Sadly that something for nothing is just becoming common place in all aspects. With all the new inventions being created to make life easier, mommy's and daddy's not able to spank the kids and teach them valves like we were, I'm honestly nervious of what the world will be like in another 30yrs with all these lazy, spoiled, "I'm not doing that" generation comes to charge.
I started out grass roots with a hammer and nail building things and luckily hve that instilled in me as I'm sure most of us on here have, so we'll never forget where we came from and the ingenuity often needed to overcome common problems, but it goes back to the no common sense which I believe is going to pot from evolution. Mommy and daddy have to work 2 jobs to put food on the table so they're not around as much as our parents, or grandparents were and we're leaving it upto schools to rasie these kids, then the free time parents get is not spent doing things themselves, it's hiring it done so they can go on vacation and it does'nt tech the kids anything. No common sense can be taught, everybody just expects somebody else to have the answer for everything without investing some actual personal brain time into the problem, just think about your last trip to the auto parts store....if it's not in the computer, it dont exist-try getting parts for your race car LMAO!! that' about a joke but it's the same principal.
Maybe we're breeding out own problems in the big picture since 90% of folks want the world for free or $19.95. I remember reading on here of a guy that had an extremely high base wage, his reasoning is if the workers are worrying about how much they'll make that week to pay the bills, they're not focusing on their work. I relate to that, but for most of us layman small biz owners, those kind of wages are not possible to pay due to the work in our region and work that we perform. We've done more bath remodles this year than all years past combined, in doing so I've found the most I can sell a bathroom for is $6K for a run of the mill (BASIC) update, anything more the sale is a no go. Some of you have been around long enough to pick and choose, but I'm still in the building customer base phase, so I either take the job for less profit to put food on the table, or go hungry. Given those circumstances there is no way I can pay out $40-60/hr total wages without going broke and in the hole. I have paid $15 to a fella I could count on in every sense that did'nt need babysitting for anything, but eventually he went on his own too. Here we have about 2 construction/handyman companies for every 1 home owner...talk about saturation...and hence goes the wages. We had an article in out local paper, our population in this area is just under 300K, average wage-$11/hr. Now figure in what they take out of peoples checks for taxes/insurance/401K, fuel to get to work, and standard house bills, it's no wonder everybody thinks my stnadard estimates are out of reach....I've recently bid 2 siding jobs, nothing special and only bid labor @$60/sq-mainly for an experiment in pricing...ya know what, I was told that was out of line
Material and labor came upto $210/sq for a standard siding job and I'm outta line LMAO!!!!! Literally dont know how it's getting done cheaper, but if it is, cant imagine those guys are going to last very long.
Seems there is a bigger picture going on that plays into all this jobsite stuff