Are We Seeing The End Of Opportunity.

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

In other recessions we've always had the 'on yer bike' stories of people going out to find jobs and also tales of new business starting up and apparently finding a niche despite the gloomy economic times. Indeed there were such stories at the start of this recession. But now the picture appears to have changed.

What I detect is happening is that all around us doors are closing as opportunities are stifled. Any success that's happening is within existing, established businesses, who are managing to maintain their size but not recruiting staff. In many part of the country, you're OK if you've got a job, but if you lose it you're as good as on the scrapheap, even if you're skilled or a qualified professional. Local government cutbacks will only make this worse. Add to this the rising cost of a university education, record youth unemployment, over-65's being encouraged to stay in work past their sell-by date, the whole system is broken.

Locally there are usually about 40-50 jobs in total on the job centre computer (mostly minimum wage) for a population catchment of about 40,000, and about 20-30 job adverts in the local paper (including small classifieds for domestics etc.) I looked on the websites of 4 large national retailers - 2 supermarket, 2 DIY. On their jobs pages not one of them had a single vacancy in their stores in my home town.

All the time the rich are getting richer, but the difference now is that the concentration of wealth is so great that they'e actually making everyone else poorer because there's a limited amount of wealth about, since nothing's going up in value very much like it was during the boom years. In the past, with rising property values, rising share values and expanding economy, the rich could get richer and everyone else get a bit better off too. But not now. If they're getting richer in current circumstances, it has to be at someone else's expense.

[Injin]

Plenty of opportunity, the problem is you'll get shot if you take a lot of it on.

It's even illegal to go from door to door now looking for work, iirc.

[profitofdoom]

HQQ, Your assessment of the situation is pretty much the same as mine. I started by business in 1977 in the Motor Trade and I was discussing with a colleague on saturday how things were when we started.On a monday morning we would drive around the bigger franchised dealers and buy the part exs that had come in at the weekend.You could pretty much guarantee that you would buy one or two.

Today if you tried that route into the trade you would just get shown the door and told to buzz off.I am sitting with £200k tied up in stock and I just did my quarter for VAT.My profit was £6600 after overheads.Out of that I will have to give the VAT £1300,so just clear of £5k for the quarter.If I was borrowing from the bank the stock would be costing me another £2k in interest.I have been sitting here and thinking that if I liquidate the stock I could be sitting with the money in an account somewhere and not working.

So your argument is correct in essence there are no opportunities out there.I have pretty much decided to sell off my stock and quit as I seem to be working for everyone but myself.

[EmmaRoid #FBPE#JC4PM#GTTO]

You mean my wife's cupcake business isn't going to make us rich?

[RichB]

HQQ, Your assessment of the situation is pretty much the same as mine. I started by business in 1977 in the Motor Trade and I was discussing with a colleague on saturday how things were when we started.On a monday morning we would drive around the bigger franchised dealers and buy the part exs that had come in at the weekend.You could pretty much guarantee that you would buy one or two.

Today if you tried that route into the trade you would just get shown the door and told to buzz off.I am sitting with £200k tied up in stock and I just did my quarter for VAT.My profit was £6600 after overheads.Out of that I will have to give the VAT £1300,so just clear of £5k for the quarter.If I was borrowing from the bank the stock would be costing me another £2k in interest.I have been sitting here and thinking that if I liquidate the stock I could be sitting with the money in an account somewhere and not working.

So your argument is correct in essence there are no opportunities out there.I have pretty much decided to sell off my stock and quit as I seem to be working for everyone but myself.

Harsh. Got a decent little motor lying about suitable for the mrs to learn to drive on?