Can you make money by building custom computers?

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• Many people seem to think that starting their own business is easy money. It isn't.
  If nothing else, the medical costs incurred by the constant headaches eat into the revenue, and that assumes that you don't start shooting heroin into your eyeballs after a few months!

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 19th, 2009

• If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is "free". It will make a $160,000 to $500,000 per job "stimulus" look like chump change.

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  by More2Be on November 20th, 2009

• I don't know. I really have mixed feelings about that.
  What many people don't seem is the TANSTAAFL principle; *NOTHING* is free. For many years the top execs in the insurance business have gotten "free" money and 8-digit salaries for denying preventive care without caring about the fact that that attitude winds up costing their company more money down the road or that the numbers they deal with represent actual human beings.
  And then there is the fact that we are so anti-death that we will spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) to keep a bed-ridden and possibly brain-dead person *technically* alive. Just think of how many vaccinations could have been given and costly illnesses prevented for the same cost as one weeks worth of life support for some 97-year-old person who hasn't been lucid since the Carter years.
  I really think we brought it on ourselves and now it's time to pay the piper.
  Of course, the people with the money can't pay because we all know that if the obscenely rich people stop getting immensely richer then they won't be able to create jobs to revitalize our economy :P

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 20th, 2009

• Still, health care and insurance costs are *always* a major concern for employers, even those who only employ themselves.
  If only we didn't have an health care system with such high overhead costs and inefficiency. There is a way to do it; every other industrialized nation on Earth has been doing it for years. Unfortunately, that would replace the social Darwinism we have here with something that many would call pure Socialism, so not only can we not do it the way that has worked for other nations, we *MUST* do the exact opposite!
  And the net result is that starting a small business will be damn near impossible here. If your little startup manages to make enough to pay for insurance and inventory, it also earns enough to be taxed HEAVILLY (30% or higher) so that multi-millionaires can be taxed at closer to 10%, and thus anything you had that resembled profits goes to Uncle Sam.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 20th, 2009

• Every time I see someone speaking random nonfactual nonsense about who pays taxes, I cannot believe we actually have 10 years mandatory schooling in this country. From IRS receipts, the top 1% of earners, who draw 22% of income, pay 40% of taxes, period. The following link includes subsequent links to IRS sources, which usually contain words such as "quartile" and "percentile" that tend to lose the innumerate liberals very quickly. http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/250.html
  So, handing over total health care to the Obama govt is going to fix all ills and provide vaccines? We are $6.4 billion into govt spending on H1N1, purely during O's administration, and no vaccine in sight. http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN06437135 . Don't even get me started on $160,000 per job "stimulus" on data proved to actually be inflated.
  So, WHERE is the overhead and inefficiency?

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  by More2Be on November 20th, 2009

• I am not advocating going back to the days when they were taxed at 70% by any means. It's just that the last round of tax cuts moved us just to the wrong side of the Laffer Curve; a little too much of a good thing.
  But what is really telling here is graphing the growth of income in the various brackets over the last few years. Look at where most of the RAISES have gone. THAT is where people like me get uppity.
  Now, if you want to do away with the whole idea of progressive taxation and go to a flat tax then I am with you. The current system leaves so many loopholes that they almost don't have to pay. I mean, Warren Buffet paid 10% while his (middle-class) secretary paid 33%? I am going to have to go over those numbers with a fine-toothed comb; Liberals are not the only ones who tend to spin stuff.
   
  As for the flu vaccine thing, Europe did it right but we are not allowed to do anything the same way that they do. Sure, it's a little "Big Brother"-ish to look in people's medical records and only give the vaccine to those that actually need it as opposed to any swinging dick who can pony up the $$$ to get one, but we have always had problems getting enough vaccine even when G.W. "Jesus Christ" Bush at the helm!

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 20th, 2009

• What the real problem here is is that we have so many people pointing fingers and many would rather point fingers at their opposition than actually get shit done.
  And it's funny how you go on about "innumerate Liberals" when I have found them to be more number-savvy than most Conservatives I've talked to. Sure, they may let their ideology get the better of them and skew their perceptions, but both sides do that.
  For instance, remember Joe the Plumber? Now, do you understand the difference between "personal income" and "small business revenue"? Most of the Liberal-bashers I heard complain about Joe and his plight did not get that distinction.
  A savvy Conservative (a rare breed in my experience) would have focussed on the actual policy under attack and torn it to shreds on it's own merit instead of some irrelevant twaddle that got misinterpreted.
   
  Just because I may be more Liberal than a staunch "Bush's shit doesn't stink" Conservative and think that the rest of the industrialized world may have done a few things right, that does not mean that I love Obama or want to spread Socialism.
  The only reason I mainly target Conservatives and don't go after Liberals more often is that many of them are either too Centrist to really be worth going after or so far Left that they don't need me to point out how foolish they are. On the other hand, many Right-wing wack-jobs *are* taken seriously and often deified.
   
  Us Moderates are considered spineless wimps who can't take a stand and/or morons who can't see that extremism is the only way to get stuff done by those who live in a black/white universe and are intellectually incapable of seeing greys. Unfortunately, that is what we need now; moderation.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 20th, 2009

• However, if it is all the same with you, I would rather not argue. See, neither of us is going to change each other's mind here so let's just leave the whole politics thing behind us here, okay?
   
  The point is that it really isn't a great time to try and start a business. The startup costs are high, the expenses higher (and rising), the odds of survival pretty low, and the headaches unavoidable.
  You *can* make money building custom computers, but it isn't likely.

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  by 8 Jan 2004-10 Dec 2009 on November 20th, 2009

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• Thanks for the sexy answer

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  by rshah9189 on November 19th, 2009

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