together).

When I was young and starting out as an outside machinist myself, he often told me that I “could work with your mind or work with your back. Choose the latter and all you will end up with is a sore back.”

So I became a design engineer, designing machines and the processes to manufacture them. But somewhere down the line, scarred hands and sore backs make my digital designs into real machines.

My son, much like his grandfather, works with his hands and back. (Of course, a good mind is steering those hands). His field is carpentry– concrete forms, framing, finish work. He isn’t even thirty yet and already has diverse skills.

But given the way of things, there are only so many opportunities in this country for auto mechanics and carpenters– far fewer opportunities than there are people to fill them. To imagine a rustic world where they somehow make their independent way and restore a past ideal of America is… well… foolish. It will take far more than their will to put their shoulder to the wheel to make that happen.

I admire the Ken’s of the world, too. Just as I admired my father and my son. But they need the rest of us to get (or keep) our acts together, so that they not only survive but thrive.

My brother is a mechanic who runs a repair/tire shop, and he told me several months ago that he wasn’t worried at all about the recession, because during economic downturns, people will pay to fix their cars rather than buy new ones.

I understand the point being made, but I wouldn’t go too far in glamorizing the blue collar worker (for lack of a better term) by disparaging the “brains of the Street” for losing face. If physical labor indeed becomes an economically optimal pursuit for white collar workers, I am confident most of those “clever manipulators of information” possess the intelligence and ability to learn to beat Ken the mechanic at his own game in no time.

Bing,

If bored, you could get back to explaining why a corporate takeover of Canada is a good idea for both parties. I was really digging the concept and then the economy went into the can and you lost your way. Entertain me once more!

Now is the time for the Ken’s of the world. In down times, people can’t afford to buy new stuff, so they pay people like Ken to fix it. Repair/restoration/renovation businesses should do well in the current economic climate.

My recommendation: buy Midas Group (MDS), Goodyear (GT) and Pep Boys (PBY).

And my recommendation is to play Tiny Butterfly to show.

Ken is in the service segment of industry with his mechanical prowess.

He can share his skills with friends, relatives, and cold call clients; being a sole proprietor, he’s limited.

Entrepenuer is another gradient in proprietorship. Partnership or corporate undertakings lead to increased rewards with over-ride of total receipts as opposed to bartering and skinned knuckles in private practice.

Innovation, patents, copy-rights, and royalties etc. lead to higher monetary and humane gratification.

Production and mass-production of new products derived from raw materials to satisfy supply-and-demand is the ultimate gradient to achieve for the mechanically inclined.

Motivation coupled with risk times advantage will get you the same satisfaction as Ken; except, no skinned knuckles.

Automation is the anticlimax to manual labor. Today, we live in a throw away World. Repair, in most cases, costs more than replacement!

Some day we may all be like astronauts–living a cacoon with all of our needs fed to us by “AUTOMATION”!! “BRAVE NEW WORLD”. Hellooooo……

SE of NY, as a manager who has spent a great deal of time around major construction projects, I’m much amused by your ready assumption that the data manipulators, if pressed, could teach the Kens of the world something about their own game. Do you really confuse sitting in meetings, writing emails, conducting powerpoint presentations, wearing effeminate office slippers, and other ‘valuable higher level skills’, with real work. I never have.

Your arrogance, sense of superiority and entitlement would provide endless merriment among your new blue collar coworkers, while your lack of physical stamina and intolerance for personal discomfort would instantly reveal your office pinky background.

Respect both worlds, but realize you landed, through great fortune, in one of the easy ones. It should be enough that they envy your soft life in the court of the corporate mandarins. Pray that soft life doesn’t evaporate, or you’ll be playing cowboy ‘for real’.

My car is in the transmission shop (again) and they have more work than they can handle. When they told me it would be next week before they could even look at it I almost suggested they hire back the last guy they laid off.

Mike, you should write Hallmark cards…

Bing: Do you really think that Ken the mechanic opened our eyes to the fact that we are a nation of consumers and not producers??? c’mon, I hope you are being sarcastic here and not offering this article as a discovery exhibit.

Ken the mechanic is described as an intelligent fellow so should we really be so quick to dismiss his concern? As the seven lean cows munch down the seven fat cows he probably realizes people will not hurry to repair autos. They’ll take the bus. Or subway.

Be sure to keep your invoices payable upon receipt, Ken.

Actually, Isaac, I think the point is not so much that consumer/producer thing, but rather that we sometimes forget that there are a lot of people who actually MAKE things and DO things in this economy of ours, not just juggle money from one pot to another or move information from point A to point B.

ITS GO TO SEE THERE IS STILL PEOPLE OUT THERE THAT CAN WIPE THEIR OWN A** . AS FOR THE REST OH WELL. AS LAYOFFS START TO TRICKLE DOWN LETS SEE IF YOUR MASTERS DEGREE GETS YOU BY WITH YOUR OIL CHANGES, PLUMBING PROBLEMS AND OTHER EVERYDAY ISSUES.

SHOULD HAVE HELPED GRANDPA FIX HIS TRUCK AND MIGHT HAVE LEARNED A THING OR TWO.

My husband has a degree in nuclear physics, supports his family as a program manager in very high tech stuff, and he put himself through college as a jaguar mechanic. He’s happiest working with his hands, or his camera, but makes the money with his mind. He calls himself “a generalist”. It’s due to the variety of skills that he has, that he, most likely, will be able to continue working throughout this “downturn.”

To Mike from Spokane
As someone who spends a great deal of time sitting in meetings, writing emails, conducting powerpoint presentations and wearing effeminate office slippers I wholeheartedly agree with you. I pray that I don’t have to play cowgirl “for real”, I’ll never survive.

waking up is not always preferrable, but sometimes it takes real nuts and bolts to slap people in the face to make them awake

Something here reminds me of Atlas Shrugged. Ken as John Galt, but apparently with a bit more social awareness.

Well, RASEC from ALICE, TX …

I might have an advanced degree, but I can fix my own plumbing 99% of the time. More importantly, I can find the caps lock key on my computer.

Mike of Spokane, I think you unfairly directed your comment against me, personally. What I said in my comment was that many of the people who TJ refers to as “the brains of the Street” could, if they decided it was to their advantage, quickly and adeptly learn to perform the work of Ken the mechanic. The people who hold positions at the major Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and private equity shops obtain those positions by spending their entire lives competing against and beating their peers at every step — in grades, service, varsity sports, college entrance exams, interviews, inter-personal skills and likeability, and work ethic. They are people who could achieve whatever they determine is in their best interest to achieve, whether that is repairing automobiles with their bare hands or advising on mergers and acquisitions of companies. What I meant to say was that we shouldn’t be too quick to bemoan the fact that white collar workers on Wall Street can’t repair their own cars. They possess the ability to learn to do so, but they don’t, because it’s not worth their time.

Arrogant? Certainly not. I greatly admire Ken the mechanic — not because he has the specific skills to repair a car, but because of his demonstrated ability and intellect to do that and probably whatever else he puts his mind to.

Sense of superiority? Maybe, because while I agree with you that many people can’t or won’t exercise whatever ability they have in order to become accomplished at anything in life, I know I am not one of those people.

Entitled? I work on Wall Street, but I worked more hours of physical labor in my teens than most 30-year-old adults have probably worked in their lives. I spent every summer of high school and several of college working in blue collar positions with workers who did get endless merriment from working with me: not because of my weakness but because I worked harder and faster than almost any of them on the jobsite. I have always maintained my body in the kind of physical condition that would allow me to do so, which is more than can be said for many construction workers who are “soft” indeed. I don’t feel in any way entitled to my job; I work harder and smarter than my peers who are being laid off every day so that I can keep that job. And when I go home at night, I do pray that the life I have doesn’t evaporate.

You allow Mike of Spokane to post an ad hominem attach directed toward me, personally, but you remove my even-handed, well-written rebuttal? If you don’t want my patronage on this blog, I will be happy never to return.

Actually, SE of NY, I did post your excellent comment. If there was an earlier one I did not publish, it was a rare exception to my policy. I don’t remember if I did delete one of your comments or not, I’m afraid, but I will tell you that I publish 99% of everything people send in. There are several things you can do to be deleted, however. If you write a very long comment, it has to be somewhat cogent, which I’m sure yours was. It really shouldn’t be too ad hominem, even in jest, although I will allow people to poke at each other a little as long as they have something else to say. And I really can’t publish too much profanity, even with $$s or XXs or @#$@! in it. People know when you call somebody else an a&&h##e or tell them to !#@$ themselves what you’re talking about, and that way lies madness and the anger of the cnn police. We don’t need that. Anyhow, SE of NY, please don’t go away. We love ya.

Actually SE of NY, many of the people inhabiting those exalted positions got there not because they’ve proved their mettle via competition, but rather, like our rapidly departing and inept President, acquired access through family connections and advantage. Cream isn’t the only thing that rises to the top (as anybody who has spent any significant time working in a large organization would attest).

Now, I wouldn’t blame anyone for using whatever advantage birth or circumstance life affords them, but I am always amused by successful peers when they assume that their success was due solely to personal effort and merit. Their lack of humility is staggering.

You do, if your statements are any indication, exemplify the attitudes prevalent among many of my old MBA classmates (and fostered by faculty brown-nosing for family endowments), attitudes I am certain had their roots in successive generations raised in an atmosphere reeking with a sense of social and economic entitlement. I’ve done well enough in my life, but I’m not silly enough to believe that it is all due to my superlative efforts, nor do I believe that every misfortune befalling other people is due to their inferiority, inherent unworthiness, or inability to ‘work harder and smarter’.

To some extent, SE of NY, I suspect you are indeed quite worthy, hardworking, and intelligent, but I also suspect that when the axe falls for you (and it falls for all of us at one time or another) you may not be as gracious in taking ownership of that failure as you readily take credit for your current corporate survival. Of course, for supermen, failure is simply unacceptable.

Mike, it’s just funny that you’re so certain you know me when you’re dead wrong. I grew up in near poverty in the Midwest for almost my entire childhood. My grandfather was certainly economically worse off than we ever were. But you call me arrogant and the product of generations of entitlement in such a pompous and pontificating manner that it’s amusing. Why make your point using personal attacks when you’re such a strong writer? I’m sorry for whatever happened to you in life that made you so bitter.

Thanks, Bing, for allowing my comments to stay up. I did hope to continue visiting your blog because I do enjoy reading it.

And now, as the sun rises slowly in the west, we bid adieu to the entertaining back-and-forth between Mike and SE of NY. They’ve been up. They’ve been down. They’ve wrestled each other to the ground. And now… it’s over. Thanks, guys. It’s been a powerful, moving saga. Now let’s move on.

I didn’t mean to start a food fight.

Well, SE of NY, it appears that we have been grabbed by the scruff of our raggamuffin necks by the playground monitor, Headmaster Bing. I, for one, sincerely offer with my grubby schoolboy paw, the olive branch of peace.

A good mechanic – highly rated like that is hard to find. I found similar ratings on http://www.motortipster.com it’s a not for profit website. For the good of the people. NYC area only at this point)