Really, really want to give that a try. Hey does that h/c come with free dental, paid vacation. I mean I’d love to focus on my weaving but I have to have some tme off. Its grueling.

is the best way to keep voters in line. These people are not stupid, they know what they are doing and are working on getting the majority so dependent on the democratic handouts, they no longer are able to vote based on principle. This type of mentality will kill drive, ambition, and individuality.

So . . . Nan’s definition of an entrepreneur is someone who quits a productive job to live on government handouts and indulge their hobbies?

Talk about your “Newspeak”!!

Here’s a quick definition from Wikipedia:

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome.

is worried that someone is angling for her job.

If this was the mindset 50 years ago then we would have never landed on the moon or put a satellite into space. If this was the same mindset 30 years ago then we wouldn’t have the internet today.

It’s time to fire “Stretch” and make her just another old hippie demonrat rep from the California Socialist Nation.

Sounds a lot like France. They make it very comfortable for people to indulge in their creative sides.

What was their structural unemployment rate again? And GDP growth over the last 2 decades? I forget.

How many extra crash and burn episodes of American Idol there will be. I thought it was “Don’t quit your day job”.

How many ACORN and ACLU/Media Matters types will suddenly become “artists” and “dancers” who need Gov. assistance…

(this thread is now pretty old, but I wrote the post before realizing there was a waiting period to post for new users…so better late than never)

Hello RedStaters. I’m a liberal musician living in Nashville. Been reading and lurking for years. This is my first post, and it’s only because I have life experience in the subject matter at hand.

Five years ago I was working at a large musical equipment manufacturer. I’d always been a musician, even had a public profile, but I took a day job ten years back when things got tight. Turns out I had a talent for project management. Five years later I was in upper management, responsible for a $10M division of the company. I was paid well, six figures. I had a great health plan. Cost me about $300 a year. And I was miserable.

When I finally got real with myself and quit without a backup plan in 2005 to be a musician again, it was a big risk. I spent most of my savings riding out the transition. A lot of work and faith finally paid off – in 2007 I turned it all around. Now I make 75% of what I did before but I’m a much stronger member of my community because I’m a happier person. I donate more to charity, I hire outside contractors for studio and graphic art work, and I love what I do. Of course, I bust my ass 8-10 hours a day networking and booking gigs and other stuff, and I travel like crazy, but when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. And it doesn’t.

The ONE thing that stood out to me during the transition is the reason this admittedly long comment is relevant to this thread – my health care costs went from $300 a year to $2000 a year the second I quit and started paying COBRA. When my COBRA expired, I changed my excellent $1K-deductible coverage to essentially catastrophic care with a $10K deductible so I could get the premiums down to $1300 a year. I get that the choice to become an entrepreneur was my own, and that there are economic impacts to that, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder why there isn’t a way for individual citizens to be able to use their collective leverage as a bargaining tool against insurance companies when the gulf between what’s available through a company and what’s available individually is so wide.

So, two points: One, I would be wary of broad-brush generalizations when it comes to artists, especially musicians. There’s lots of professional conservative (as well as liberal!) musicians in Nashville busting their butts to feed their families, and I don’t think they’d fall quite so neatly into the category of deadbeats and dream-chasers just because they’d like a better deal on individual health insurance (most I know don’t have any, and it’s not by choice – when something serious happens they have a benefit concert and hope for the best). Two, I think there’s a valid point as to how the “job-lock” phenomenon can lead to a stifling of entreprenuerial spirit, and there appears to be a reverse incentive in terms of health care coverage. We want to incentivize people to take risks and open small businesses if they have a worthy idea, right?

Granted, it didn’t stop me.

Thoughts and comments welcome. Thanks to Moe, Erick, Neil & the gang for the open forum. We don’t agree, but it’s my opinion that we’re all after the same thing, albeit through different means.

I’m going to quit my job to start a conservative think tank so we can run morons like Pelosi out of office.

That probably wouldn’t be considered “artistic” enough. There’s probably a provision in the health care bill that get me fined for doing something like that.

Does it ever strike her that if people ever took her up on her lunacy and quit their jobs en masse that there wouldn’t be enough working stiffs to pay taxes and fund her pet programs?

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Yes, I have health insurance which I pay for and no, I’m not interested in sucking off the government teat. Nancy doesn’t mention whether these aspiring artists will be residing at her place or not. One can only hope…