Quote:
Originally Posted by djplong
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.
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Every point you made above made my point. If the action is in the interest of the shareholder, the business will succeed. You assume that business will always act in the short term interest of business, even to the detriment of the business (when they do, they fail), and that any long term interest of business is in the interest of the public. Neither are correct. Microsoft has saved cash instead of paying dividends, not for the public interest but for the long term interest of the business. Sometimes the interests of the shareholders coincide with the interests of the public (pay higher wages to get or keep better workers) but those decisions should never be made just to pay higher salaries than the worker is worth for the public good. If they do, the go out of business, or they move to a cheaper wage market BECAUSE the purpose of business is to make a profit (short term and long term), not to serve the public welfare.
JJ