Thread: Occupy Wall Street around the world.... Your thoughts and feelings about it!

Short term profits killed the economy. The "Greed is good" mentality.
Americans have a short term outlook and memory. Double digit profits don't happen every year and when they do, a collapse will follow (see housing).
We used to make a lot of "things" here. Short term profit sent the manufacturing overseas. A less expensive product (then cheaper) = better profits but no one to buy the products.
Henry Ford might have been a a real SOB but he knew that paying his workers allowed them to buy his product and kept a stable an loyal workforce.
I worked in plastics for 30 years, primarily shoes and other consumer goods. The footwear industry is gone. Not just a couple companies, all of it. A few bookkeepers, accountants and designers remain with upper management. All of the lower level production and assembly, mid level management, tooling (me) are gone and I doubt they will come back.

I worked for years learning and developing my skills to make a quality product at a fair price. I used to make some things that can be done without like fishing lures and golf trinkets but they kept companies alive that also made packaging, printing, raw and manufacture materials.

My resume is a graveyard of companies that were made to fail over a percentage point or two.
See Is "Walmart Good for America?". Transcript | Is Wal-Mart Good For America? | FRONTLINE | PBS

They did the same thing to Dr. Scholl's; one of my former clients. Collective Brands (Collective Brands, Inc.) sent all their manufacturing overseas. Not some, all. And took the profits. I could take you for a ride about an hour from my home and spend 3 hours showing you all the empty buildings where businesses once were.

We gave it all away for cheap crap and short term profits.

The stuff we get from China is no less expensive in terms of price but far greater in the long term.

China is thinking long term.

That's the root cause. Immediate gratification.

Originally Posted by capecoddah

I worked for years learning and developing my skills to make a quality product at a fair price. I used to make some things that can be done without like fishing lures and golf trinkets but they kept companies alive that also made packaging, printing, raw and manufacture materials.

That is an excellent point! The totally 'unregulated' free market is fundamentally based on the idea of the 'agile workers', the ones who would move from one employment to another and acquire new skills fairly quickly. But the reality is that concept has limited applications. That's why we need some balance. We shouldn't let the extremes of either way (right or left) to rule the country. And especially we shouldn't let those who need blood for their social experiments to rule the country. Regardless of how passionate they are in their desire to hang the wrong guys.

The "social justice" deals with the problem of slicing the pie more equally, but the Western-style capitalism deals [most of the time] with how to create a larger pie. But, there should be some limits and stoppers on that process to make it more humane.