Although I make nominally twice what I did at my previous job doing much of the same that I do now, this former job was software development at a college, and the college provide very cheap rent-controlled housing and free lunch buffets.
24. Consulting. Around 70K.
I'm 26 and a physical therapist, own and operate a private practice with an associate. I gross around 250k, but don't let that fool you...
First off, at 26 years old making $250,000 per year - you are my hero.
Second, to the primary poster, I'm a 20-year old genetics major, and I'm currently making about $7 a week writing political opinion columns for my college newspaper. Not much money at all but it doesn't matter because I would be doing it for free anyway.
I'm 32 years old. I am an economic/statistical analyst and make about $52k per year.
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." -James Madison
"If government were efficient, it would cease to exist."
25, Geologist in environmental consulting, and make between 44-50k a year depending on overtime.
It might also be useful to mention which region you live in. Cost of living and salaries will vary between, say, New York City and Cody, Wyoming. I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Infantryman - 30-35K
I'm 52, a former software developer, now my title is "systems coordinator." Been in IT for 30 years, and make just over $90k per year. I never dreamed I'd be making as much as I am, but it doesn't go too far as the only income with my dear wife and five children at home.
26, manufacturing wire assemblies for the naval military indu comp. its a 7-3 or so job, i make about 11-14K yr, weekly pay. I save as much as possible, closing in on a whole year of savings worth of pay (playing my hand for the next gov panic). Since i have learned as much as i could about AE i have found my self trapped between my knowledge of 'what is' and what i would like to do. Now making a choice seems harder than ever. But perhaps choosing to do nothing and waiting; acting on what i believe to be an potential entrepreneurial moment in the future.
John:Since i have learned as much as i could about AE i have found my self trapped between my knowledge of 'what is' and what i would like to do. Now making a choice seems harder than ever.
Making "that choice" will get easier later. Right now, you are making a choice by continuing with what you are doing.
John:But perhaps choosing to do nothing and waiting; acting on what i believe to be an potential entrepreneurial moment in the future.
Praxeologically, waiting is doing something. Waiting is what you are doing. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Sometimes being confronted with a clear view of society and a sharpened capacity for perceiving ethical/rational behavior can be overwhelming. But it does get easier, if you can avoid becoming an ideological fanatic.
Just curious - we see a fair number of people who know a lot about AE on this thread talking about what sounds like "everyone should start their own business." Why is this? AE is perfectly capable of describing a world with division of labor and a large workforce. If everyone who likes AE should start their own business, isn't that limiting the number of people who could end up liking AE? We're not against big business persay, or am I wrong?
@JAlanKatz The problem is that wage labor in today's system is a form of soft serfdom. After reflecting on all the incentives government grants business owners that employ (while penalizing the self-employed), I realized that business owners who employ others are effectively tax farmers (tax enforcement really begins with the employer's compliance with the rules for withholding taxes - which is just garnishment - from your bi-weekly paycheck). No matter what, there's no way to earn a truly honest living unless you're in a non-criminal black market (prostitution, pimping, drugs, illegal immigrant house- and child-care... pretty much any of Block's "undefendable" occupations).
While being a tax farmer is not a much better prospect than being a serf, the only other option is to be in constant danger of prison. I'm stuck in this damn system because of the bizarre desire of my fellow serfs to be enslaved to a Leviathan, so I'd rather be a tax farmer than a serf. It's really their own damn fault.
Clayton -
In Canada you have to garnish employee wages only if you fit the legal definition of "employer", which IIRC is basically someone who collects pension "contributions" (CPP) for a SIN account. In other words, working/employing under the table is not an offense. It's essentially the same in every British system and more or less the U.S. (supposedly there are differences there, but I don't know what). If anything being an employer is where you want to be because you don't have the problem of trying to find someone not brainwashed to pay you privately. So, just don't hire government employees and you are good.
Take a look at this if you are Canadian. I can't find the American version anymore, sadly. I didn't see the whole thing either when I did have it.
23 (almost), 11$ an hour in health care and I still manage to save more than half of it. I think I may expatriate to Australia and work part time and on days off learn Chinese then move to Hong Kong, Singapore, or Taiwan. There will be far more money and security in that part of the world very soon. Maybe do engineering eventually.
"A geeky note: strictly speaking, management is labor."
self-exploitation.
anyhow, I'm 25. I have an absolutely worthless college degree and am unemployed. I've been unemployed ever since I graduated (a year ago). most of this is due to the fact that I recently immigrated to Canada and it's illegal for me to work until I get my landed immigrant status. well...I could work if I could get a job offer/work visa, but no one really wants to spend the extra few months wait on a kid with a degree and no work experience when they have hundreds of resumes to fill up their entry level positions. right now I'm just looking to do as much volunteer bs as I can to pad out my horrid resume.
anyone out there work at a VC firm and need a coffee boy? I'll work for much less than minimum wage if I can eavesdrop, get some experience, and eventually get a job.
Jackson:anyhow, I'm 25. I have an absolutely worthless college degree and am unemployed. I've been unemployed ever since I graduated (a year ago). most of this is due to the fact that I recently immigrated to Canada and it's illegal for me to work until I get my landed immigrant status. well...I could work if I could get a job offer/work visa, but no one really wants to spend the extra few months wait on a kid with a degree and no work experience when they have hundreds of resumes to fill up their entry level positions. right now I'm just looking to do as much volunteer bs as I can to pad out my horrid resume. anyone out there work at a VC firm and need a coffee boy? I'll work for much less than minimum wage if I can eavesdrop, get some experience, and eventually get a job.
What is your degree in? How bad do you want to make it?
SOMEONE GET ME A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
20, and a student, but I manage to make a little over 1k a month working on the side, which allows me to save a little every month.
We were actually talking about trying to somebody to do coloring and/or lettering for our comic. Cant pay much though....
"What is your degree in? How bad do you want to make it?"
I went from orchestral percussion to English and finally landed at psychology/english. so I've got a degree that can be used to say I know how to research and communicate that research.
I'm apllying to any and all volunteer positions that would hopefully give me some more experience and make me a more valuable prospect to future employers:
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=16479
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=21875
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=20450
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=12150
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=14142
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=17410
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=17405
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=17699
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=17411
http://www.govolunteer.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?_id=29&posting=17406
following the any of these links should show that I'm willing to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel of mind numbing tasks for the chance to potentially make myself more of an asset to a company - that's how much I want to make it.
Check your private conversations, I sent you a message.
Mises forums is the new craigslist yo
spread the word
I'm late to the game, but: I'm 47, a software engineer, and am in the low end of 6 figures.
I don't think I've ever heard of that stereotype, however. Most rich people I know hate libertarianism.
Check out pretty much any forum that has a liberal bent. Any discussion of libertarians will inevidebly result in somebody saying libertarians only care about the rich.
And I'm not surprised that most actual rich people hate libertarians. Since libertarians directly oppose the corportatism many of them take advantage of.
Clayton: @JAlanKatz The problem is that wage labor in today's system is a form of soft serfdom. After reflecting on all the incentives government grants business owners that employ (while penalizing the self-employed), I realized that business owners who employ others are effectively tax farmers (tax enforcement really begins with the employer's compliance with the rules for withholding taxes - which is just garnishment - from your bi-weekly paycheck). No matter what, there's no way to earn a truly honest living unless you're in a non-criminal black market (prostitution, pimping, drugs, illegal immigrant house- and child-care... pretty much any of Block's "undefendable" occupations). While being a tax farmer is not a much better prospect than being a serf, the only other option is to be in constant danger of prison. I'm stuck in this damn system because of the bizarre desire of my fellow serfs to be enslaved to a Leviathan, so I'd rather be a tax farmer than a serf. It's really their own damn fault.
Can you elaborate on your "tax farmer" idea?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Age: 49
Occupation: Former community organizer
Salary: $400,000
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Occupation: Counterfeiter
Salary: Infinite
You work for the Federal Reserve?
*come on, somebody had to say it*
21, Machinist at a light fixture manufacturing company, $17.62/hr. When I am running the punch press the cycles can be up to 10 mins long, and you can usually find me reading mises.org on my blackberry to kill time.
Being 33, I am probably in the top percentile of the forum :)
I have MS in computer science, and working in software engineering since around 1997.
Since I live in Latvia, my salary is really irrelevant (and ridiculous by the US standards). Having said that, my purhase power for local stuff is comparable to that of my colleagues from Silicon Valley :)
"Age: 49
Salary: $400,000"
When your contract expires in 2012, you'll be able to charge $100,000+ speaking fees. And you'll get a fat pension at everyone else's expense.
Age: 80
Occupation: rent seeker
Income: over $1,000,000,000
Finally! Someone got it. (Or, at least, responded to it.)
Sam Armstrong: Jeez, 6 of us are coders. Is there something about creating code that makes you libertarian?
Jeez, 6 of us are coders. Is there something about creating code that makes you libertarian?
Why yes, yes there is. Libertarians have a model of interaction, and programmers have a model of computation. They're also both generally highly axiomatic, at least in the case of natural rights libertarians. The sort of thinking that leads people to these conclusions or careers is very similar. Aside from that they also tend to not do as well in what is considered "normal" social circles, which naturally pushes them to "fringe" political positions or interests.
Well, the snarkier answer is that the common factor is intelligence.
Even though that's snarky and egotistical, I think there's some truth to that, though the previous answer discussing particular ways of thinking is more constructive. I happen to think that those ways of thinking essentially "are" inteliigent, in the sense that if you define "intelligence" in terms of the things they do for us evolutionariy, namely solve optimization problems, or put another way, do prediction and control, then it follows that if you "think" in nonsensical ways, you're not going to be good at prediction and control and thus won't be "intelligent".
There are probably other reasons for the correlation as well, e.g. software people are on the internet a lot more than the average person and thus get exposed to more of the smaller communities on the net like the libertarian community.
I'm 17 with no job. D:
I just spend my time reading Austrian Economics. Mainly a lot of anti-IP literature and a lot of MES. At least be intellectually stimulated?
30 years old, I'm a currency trader, income.. never enough.
@Jhonny Five. You actually manage to scrape a living off it?
DMI1: With a good amount of capital, low or no leverage, a large dollop of common sense, a lot of experience, and a decent knowledge of economics.. yes it is possible.