@@funbird709 It's not hard to believe at all, especially in this day and age when - thanks to avowed racist Donald Trump - ethnic slurs are experiencing a rebirth. I call it the "small words for small minds" syndrome, and it's as offensive, if not more so, than it was during WWII.
@@lancasterritzyescargotdine2602 the left's current and supposed moral hysteria over "racism" is nothing but a smokescreen to cover their active yet subtle attempt to normalize pedophilia and other harmful perversions.
@@Navy35 That's correct but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is having their name on a degree from a prestigious university that will open doors for them. They're smart enough to learn the exact way things are done later.
That's EXACTLY HOW it used to go with these so called "INTELLECTUALS". Here in Australia they are expected to have HAD like 10 or 20 years IN the real world on whatever they're teaching.
@@aurnbob7209 My lecturer had a side business selling bootleg softwares. In CD-i form. This was in the early 00s though. And in South East Asia. Ran on the side alright. lol.
One of the biggest keys to this film's success is that Dangerfield is not just a joke machine here. He is shown to genuinely care about his son, and when he says "I was just trying to help" here, we in the audience can tell he means it. His likability does a lot to carry us through the story.
@@martinpye549 Yes, it definitely has funny and crazy moments (I loved the inclusion of Kurt Vonnegut), but, as you said, they all come from a place of this man caring about his son. Also, it has the interesting element, for me, that it was filmed in part at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where I went to grad school, and I can recognize some of the campus landmarks (even though it was filmed about a decade before I was there).
That's exactly how I feel. The father and son relationship was very strong and I'm glad they emphasized it. I loved it when Jason told Chad that he hoped to end up like his dad because he loved him. That was great.
I remember talking to the Planning and zoning department about a business Idea that I wanted to do in the late 90s. I was talking to the permit guy about the legality of it. He told me that it was legal now, but by the time my permit was submitted, the ordinance would change because they did not want that type of establishment in the city. Melon was way more right than most people realize.
@@roiad876 No it wasnt. I owned an amusement vending company at the time. When you do that, you have a surplus of equipment that you are always rotating to keep your locations fresh. So we were going to do a teen club/arcade setup with the video games, snack bar and live music from time to time. P&Z classified it as a nuisance and said the city council would shut it down and never approve the Certificate of Occupancy.
@@roiad876 Well this was in the Dallas area. I encountered a couple of situations like this. Local councilmen who had "concerns" over businesses. It is really an eye opening experience for people who have not experienced it firsthand.
Well, I assume that CDs actually had decent returns at the time, as the base rate was substantially higher. Nowadays, your CD rates are super low, so unlikely to be a decent bet.
@@crimson1919 The assumption is that you want a decently liquid asset that is still safe as contrasted with a brokerage account. The return wont be what it was back then, but the point is the stupidity of funding a project up front.
@@crimson1919 5 year CD rates were about 10% to 11% and 1 year CD rates were about 10% and 6 month CD rates were about 9%. However inflation was really high.
@@crimson1919 In the 1980s, the average CD interest rate was around 12%. This was a great return on investment, especially compared to savings account rates, typically around 0.75%.
While that's true, this seems like an entry level class. I get that this is all good for jokes but I always finda felt bad for the professor trying to teach business 101 to his students
I'm the only Blue Collar worker with years of construction and industry experience behind me in a building full of educators. My conversations with them are pretty much exactly the same as that one. Mellon was spot on!👍
I work in commercial finance and these costs are absolutely 100% accurate. Hell, 25 years ago I was managing a restaurant and I got the liquor board inspector to give us a good write up because he saw the piano and wanted his nephew to come in and play. lol
@@MichaelGiordano777 you go to NYC and YOU WILL SEE it's exactly like Roger said. Wall to wall BRIBES or nothing gets done. It's nothing political, it's the WAY IT IS.
@@OffGridInvestor Why government needs to be stripped down significantly like it was supposed to be. My friend went to a public meeting years ago. It was in regards to health inspections from the city. That crap they talked about was disgusting. One thing Ill never forgot was they picked and choosed who to basically harass. If they did not like said businesses they make phone calls complaining about the "health safety" Any business without an A rating on the door no one will go into. These "health inspectors" would write up people for the most miniscule bullcrap just to give them a hard time. This happened greatly under the cov lockdowns. A friend of mine owns a restaurant and was shut down for over 2 weeks. Why? Anonymous call said he/staff not following cov rules. No one had to prove anything.. Over two weeks shut down waiting for Cov health inspector (whatever that bs is). You think they did this crap to the big box stores? Of course not.. Over 40% of small businesses permanently closed and big box stores had record profits under the lockdowns. This is intentional and I bet another lockdown this winter is coming to put a few more nails in the coffin.
He did an HBO special in the 80's that was classic, just mostly skits of him doing crazy stuff! Also "East Money" is highly underrated, I saw that at the Drive in with Superman 3.
My dad lived comedy and in the 80s he allowed me to watch comedy with him especially the HBO specials and I got to see all the legends on TV with my dad Good times. There was an HBO special also called Robert Townsend and his partners in crime that was funny as hell too.
This clip showed the difference between teaching & doing. One was teaching how he thought businesses should be run & Rodney was telling the class how things were when you added the human factor. If I was a student there I look up Rodney that night & fill a notebook with what he say . And then not look at it again until after I passed the course so that way I be giving the answers the teacher wanted . After that I forgot what the teacher said & memorize the notebook.
the professor was going based off theory while he was going of real world experience that tosses business theory right out the window. those who took notes on the hidden costs were the smart ones.
@Bigger Issues Bigger, if you had ever done business here in NYC, you would find that Mr. Dangerfields take on this subject is quite honest and factual.
How bout fantasy Land. As a child of a political scientist, Rodney is exactly right. Most of the 'settlement' in any work scenario is political & underhanded economics.
I remembered this scene when I went back to finish a BS in the 90s. I was in a Finance class where the professor stated "Inflation has been low since World War II." I couldn't help asking about the mid 70s, Gerald Ford's "WIN" campaign to Whip Inflation Now, and Carter's "malaise" speech about stagflation. He just doubled down on his assertion. I have to wonder whether any of my classmates looked up what I'd said and found out that we went through a period of relatively high inflation that he was completely glossing over. It wasn't Weimar Republic inflation, but it wasn't "low" either.
Inflation has been low since WW2, yes. Like nothing in the 70s or 80s compared to the post-war inflaton of the early 1920s. Like imagine going into a shop and seeing that bread costs more than it has any right to cost. People joined increasingly militant labor unions to protect their living, which in turn fed into a far-left radicalism and the red scare. Some places in the US were facing turmoil comparable to a civil war. The inflation of the 70s was mild compared to the 1920s, because people lived more precariously back then. Today's inflation is mild compared to the inflation of the 70s.
@@TheTokkin Defining what is considered "low" would have been more helpful than just reasserting that it's been low and moving on. Within my lifetime I'd experienced inflation that was high enough to be a political issue, but not depression-era ruinous.
I remember my first years in college. There was always some older people in various classes of mine who would always participate in class discussions like Rodney did. Back then, the students and the professors embraced the wisdom older students gave during the class. I befriended an older guy in my class who was retired, and just taking classes fir fun it seemed. He helped me launch a very lucrative business during my sophomore year.
That is so true about embracing the wisdom of older students. My mom, after raising 12 children, went back to school to get her bachelors. She started at a junior college. After the economics professor found out about Mom raising 12 kids on my father’s budget, owning their home, the vacations they were about to take, etc. my mother became the “teacher’s teacher” and was called upon quite often to speak before the class. Book sense and common sense are two different subjects. Common sense ruled in our family.
@@ensignmjs7058 We started two Arcade Parlors. This was in the early 1970's before video games and computers took over. We had coin operated Foosball, air hockey, pinball, early video games etc. This type of business really did well for a while.
I went to business school too. It's funny just how much this scene drives home that so much of what you learn there is useless once you are out in the real world. The best classes I took were taught by a former CEO of a major corporation that taught some of my major management courses, and a litigation attorney that taught business law. Both were teaching for fun, and had incredibly relevant classes. Career professors that taught business classes regurgitated from books and I got so little out of it that was useful later on.
The (now) university that I graduated from was founded on this principal as a "business school." They had a 95% placement rate upon graduation. Then they became "accredited" and replaced their instructors with academics instead of business leaders. Now their placement rate is abysmal.
I worked for a guy 30 years ago. He opened a trucking / construction company despite some of the local city council objecting. I spent a good portion of one summer hauling oil dirt and building one of the council members a nice road thru his own private zoo. Another one I built a nice pond with a trailing switch back laden creek across his property. Put up a nice viewing area with a large pergola that his daughter used for her wedding. Suddenly after all of that free work they were both all in favor of the business.
I love when Thornton mentions the waste disposal costs and tells him "I'm not sure you know who runs that business but I assure you it's not the Boy Scouts". The industry that was notoriously run by the mob in the 70s and 80s. Lol This scene is so true since most professors have never run a successful business. Most English Profs would likely quit teaching but they need the paycheck. If they could write million selling books most would quit teaching in a minute... especially teachers at middle of the road Universities.
You really need to meet some English professors, it’s very rare that anyone goes into that profession because they value mainstream fiction-writing success or making money. Some people, if very few, still actually believe that education can give you something valuable that can’t be reduced to money
@@tlm19670 I majored in English and I can tell you that I wasn't very impressed with the professors. Nor do I think it's all about money. I didn't see them creating much of artistic significance with their own work or ideas. They just analyze the works of others. Most of their own work doesn't go anywhere. I realize a lot of great literature doesn't really have a market for it like romance novels or mysteries but I'm just not seeing it with most of these people.
My machine shop teacher was a machinist/tool and Die man by trade. Sad he only worked as a teacher one year. They fired him because our equipment was 25 yrs old manual lathes and mills. and we needed new CNC Type equipment. So he turned our shop into a job shop. For some used CNC equipment. Teachers in my experience Just read what a book says and most know nothing of the real world.
The point of a classroom education is to give students a basic understanding and model of the world from which to operate. Real life experience will teach students about the complications, the hiccups, and the deviations from theory.
You don't spend 40k a year at a school to run into hiccups, but that's what the college scam is, if that happened with another entity that failed you, you would be in court getting your money back, don't go to college, just get out of high school and start learning from there. I know I did the college and started the business ground up, that zoning problem that comes up is the realist thing you can run into.... will demoralizing you. You just wish they would wear their bribe price on there chest so you know how much to pay to keep going
And that's why we have a generation of little precious buttercups that get triggered whenever something doesn't go their way. Heck, in University they try and shut down opposing views and need safe spaces because they get "offended".
@@fredmercury1314 there are so many complications from the main theory it is impossible to teach them all. You teach students the main theory, and any derivatives of that theory can easily be understood when you know the overall objective
Yep. "Legitimate" or not, they're a fact of life. You ignore it at your (financial) peril. The business world is simply another version of the Law of the Jungle and operates essentially the same way - you're either a predator or you're prey.
When I was in the HVAC industry and had a class on air handlers, they showed one completely installed wrong, the instructor asked what was wrong with it and I yelled out there is not a $50.00 dollar bill on it for the inspector..
A common point in my LPN classes are how the test questions take place in a "perfect world." Before that, in EMS, during training I'd often hear, "do as I say, not as I do." The real world requires deviation and innovation from the textbooks; but first you have to pass the tests to prove you understand the material. Then you can be trusted to rise to the reality.
This scene perfectly demonstrates the same subject from a book mentality to a real world mentality. You have a college professor arguing with a huge business magnate about something Mr. professor has never actually done aside from regurgitate the material from someone else's books. You can see the problem with institutions that indoctrinate rather than educate. This Professor might as well be a Political teacher for all the good he does.
you should read Yanis Varoufakis books then. He is s famous Greek economist who shares the same position, that teaching economics theory is not preparing the students about how economy actually works in the real world.
He was teaching economics not management. Economics is theory. But managers have to know how to apply it to the real world. But at the same time you can't make management decisions in a vacuum that ignores labor markets, inflation, etc. So you need economics but you also need to know it's limitations.
The thing I love most about this scene is the fact that Thornton is taking the fictional company more seriously than the professor. (Side note- please don’t edit out the word “japs”. That’s the funniest line in the entire scene)
Japs isn't even derogatory. It's like here in Australia. Instead of saying aboriginals we used to say abos (abo-s). They found a way to be offended by that. I'm waiting for them to decide "indigenous" is derogatory.
Ross Cicero It may be funny to you, but it's politically offensive by today's standards. The word "Japs" was way less offensive in the 1980s than such words are today, with the Internet dredging up old original meanings; in this case, throwing back to WWII when "Japs" was an ethnic slur. The writers of "Back to School" could have written "Japanese" but they wanted to show how low-class Melon is, so they used the less elegant term, thus the video editor erred on the side of caution by taking it out. Otherwise, I agree, the line lost 90% of its impact.
@@lancasterritzyescargotdine2602 Oh pls Everyone is "offended" not because they find the words offensive but because being offended is the in thing now. Be offended for power, money, attention and so on. This whole "im offended" is also being pushed by strong financial groups who dominate the market... Probably for the sole reason to enforce control over information with things like "hate speech laws" that have popped up significantly over the years. No person with their heads on straight gives a dam about this crap. You guys live in a bubble. A big part of comedy is poking fun at tragedy, stereotypes and so on. People need to learn how to laugh at themselves or life will be depressing for them.
I will say this. The teacher's business model is still important. I reached the framework and principles of starting a business. Thornton's realities came from all his yrs in the real world.
Melon should be teaching that class. He doesn't even have a college degree and he's more qualified than the professor. The professor's ego was bruised.
I know so much more about business and economics than most people who went to college. But of course I would, I learned it either firsthand or on my own because I had to, not to know just enough to pass a class. I've talked to older guys about buying stocks and I've talked to real estate investors. I know multiple business owners, my father also being one as well as me running one on my own. The crazy thing is, a lot of these people I've talked to have little to no higher education and simply learned through their own experiences. The school system will never tell you this, but there's people out there working in retail that are real estate investors, or really good with stock picks and they know more than a lot of professors ever will on their subject. If you want to go into business for yourself, don't spend the money on a degree you don't need it. The internet is free. If you want to be an employee and run someone else's business, go right ahead and pay for the courses to meet the criteria they're looking for.
Schooling is a good thing up to a point. The technical stuff is about the only thing that is fairly standardized. The business part is like trying to hit a moving target. Example is during the Cold war (1947-1992) things generally were on the up, people can actually plan. Now it's more like an idea with a needed escape clause. Knowing when to get in and when to get out. While many dislike politics, the political climate can make or break a business.
when i retired from the cops i did a law degree at my local university.for some reason to do with diversity god knows we had to do a business module similar to the clip to get our degrees! we were set a project of setting up a sucessful course to sell to universities by the lecturer.we were in groups and had to come up with a subject we thought would attract students and make money! alas on our second lecture the teacher told us he was no longer qaulified to judge our efforts or what constituted a sucessful business! his entire dept including him had been cut from the curriculam as it wasnt performing well enough to make money! he told us i realise now i know nothing about the real business world just theory! the course was then dropped and we all got a credit.apparently it had been inserted in a lot of degree courses by the uni to make money having no bearing on the courses themselves and even with that it failed.
This is one of the best movie scenes ever. So true and educating the pompous. Clearly the prof not knowing the mafia ran the waste pickup industry was the funniest part. There was no way around what He said, and the prof was too snub nosed to acknowledge it. In the real world he would be eaten alive.
No he isn't. In the real world he has tenure. And that was the good old days. Nowadays the professors in gender studies and social work teach Marxist-friendly forms of National Socialism, which is actually more useful for students because when they graduate they get to be the Left fascist mobsters that everyone pays kickbacks to.
Ah yes. The appeal to ignorance. Sounds like the fake agent for a notorious grifter who bankrupted multiple failed businesses but who is somehow still hailed as a good businessman. Is serial bankruptcy good business because you screw your investors and creditors, but you can still scam people into giving you money?
@@DrCruel I don't think that you are using the same definition of "socialism" as other people are using. For example, bankruptcy protection is ultra-capitalist in that it is a way for supposedly capitalist ventures to fail, but still make money because they appeal to the government to be excused from paying people what those capitalist businesses capitalistically owe to those people. In a real capitalistic society, every person stiffed out of money in a so-called "bankruptcy" affair could storm the homes of the owners of those businesses and just take what is owed them. But it turns out that so-called "capitalists" are just greedy assholes. They expect the government to help them take what they think is theirs when they make money, then they expect the government to help them avoid paying when they lose money. That is not "socialism." Grow the F up and learn some basic economics.
@@FinnMcRiangabra In a socialist society, the "worker representatives" own the means of production. These representatives are chosen by the Party elite, and neither by a free market nor through any sort of fair elective process. Common to these societies is a sort of "bankruptcy protection" where Party SOEs do any ridiculous and corrupt things they want. The general public are compelled to pay for the results, often by force. This is especially the case under the socialism of communist China. This brutal Marxist state has become so repressive and exploitative to workers and small business owners that huge transnationals flock there to do business there. That is what socialism has come to mean in the 21st century. Where have you been for the last one hundred years? Apparently, you think being a "grown up" means being a Left fascist. I don't think that you are using the same definition of "grown up" as other people are using. Why not stop lying to people and trying to cheat us and rejoin the human race.
I worked for a company that had a contract to maintain American built railroad locomotives operating in the uk. It took two years of back and forth negotiations between corporate lawyers, British rail and American parts suppliers before we could even start to do the work. University and college does not prepare you for the real world.
What is truly tragic is an actual academic would have prodded him for every ounce of practical information to incorporate it into his lectures. This reminds me of teaching it’s all theoretical until you get into a classroom. There was a time when professors would go on sabbatical to upgrade their skills.
I majored in economics, and found it informative. If you want a real lesson look at three countries over a 30 year period. In one corner Israel and Ireland. One was an economic black hole, the other the backwater of Europe. Venezuela with it's oil industry was the jewel of Latin America. Israel had many jews from Eastern Europe with skills and money move there, and had policies that allowed growth, low taxes and fewer regulations. The EU let Ireland have lower than usual taxes to invite investment. Today they are economic miracles, not perfect but very successful. Israel is very entrepreneurial and innovative. Please don't bore me with talk of American financial aid, that is just backdoor subsidy for American military contractors. Venezuela's socialist policies and mismanagement have turned that country into a dumpster fire. Different laws of economics, extensive mathematical models and schools of thought, give jobs to displaced intellectuals. Economies are best when profit is the goal and it is allowed.
Venezuela under Chavez, it was sad watching it go downhill due to policies. I can recall arguing online back in the early 2000s that some policies were bad and being told things would turn out just fine.
@@rizon72 Many that argued things would be fine could well have been Econ Majors, that knew extensive theory and mathematical models like the back of their hands. AOC was an Econ Major and graduated cum laude, and went to a far more prestigeous university than me, and no question had far more extensive math than I did. Ireland has invited foreign investment and done well, Israel is innovative, creative and entrepreneurial. Israel also has the total opposite of "brain drain". They intelligence influx with educated and skilled people moving there.
This is what they dont teach in biz school ! The finer points. Someone needs to write a book on finer points the politicians , bureuacrats and judiciary even all govt servants from bottom to top may raise a few eyebrows. The system demands accept as iam or you are discarded. Dirty money or clean money , money talks .
In macro you could. Its the fine details and the micro level that would make such a book useless since the personalities involved are vastly different alongside their wants and needs.
@@eonaon6914 in governance the personalities enerskly take the shape if power of the chairs they sit on and thats whats gets into their head till they retire
This is pretty much how classes are taught. The big assumption is that everything goes according to plan. College provides you with some tools and theory. When you get into the real world you really start to learn. I found it hilarious that a business teacher said' If you are sick you should stay at home so that other workers don't get ill and lower overall production. A company couldn't care less if everyone got sick because they will expect everyone to work just as hard and they frown on absenteeism.
Sorry, did you really just say companies don't care if everyone gets sick after witnessing the world deal with a pandemic the past 2 years? Do you think companies like it when health insurance rates skyrocket because employees are passing around the flu? Do you think companies like paying disability when sick workers get themselves or someone else injured? Getting sick doesn't only mean catching a cold.
@@freedbygsus Obviously a pandemic is something else. Besides the government stepped in and said that people had to stay home. Companies would rather you came in with a cold than be off sick. I don't why you would equate a dangerous virus with a cold or the flu.
I saw this movie when it first came out. My mom took me to see it and I remember how much she (and everybody else) was laughing out loud in the theater.
The professor here reminds me so much of a Political Science teacher I had in college in 1973. Department head. Taught the subject as if it was math (A+B=C). Arrogant beyond words. Plus, found a way to mention at least once a class that he had a Ph.D. The man was ludicrous on every level. Sat in back of class first day, and was appalled by his approach and style. On Day 2, I switched to the seat right in front of his desk, and it was ON. We battled all semester. The chairs on both sides and behind me were always empty. It was him and I, and everyone knew it. He'd mouth some generality, and I'd ask for an example or for him to prove it. He passed me with a 'C' only because I threatened to take the class again if he failed me.
Real world business planning versus academia... great stuff...! The professor and Dangerfield both make valid points of costs not considered in fancy business models. A top defense contractor paid $20 billion for a merger that lost $500 million a quarter for years afterwards. All those top business school MBAs predicted greatness and 'synergies' only to end up with years of losses,... annual bonuses to buy exotic luxury cars notwithstanding...
