Anonymous wrote:Personal injury lawyers, they are so slimy and dishonest.

I am not one, but I hired one when I got hit by a car. I'm glad they exist.

Honestly nearly everything on this thread sounds like it was invented from stereotypes and TV. I bet most of the PPs have never met more than one person with any of these jobs.

Anonymous wrote:Personal injury lawyers, they are so slimy and dishonest.

Until you (or someone you love) are gravely injured by someone else's negligence. Then your PI attorney is the exception to the rule, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is PE?

Thank you! People, use your words.

PE = Private Equity. These are firms that buy all the small businesses in an area/ industry to corner the market, then jack up prices, diminish services (often by firing the employees with the most experience bc they earn the highest salaries,) and generally "do more with less". That's their motto and they think it sounds financially savvy, but we all know it looks like higher cost of less services. You're seeing this in dentists and veterinarians, funeral homes and crematoriums. It's sometimes hard to tell when a small local business has been gobbled up by PE, because they keep the branding to make it look like it's business as usual.

For another fun PE trick, look at Red Lobster. Private equity's sale of the land the restaurants were on, which was then leased back to the company at high cost, requiring them to take on debt to pay it, pushed the entire chain into bankruptcy. But it's ok! The PE bros got paid first. Don't worry about them.

Personal injury lawyers, they are so slimy and dishonest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lobbyists, with the possible exception of those who lobby for non-profit causes.

So honored my profession didn’t come up until the 4th page.

Hate the first amendment all you want, but lobbyists are inherent to democracy.

Cry some where else.

Lobbyists are the antithesis to the first amendment. They maximize the influence of the wealthy. Citizens United is a huge factor in how our country has gotten into the situation we are in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet half of the people on here don’t even understand PE. I’m in it and people think we’re like the 80s corporate raiders. There are some firms like that but those are mostly bottom feeders. We generally buy up small companies who were not able to access capital due to their size or lack of performance or who have retiring owners/founders. We always keep the former owners as partial minority owners. We put all the employees on incentive plans with small ownership stakes. We generally try to roll up a few small companies together before exiting but often don’t exit. We get economies of scale in our inputs as the companies grow and are generally able to cut non-personnel costs by up to 30%, thus increasing the bottom line a lot. I’m not sure what is so awful about that? Several of our purchases would have shut down at the founders retirement had we not purchased them.

To the average person interacting with a company bought by PE, the cost-cutting results in worse products or services. The company ceases to become about trying to do the thing it originally set out for and instead feels like they are trying to provide the least value at the highest price.

It also creates barriers to entry for new practices. No one can compete with the big corporate money. So our only options end up being practices that are run to maximize shareholder value.