Clubhouse Grille (*** NO LIV DISCUSSIONS ***) (*** NO POLITICS/RELIGION ***)

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, BIG STU said:

Where do you come up with this stuff at? Yeah I just about did that laughing. And what makes it super funny is the time period it was recorded

It just popped up in my feed on YouTube. What Does that say about me 🤣.  It says I’ll click on anything.  I guess.  

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, BIG STU said:

That paint store reminds me of the old Cherokee Auto Parts in Gaffney. Go up there and tell them what you need. Most of the time they did not have to look it up. Yep you could get a cup of coffee out of the urn or a free Pepsi. From what I learned they guy who owned it passed after I moved here. His kids had no interest. In fact a guy I know has his fab shop in there. Note I have a piece of history from that place. You remember the old Hi Tach lube demos with the gears? He had a couple that had been on the counter for 20 years or more. This was in like 98. I was in there and the rep brought in 2 new ones. I scarfed one of the old ones and have it to this day in the living room of the house. No telling how many people I knew and did not know played with that thing.

Another small time merchant story. Up in Surfside Beach we had a family owned Hardware store. IMHO a real hardware store. Had everything you needed and no Taiwan junk either. The owner named Tommy was the 2nd generation owner. When we had the golf shop we were messing around with some Bobby Grace tour issue putters. They used different Allen set screws for weight. Of course he had those. I went up there one day and was looking and wondering about weights. Tommy produced a gram scale and gave me some clear plastic bags and a marker to mark them. Now he did not know squat about golf but understood what I was doing. Yeah he did all of that for the less than $10 I spent total on the screws. He ended up selling the property because it was prime real estate. He told me he got offered more than he could net in 10 years running it as a store. Besides he had a huge family farm about 45 miles up the road and he could take care of his family farm hunt and fish.

Oh yea. I turned the hi tach knob and watched the gears every single damn time 🤣.  I’m a button pusher. By nature. I don’t read owners manuals.  I push buttons and watch for action like any chimp would do 🤦‍♂️

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, bscinstnct said:

 

Omg could ya put a warning?!

 

I clicked on it just as I was eating lunch 🤣

🤣.  I needed that laugh.   I thought I warned you sufficiently, knowing it was from me.  But nothing was going to prepare you for that.  I can’t get over the subject and the time period.  It’s just unbelievable 

[Double Mocha Man]

1 hour ago, Double Mocha Man said:

You can have it fast. You can have it good. You can have it cheap.  Pick two, you can't have all three.

 

On occasion I have to use this in the world of TV Commercial production.  Oftentimes when a client finally decides he/she wants to do a commercial they want it tomorrow, they want a Super Bowl-quality commercial and they don't want to pay much for it.

[bladehunter]

22 minutes ago, Soloman1 said:

i typed something earlier about the misconceptions of anti-trust laws. i erased it.

 

the customer or consumer isn’t mentioned once in them. they were actually used to break unions. it’s only about eliminating a monopoly, so businesses can create a duopoly. greater opportunity to have a couple companies to rake you over the coals.

 

look at the kroger acquisition of albertsons. you control the food supply, you have a license to steal. and yet, the puke pablum lies about this being good for customers is being spread like manure.

 

realpage is destroying competition in real estate rentals. apartments and rental companies sign up to get “suggested” rental rates and aren’t allowed to rent under the suggested rate across an area. absolute price collusion.

 

they’ll leave places empty in the long game of forcing people into the higher rents because people will have no choice.

 

rents in phoenix have risen 76% in 6 years thanks to over 70% of companies signing up with them. they’re coming for your area to throw people in the street.

 

you get outside the small towns, and nyc is like a collection of small towns, every place in the country looks the same. same companies, same buildings, same strip centers, same chain stores for clothing and pet food and fast food and pharmacies, etc.

 

profits have skyrocketed, and ceo salaries have exploded to 350 x employee wages from a historical 30:1.

 

and taxpayers are subsidizing the companies since the employees earn so little, they’re on food stamps and medicaid and section 8 housing because they can’t earn enough to live, even with roommates.

 

but, wall street and private equity is killing it. 🙂

 

 

wait til i go on about the fed and banks. but, i can’t. i have to go play golf so i can forget about it for awhile.

 

forecast is for pars, with widely scattered birdies throughout the day.

 

All true.  The boiled down end game question is……. Does it self correct, or have a peaceful ending at all?   
 

I have the unfortunate reality that they’ll come for my farm eventually. Via taxes most likely.  As in they’ll tax me out of affording to stay. As of now the usda certification for farm use keeps it to a reasonable place ( in context ).  But eventually “ the greater good “ will want it for profit.  Hope I don’t live that long.  Because I don’t have a mind that I’d take it sitting down.  

[dashanks]

I keep hearing on mainstream news about how the economy is in great shape.  Apparently, the fact that nobody can afford anything is not a big deal.

[Jim53]

We charge $145 per hr for shop work, which is mostly repair work on our rental equipment damaged by the customer. Now of course none of the customers will ever admit to damaging anything and will fight any bill. We now take pictures of everything when it leaves and when it comes back so we have some proof we are not trying to rob them. 

 

The best one was a piece of equipment came back with the Hydraulic hose bundle cut in half and no oil left in the Power unit, the Customer claimed it came that way.......huh? they had it for 4 months and clearly on the last day drove a sheet pile or something thru the bundle which must have been  pretty impressive with all pouring out at 240 gpm. But they didn't do it...they paid $18,000 for a new hose bundle and $12,250.00 for the bio hydraulic oil..

 

We are installing a PPG Spray system to work with our new $250,000 spray booth, 45 ft long x 20 ft deep x 20 ft high open front. The spray system should in the $25,000 range and supposedly saves on paint and time. We use a 2 part paint so it is hard on the filters with too much overspray. Basically all we are doing is putting color on the Equipment so it looks decent, most of this Equipment has been painted many, many times and the turn around between rental can be days. 

[Jim53]

Just now, Jim53 said:

We charge $145 per hr for shop work, which is mostly repair work on our rental equipment damaged by the customer. Now of course none of the customers will ever admit to damaging anything and will fight any bill. We now take pictures of everything when it leaves and when it comes back so we have some proof we are not trying to rob them. 

 

The best one was a piece of equipment came back with the Hydraulic hose bundle cut in half and no oil left in the Power unit, the Customer claimed it came that way.......huh? they had it for 4 months and clearly on the last day drove a sheet pile or something thru the bundle which must have been  pretty impressive with all pouring out at 240 gpm. But they didn't do it...they paid $18,000 for a new hose bundle and $12,250.00 for the bio hydraulic oil..

 

We are installing a PPG Spray system to work with our new $250,000 spray booth, 45 ft long x 20 ft deep x 20 ft high open front. The spray system should in the $25,000 range and supposedly saves on paint and time. We use a 2 part paint so it is hard on the filters with too much overspray. Basically all we are doing is putting color on the Equipment so it looks decent, most of this Equipment has been painted many, many times and the turn around between rental can be days. 

why it is sideways I have no idea

[braincramp52]

1 hour ago, bladehunter said:

🤣.  I needed that laugh.   I thought I warned you sufficiently, knowing it was from me.  But nothing was going to prepare you for that.  I can’t get over the subject and the time period.  It’s just unbelievable 

Ahh, the good old days. 😅

[Double Mocha Man]

1 hour ago, Jim53 said:

why it is sideways I have no idea

 

But it looks like your forklift has pretty good side-hill traction.

[bscinstnct]

3 hours ago, bladehunter said:

🤣.  I needed that laugh.   I thought I warned you sufficiently, knowing it was from me.  But nothing was going to prepare you for that.  I can’t get over the subject and the time period.  It’s just unbelievable 

 

This is awesome 

 

 

[Jim53]

2 hours ago, Jim53 said:

We charge $145 per hr for shop work, which is mostly repair work on our rental equipment damaged by the customer. Now of course none of the customers will ever admit to damaging anything and will fight any bill. We now take pictures of everything when it leaves and when it comes back so we have some proof we are not trying to rob them. 

 

The best one was a piece of equipment came back with the Hydraulic hose bundle cut in half and no oil left in the Power unit, the Customer claimed it came that way.......huh? they had it for 4 months and clearly on the last day drove a sheet pile or something thru the bundle which must have been  pretty impressive with all pouring out at 240 gpm. But they didn't do it...they paid $18,000 for a new hose bundle and $12,250.00 for the bio hydraulic oil..

 

We are installing a PPG Spray system to work with our new $250,000 spray booth, 45 ft long x 20 ft deep x 20 ft high open front. The spray system should in the $25,000 range and supposedly saves on paint and time. We use a 2 part paint so it is hard on the filters with too much overspray. Basically all we are doing is putting color on the Equipment so it looks decent, most of this Equipment has been painted many, many times and the turn around between rental can be days. 

For context the piece on the right is powered by a C32 1200 HP CAT. The vibro on the left weighs 35,000 as it sits. The fork lift in front of it could not pick it up.

[Petethreeput]

For anyone interested in the corporate takeover of American commerce I found The Walmart Effect by Fishman (IIRC) to be very interesting.  He essentially explains how Walmart grew as they did and effectively made smaller producers beholden to their rules.  I don't remember much of it since I read it 15/20 years ago.

 

No one complained about the falling income because we entered into NAFTA and other trade agreements which kept prices low.  The consumers essentially chose to ship those jobs overseas for lower prices thinking they would never change, and the manufacturers were making more money as well.  Now that they have we are feeling the brunt of it.  And somehow, as all of this was happening Regular Joe was blaming the other Regular Joe's for doing this to our country, as they fought over the Spongebob onesie at Walmart for $0.99.

 

The fact is, Wall Street has no bearing on the economy.  Shares are bought and sold on guesswork and desires, the only way to explain how the newest IPO is valued at $6B (or whatever) and they showed $5M in total revenue this past year (assuming all the news reports, I didn't read the reports).  Starbucks, a company who likes to think of themselves as socially conscious could give each employee a raise of $11,000 annually and STILL make $20B in profit.  And the barista is on the public payroll, and rightfully so because they don't get paid enough to live, but not rightfully so because we are subsidizing SBUX and they burn their coffee, and I why am I subsidizing a company profiting $40B?

 

I have ideas of how we got there, and much of it is 4th pillar stuff aided by the Thread Title so there it will stop.

 

 

[Double Mocha Man]

1 hour ago, Petethreeput said:

... but not rightfully so because we are subsidizing SBUX and they burn their coffee...

 

Did their stock drop 16% today because of what you wrote?  I have heard that same story of burned beans many times.  They are not my bean of choice for my morning double mocha.

 

A few years ago a friend of mine became a manager of one of the local Starbucks.  Weekly he received a free 1 lb. bag (maybe it was 5 lbs.) and he gave it to me.  He didn't drink coffee.  Well, I only took two bags off his hands before I said, "Thanks, but no thanks."  They weren't very tasty and the beans were so hard they were making my coffee grinder work overtime.

Edited May 2 by Double Mocha Man

[mshills]

2 hours ago, Jim53 said:

For context the piece on the right is powered by a C32 1200 HP CAT. The vibro on the left weighs 35,000 as it sits. The fork lift in front of it could not pick it up.

Damn. Did not realize the scale of what I am looking at!

 

I know what a C32 is and I know what 35,000 lbs 😳 are. What is a vibro and what does it do?

[bscinstnct]

1 hour ago, Petethreeput said:

For anyone interested in the corporate takeover of American commerce I found The Walmart Effect by Fishman (IIRC) to be very interesting.  He essentially explains how Walmart grew as they did and effectively made smaller producers beholden to their rules.  I don't remember much of it since I read it 15/20 years ago.

 

No one complained about the falling income because we entered into NAFTA and other trade agreements which kept prices low.  The consumers essentially chose to ship those jobs overseas for lower prices thinking they would never change, and the manufacturers were making more money as well.  Now that they have we are feeling the brunt of it.  And somehow, as all of this was happening Regular Joe was blaming the other Regular Joe's for doing this to our country, as they fought over the Spongebob onesie at Walmart for $0.99.

 

The fact is, Wall Street has no bearing on the economy.  Shares are bought and sold on guesswork and desires, the only way to explain how the newest IPO is valued at $6B (or whatever) and they showed $5M in total revenue this past year (assuming all the news reports, I didn't read the reports).  Starbucks, a company who likes to think of themselves as socially conscious could give each employee a raise of $11,000 annually and STILL make $20B in profit.  And the barista is on the public payroll, and rightfully so because they don't get paid enough to live, but not rightfully so because we are subsidizing SBUX and they burn their coffee, and I why am I subsidizing a company profiting $40B?

 

I have ideas of how we got there, and much of it is 4th pillar stuff aided by the Thread Title so there it will stop.

 

 

 

Slippery slope.

 

Take  a guy who makes 675K a year from a company he built, one with 15 employees, who make an average of 60K for doing medium skilled labor. 

 

Should he pay them all more because he makes too much?

 

Oh, I saw some thing that one out of every eight people in the United States has worked in a McDonald’s! Crazy, right? 
 

And so there must be millions of people who could go to college or started business and been successful because of their minimum wage job at Micky Ds.

 

Starbucks pays 30K for people to work a job that basically requires no education and no experience. But they need to pay 100, 200, 300K for employees with higher levels of skills and more education. 
 

And consider this 

 

Yes, they make 25Billion a year in profit. But they have 40,000 stores

 

Thats 675K in profit per store per year. 
 

 

[bladehunter]

4 hours ago, bscinstnct said:

 

This is awesome 

 

 

Man out front still has the pepper !  That is so awesome ! 

[Soloman1]

walmart was the catalyst to hollowing out domestic manufacturing.

 

china didn’t make a bunch of cheap plastic stuff on speculation and try to sell it at the docks. walmart, and then other american companies, went there to get cheap plastic stuff they could sell at the same price at 1/25th the cost. american companies sold out america.

 

average take home pay for starbucks employees is $2,200 per month. try getting a place to live, a car, insurance, health insurance, utilities and some food with that. you can’t. they’re jobs for people living with mom & dad, or a second income in a household. 🙂

 

[Soloman1]

 

 

 

 

[Petethreeput]

1 hour ago, bscinstnct said:

 

Slippery slope.

 

Take  a guy who makes 675K a year from a company he built, one with 15 employees, who make an average of 60K for doing medium skilled labor. 

 

Should he pay them all more because he makes too much?

 

Oh, I saw some thing that one out of every eight people in the United States has worked in a McDonald’s! Crazy, right? 
 

And so there must be millions of people who could go to college or started business and been successful because of their minimum wage job at Micky Ds.

 

Starbucks pays 30K for people to work a job that basically requires no education and no experience. But they need to pay 100, 200, 300K for employees with higher levels of skills and more education. 
 

And consider this 

 

Yes, they make 25Billion a year in profit. But they have 40,000 stores

 

Thats 675K in profit per store per year. 
 

 

While I agree, I disagree.  The owner should profit from their savvy and hard work.  In Starbucks case the people who make the money are largely the shareholders who don’t work sourcing, producing, or servicing.

 

I know a few self made folks and they deserve everything they have.  But when money is made, really just to make money, I find that over the top.  And corporate profits are at record highs, but many (and statistically golfers are not part of the many) are left behind. The working poor are multiplying, and we don’t have the types of jobs that can create socio-economic mobility any longer.  Shipler (a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist) in his book, The Working Poor surmises bc 80% of the people he interviewed believed they would be millionaires by retirement accept the trade off of inexpensive goods for lower wages… for now.

 

I trust people, I don’t trust the folks who make inhumane decisions and hide behind the rationalization “it’s for the brand.”

 

And you are correct, it is a slippery slope. Your jumping off point might be higher/lower than mine, but I bet we both have that point.

[Petethreeput]

2 hours ago, Double Mocha Man said:

 

Did their stock drop 16% today because of what you wrote?  I have heard that same story of burned beans many times.  They are not my bean of choice for my morning double mocha.

 

A few years ago a friend of mine became a manager of one of the local Starbucks.  Weekly he received a free 1 lb. bag (maybe it was 5 lbs.) and he gave it to me.  He didn't drink coffee.  Well, I only took two bags off his hands before I said, "Thanks, but no thanks."  They weren't very tasty and the beans were so hard they were making my coffee grinder work overtime.

I only pick them bc I think they exist in a truly weird place.  I don’t know anyone who likes their coffee.  I also don’t know anyone who doesn’t drop $5 on a Starbucks coffee.  It’s simply weird.

 

At least many of the other corporate behemoths exist in a space my tiny mind can understand.

[bscinstnct]

20 minutes ago, Petethreeput said:

While I agree, I disagree.  The owner should profit from their savvy and hard work.  In Starbucks case the people who make the money are largely the shareholders who don’t work sourcing, producing, or servicing.

 

I know a few self made folks and they deserve everything they have.  But when money is made, really just to make money, I find that over the top.  And corporate profits are at record highs, but many (and statistically golfers are not part of the many) are left behind. The working poor are multiplying, and we don’t have the types of jobs that can create socio-economic mobility any longer.  Shipler (a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist) in his book, The Working Poor surmises bc 80% of the people he interviewed believed they would be millionaires by retirement accept the trade off of inexpensive goods for lower wages… for now.

 

I trust people, I don’t trust the folks who make inhumane decisions and hide behind the rationalization “it’s for the brand.”

 

And you are correct, it is a slippery slope. Your jumping off point might be higher/lower than mine, but I bet we both have that point.

 

But the shareholders own the company.

 

Take most any great American business from GE in the late 1800s to Microsoft to Google. The companies all started as tiny companies with great ideas

 

They all took on institutional investors who provided the capital to develop great products and scale their business. Those investors risked their/their clients capital and then took these companies public. Additionally, employees of these companies are huge percentage shareholders especially early on. 
 

For every Microsoft there are dozens of companies that Wall Street invests in that fail or produce minimal returns 

 

Without Wall Street, which was  basically started in the 1700s, the US would have none of the economic growth that made it the bigger economy in the world.

 

Now, we can argue if we’d all be better off subsistence farming than, but that’s a whole other discussion ; )

Edited May 2 by bscinstnct

[Soloman1]

well, it's not our parents or grandparents stock market. 😉

 

todays market is game-theory based algorithms doing millisecond trades to arbitrage stock prices. then manipulating short-term gains to entities held more than a year to extract the lower tax rate.

 

uber has lost a total of $35 billion. betting the stock price, thinking you're smarter than the other guys at the poker table, is the game. the game isn't investing in uber because of some revolutionary technology to cure cancer.

 

everyone at uber will be dead and gone 30 years from now before it could possibly make $70 billion to recoup the losses, but the next generation of traders will be trying to make money trading that stock. it it's still around.

 

keynesian economics is more like a quaint economic exercise from the past. we do not live in the world of keynesian fundamentals that it was based upon.

 

thumbs are on the scale in all aspects now.

[BIG STU]

5 hours ago, Petethreeput said:

I only pick them bc I think they exist in a truly weird place.  I don’t know anyone who likes their coffee.  I also don’t know anyone who doesn’t drop $5 on a Starbucks coffee.  It’s simply weird.

 

At least many of the other corporate behemoths exist in a space my tiny mind can understand.

I do not drink Starbucks period never have. Never saw the point of what I call "Foo Foo Coffee". I either make my coffee at home or get a cup at the Speedway store or Circle K. Me I am a man of simple tastes. I have never did anything "mainstream" any how. Sometimes when I stop in Kroger early mornings in Summer Tourist season the "yuppie" types are already lined up at the Starbucks Kiosk waiting on their $5 cups of coffee. I chuckle as I go by with my cup of "Stu Brew" or my 99 cent senior cup of Circle K coffee. Yeah I go to Kroger a lot of mornings to get my fruit and stuff for the course

[Jim53]

9 hours ago, mshills said:

Damn. Did not realize the scale of what I am looking at!

 

I know what a C32 is and I know what 35,000 lbs 😳 are. What is a vibro and what does it do?

The proper name is Vibratory Driver / Extractor we just get lazy and call them Vibros, it is used to drive steel pipe piles or sheet piles into the ground and in some cases pull them out.

We can pull out concrete piles but cannot drive them because the vibration will damage the concrete and separate from the pre stressed cables.

[mshills]

1 hour ago, Jim53 said:

The proper name is Vibratory Driver / Extractor we just get lazy and call them Vibros, it is used to drive steel pipe piles or sheet piles into the ground and in some cases pull them out.

We can pull out concrete piles but cannot drive them because the vibration will damage the concrete and separate from the pre stressed cables.

Thanks, I learned something new before 7a….a good start to the day indeed!

 

The Missus is playing in her 1st ladies event today. She’s anxious about playing the 9a event because she does not have a GHIN yet, so she’s playing with the non-GHIN group of nine-holers at 11a. 👍🏼
 

I give it 8 to 5 she plays 9 and keeps going. We will see — I hope she does as it’s a beautiful day for golf. 

[braincramp52]

8 hours ago, Petethreeput said:

I only pick them bc I think they exist in a truly weird place.  I don’t know anyone who likes their coffee.  I also don’t know anyone who doesn’t drop $5 on a Starbucks coffee.  It’s simply weird.

 

At least many of the other corporate behemoths exist in a space my tiny mind can understand.

I'm proud to say I've never dropped a dime in starbucks. One of my customers gave me a $25 gift card one year for christmas. I used it for a cup of coffee and never went back. I think the card might still be in my car somewhere.

[bscinstnct]

8 hours ago, Soloman1 said:

well, it's not our parents or grandparents stock market. 😉

 

todays market is game-theory based algorithms doing millisecond trades to arbitrage stock prices. then manipulating short-term gains to entities held more than a year to extract the lower tax rate.

 

uber has lost a total of $35 billion. betting the stock price, thinking you're smarter than the other guys at the poker table, is the game. the game isn't investing in uber because of some revolutionary technology to cure cancer.

 

everyone at uber will be dead and gone 30 years from now before it could possibly make $70 billion to recoup the losses, but the next generation of traders will be trying to make money trading that stock. it it's still around.

 

keynesian economics is more like a quaint economic exercise from the past. we do not live in the world of keynesian fundamentals that it was based upon.

 

thumbs are on the scale in all aspects now.

 

Took a quick look and Ubers current debt is around $11 billion in various notes and bonds due no later than 2030, much of it due earlier. 
 

Looks like in the last year they are finally “covering their nut” and generated billion plus in free cash flow. 

That said the stock has no appeal to me currently. 

[bladehunter]

19 hours ago, dashanks said:

I keep hearing on mainstream news about how the economy is in great shape.  Apparently, the fact that nobody can afford anything is not a big deal.

That level of lies should be illegal.  It’s been bad since the C word happened. Period. I don’t care what the market does.  That isn’t attached to regular folks  at the grocery store.  
 

I give you a little example. Junk.  Junk can be anything from antiques.  Car parts.  Tractor parts . Golf clubs. Guns. Ammo.  Sporting goods etc etc etc.      normally. Around tax return time , you can cash out on some of your junk collection for the first quarter of the  year.   So we junk hoarders load up as we go , cull what we want to keep , and then unload extras after March 1st.  Well. Last time I saw it so slow was 07-08.  Before that 9-11-01 these aren’t good markers.  

 

 

the only thing I’m seeing as recession/depression proof - is guns and ammo.  Was at an actuation Saturday evening where 48k worth of handguns sold.  $20k in ammo.  And it was a small event.  Maybe 120 people there.  Estate sale.  Not a “ gun event “. They sold everything including the rugs on the floor.    I got the stats from the auctioneers mouth as we collected our purchases and paid.  
 

but on the other “ junk” front.  It’s absolutely dead.  I can’t give things away.  I hope the produce market is stable.  We’re putting things in the ground starting Friday.  And we’re doubling acreage from last year.  Things are not as they claim on TV.  

Edited May 2 by bladehunter

[bladehunter]

9 hours ago, bscinstnct said:

 

But the shareholders own the company.

 

Take most any great American business from GE in the late 1800s to Microsoft to Google. The companies all started as tiny companies with great ideas

 

They all took on institutional investors who provided the capital to develop great products and scale their business. Those investors risked their/their clients capital and then took these companies public. Additionally, employees of these companies are huge percentage shareholders especially early on. 
 

For every Microsoft there are dozens of companies that Wall Street invests in that fail or produce minimal returns 

 

Without Wall Street, which was  basically started in the 1700s, the US would have none of the economic growth that made it the bigger economy in the world.

 

Now, we can argue if we’d all be better off subsistence farming than, but that’s a whole other discussion ; )

For manufacturing or developmental engineering type deals that model makes sense. For things that are intended to be global.   People who work in that should expect bean counting overlords.  
 

in the medical industry  it should be outlawed.   Medical practitioners provide better service when they’re smaller ( compared to huge conglomerate hospitals. This is true in all but the most extreme examples ( world renowned surgeons in a city hospital being exceptions ).  I’ve seen first hand several times how far down a single office goes if a PE group buys them.  Profit becomes the single reason for existence.  And doctors become just employees. Once a doc is just a hourly guy or gal, they start acting like one. They take no ownership in anything.  Just vacation days and pay me.  PE firms absolutely stifle choices for healthcare.  You never know what office didn’t open in your small town , because a PE firm has the money to fight its license in that local court.  They do it daily to keep competition out.  One of my best customers spent $3.5 mil fighting the state of SC for a license to open a new surgery center. In the end it was uncovered that a PE firm that owns a competing practice from a town over , was the lobby behind filing complaints on behalf of “citizens “ trying to get it stopped.  They paid folks to complain.  And who knows what else under the table.  To stop 4 partners from bringing a $25mil surgery center to the area . One that wouldn’t be beholden to the state run hospital etc. well.  That center was built.  It covered its cost in 5 years , and is running deep into the black.  The same PE firm offered the partners $250mil for it last year. They told them to eat ____. And the community absolutely loves the place.  It’s convenience and the service it provides.  Minus the government run around of a state run hospital.  I personally can’t stand those types who stifle the small guy.  .