JimJoe: Even the racist Henry Ford knew a good business model. Keeping prices LOW meant long-term company growth with meant a lot more to the shareholders (although Ford was a private company back then) than today's Holy Grail of Next Quarter's Numbers. His motto even included paying employees "the highest possible wage" to keep skilled workers.

We're in a race to the bottom when it comes to what companies USED to call "our most valuable resource" - employees. We joke about it these days with call center in Bangalore giving "customer service" with an accent so thick you need a supercomputer to decode it.

Whereas there used to be more of a balance between the employee, the customer and the shareholder, it's all shareholder now. I mean, there have even been shareholder-induced lawsuits that want to punish a CEO for not producing enough profit, regardless of the fact that the company was healthy. Shareholders now want every single penny (look at day-traders) and if they don't get it, they bail out without a care.

By and large we have completely lost our ability to look at the long-term big picture. We don't do big projects anymore. NIMBY and BANANA (Not In My Backyard - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) rule this country now.