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Don Bowey

On 9/10/07 2:36 PM, in article ,
"Jim Thompson" wrote:

On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:45:19 GMT, Joerg
wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Joerg wrote:

David Brown wrote:

[...]

Americans prefer do do most of their work when they are younger and
stronger, some so they can retire early and enjoy life, but others

How well do your pension schemes support that? (I'm thinking of your
average man in the street here, who is unable or unwilling to save
significantly for the future, rather than engineers and other higher
income people).

People who live frugally have no problem with that. Besides social
security pensions we have other methods with tax benefits. Of course
people who squander their money, buy every new gadget, eat fast food all
the time and never repair anything themselves will often find themselves
never being able to really retire. However, those problems are
self-inflicted. America does not take away the decision making by
withholding a large chunk of people's income for a pension. As a
comparison, here it's roughly 12% (that doesn't include the medical
part) while in Germany it is AFAIK around 19% now. Different philosophy,
and I like the one here in the US better.

because they enjoy working. Doing something you love, and getting paid
for it? It is a VERY hard to beat combination.

Agreed.

The president at one of my clients is in his 80's and seriously enjoys
work. Nothing seems to be able to slow him down.

I know someone who once took a week's holiday during his 60-odd years of
working life, but said he didn't like it.

Those words could have come from my father :-)

I always used my vacation time to do projects around the house, or
travel to a hamfest. I rarely took more than a few days at a time, and
at several jobs i was threatened with losing my accumulated time.

In the last years before I became disabled, I took them by
volunteering as a mentor at a vocational school in their electronics
department. It gave the students a chance to ask real questions about
what was happening in the real world of Electronics.

An engineer at a client hung up his hat and became a fulltime teacher.
Taking a 50% cut in income, he said that this was his way of giving
back to society. Hats off to the guy, that takes guts. Especially since
he's got four kids to bring through college.

I've volunteered to teach at the community college level, for FREE.

I was turned down because I don't have a teaching certificate ;-)

...Jim Thompson

They don't deserve you or the ;-). I taught a "T1 and T3" course at a
University in Portland, and it upset them that I didn't have a MBA - They
had invited me, and set the ridiculous course title. They resolved their
conflict by having a guy with an MBA be "in charge."