What do you want to do to make your living?

There’s (at least) 2 different approaches to making a living.

1. You can have fun at what you’re doing, or
2. you can do something else.

Usually, that something else is “making money”. People who work for someone else for “a living” are just exchanging their time for someone else’s money. There are a very few people at the top calling the shots and everyone else dances to their tune.

This can become what’s called a wage slave. You “get” some time off to enjoy some of your own time doing whatever you want to do. And the bulk of your week is doing whatever someone else wants you to do and sleeping and eating. (Some exceptions to this are sports figures, who love getting paid to play all day.)

And under the guise of “making money”, you are able to work some overtime where the employer has to legally pay you more for working over and above some arbitrary amount – usually 40 hours.

Under the guise of “saving money”, some employers don’t employ you for a full 40 hour week and so you don’t have to get paid benefits. And you aren’t being paid enough to pay your own benefits.

And governments have it set up to take some of the money you earn everytime you do - so they get paid everytime you work for someone else.

But entrepreneurs have their cake and eat it. They are doing whatever they feel like doing and have figured out how to “make money” at it. And self-employed persons who are incorporated as a business get the best tax breaks. So the government (bless their soul – if there is such a thing, really - except what we agree to) is really telling people through their regulations and laws to quit working for anyone else and start your own business.

The bulk of humanity has been trained to and accepts simply working for someone else – trading their time on this planet for enough money to live on, which is the same thing as saying they are being paid to come to work the next scheduled day. That old saying, “I only work as much as I get paid, and I only get paid as much as I won’t quit.” That’s a wage slave.

If you want a raise at work, you have to be doing 150% to 200% or more of what your job description is. The guys who get laid off can be afforded by the company. Not invaluable to keep.

Entrepreneurs have it better – they only get paid as much as they work, also. But there’s no cap on how much they can get rewarded. I’ve heard of some salespeople who only do one sale a year – but that sale is a really big one.

And there is also the approach that you cut down your expenses and debts so that you can work for hire to someone else minimally – and do whatever you want the rest of the time.

One story I was told goes down this line: A lady wanted to get a high paying job after college, so she got trained as a dental hygienist. After she had graduated and worked full time for awhile, she found out that her (California) taxes were such that if she worked half as much she’d have the same take-home pay. So she started skiing and swimming at the beach the rest of the time. And her company was happy to have twice the people working as their own costs went down.

If she had been contract labor with her own corporation, she would be able to take all that money and invest in her own benefits and retirement savings, plus cover her work-related travel and living expenses and only get taxed on what was left over = profit.

So it’s no surprise that some analysts report that 40% of Americans pay no income tax at all. To them, taxes are just another penalty for “making money”.

- – - -

But that whole diatribe above is a little off-beat.

The only people who actually “make money” work at the government printers where the stuff comes off the press. (And credit card companies make money by charging interest – think about it.)

Earning money is where everyone else lives. Earning money is giving something valuable as an exchange for something else valuable. Like baking a cake and getting paid in that commodity called money - which is still valuable.

That’s the real basis of economics (which originally meant “managing the household.”)

On the Internet, this is much more well understood. All those people rabidly pitching their wares are mostly ignored. And I saw some statistic lately that advertisements are being ignored more than twice as much as they are read. (That’s not “clicked on”, that’s being noticed at all.)

But there is a lot of money being earned on the Internet by people who are providing great service first and then people want to know how they can support them. And this is how they then end up buying something after they’ve been well serviced and well treated.

This, then, finally comes back to the two ways of making a living I was telling you about.

You can “make money” working for someone else. Or you can “earn money” giving away valuable stuff to other people – and earn a living doing just this. (Preferably through your own private corporation.)

Who’s the winner on this? You are, and all the people you help. Essentially, any community you want to contribute to.

Who’s the loser? Anyone who depends on requiring an exact exchange of money for time – handouts, basically. Meaning: all government, “Big Business”, centralized power structures.

Think it over. Decide for yourself. See if it makes sense.