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let see that was when high school rotc had real gun, when you left your keys in your truck in the high school parking lot with the windows down and a rifle in the back window and nobody mess with it. that when your graduating high school and next day had a job at the paper mill.
So what limit do you as a shareholder want a company you are invested in to hold their profit at?
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Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
You nailed it.
It's the 21st century. Time to do away with the sin of greed, I guess.
One thing that was great about that time, though. Corporations made a lot of money, and along with handsomely paying their stockholders and high-ranking personnel, they paid the actual workers decent wages. I guess back in that long ago time, companies actually realized that if they didn't have hard-working employees the company wouldn't be doing so well.
This is the only 'trickle-down' theory that works: Profits are made and disbursed to owners, stockholders, and employees.
Today there is no such thing as greed. Today it's make all the money you can and screw the workers. After all, they're a dime a dozen these days, aren't they? If Mr. Jones doesn't like being paid $7 an hour he can just go find another job and his job will be filled by someone working for $5 an hour. People? What are they? Aren't they just wooden pegs to be used and maneuvered for the good of the corporation? They don't actually have any VALUE, now, do they?
So, today, the only thing that's really happening in this economy is the wealthy passing money around to each other. A jolly old club, I'm sure.
A middle class man could support a family in the 50s and 60s on one salary because families lived in a 1000 sq ft house, had one car, had one TV (if lucky) and one phone. We each had three pair of shoes, one pair of Converse play shoes and one or two pair school/work shoes, and a clothes closet the size of a refrigerator that held all our clothes. Vacations were a family car trip to a local site. We rarely ate out, maybe 3 times a year.
Is that a middle class lifestyle now? Nope.
Last edited by texan2yankee; 03-05-2016 at 02:28 PM..
A middle class man could support a family in the 50s and 60s on one salary because people lived in a 1000 sq ft house, had one car, had one TV (if lucky) and one phone. We each had three pair of shoes each, one pair of Converse play shoes and one or two pair school/work shoes, and a clothes closet the size of a refrigerator that held all our clothes. Vacations were a family car trip to a local site.
Is that a middle class lifestyle now? Nope.
Not just the middle-class. This is a good read: For Richer
One thing that was great about that time, though. Corporations made a lot of money, and along with handsomely paying their stockholders and high-ranking personnel, they paid the actual workers decent wages. I guess back in that long ago time, companies actually realized that if they didn't have hard-working employees the company wouldn't be doing so well.
Yes, at a time when they are payhing a really high corporate tax rate, too. Wonder how that happened?
I grew up white and middle class in the 50's. We lived in much smaller homes back then. One car. My father drove the family car to work. Mother had a job. She took the bus. On vacation we drove to Florida for a week to stay with grandparents.
Notice the pictures on this thread. White children and adults. If you weren't white you couldn't buy a decent home in a decent neighborhood. Deed restrictions prevented that from happening. People saluted the flag and went to church but often times but didn't want people of color in their schools or next to them at the workplace. So much for the Leave It To Beaver images of the 50's lifestyle. Not everyone shared the dream.
I grew up white and middle class in the 50's. We lived in much smaller homes back then. One car. My father drove the family car to work. Mother had a job. She took the bus. On vacation we drove to Florida for a week to stay with grandparents.
Notice the pictures on this thread. White children and adults. If you weren't white you couldn't buy a decent home in a decent neighborhood. Deed restrictions prevented that from happening. People saluted the flag and went to church but often times but didn't want people of color in their schools or next to them at the workplace. So much for the Leave It To Beaver images of the 50's lifestyle. Not everyone shared the dream.
No doubt, racial prejudice was prevalent during the 50s and 60s. I never met a white collar Hispanic professional until I got out of college in the 80s even though a large portion of my state's population was originally from Mexico.
It went to quarterly earnings calls and ceo types 'returning value to shareholders' and not taking care of customers. It went the way of people who treat others that disagree with them as enemies as opposed to fellow countrymen. It went the way of iconic institutions crumbling under the weight of their own greed and ineptitude.
I only disagree with one point: only the richest and most powerful shareholders benefit from the idiocy of the modern Robber-Baron CEO. The small investor is there to bear the company's losses and make the stock market rich with fees, while the ultra-rich make those spectacular gains that somehow avoid Big Government's insatiable tax appetite.
How many of us realize that the CEO is just an employee of the corporation--like the little guys who actually produce the company's wealth by working. Except that they don't have to cater to bosses who act like psychos; their benefits and pay aren't constantly reduced; they aren't asked to pay more every year for their health insurance; and they certainly won't be demoted or fired for making bad decisions that cost their companies huge amounts of money, with no corresponding benefit.
Nope, here's the deal: "The more CEOs get paid, the worse their companies do over the next three years...This is true whether they’re CEOs at the highest end of the pay spectrum or the lowest...The negative effect was most pronounced in the 150 firms with the highest-paid CEOs...the longer CEOs were at the helm, the more pronounced was their firms’ poor performance." Forbes Welcome
How did this happen? I blame it mostly on our nation's ongoing infatuation with the supremely self-confident--a group that happens to consist of only mindless morons and Pathological Narcissists (sociopaths with a gift for manipulating people). We seems to WANT to be ruled by these sadistic predators, and will go to any lengths to give them infinite money and power. Pretty much any committee charged with interviewing and hiring a new Big Business CEO will choose the most arrogant, job-hopping Pathological Narcissist that claims he knows everything about everything, and in particular claims great expertise in the sleazy mergers and "Big Finance" deals that represent large-scale gambling. The Selection Committee won't care that the applicant has no experience or knowledge of the business; they also won't know that the company will LOSE MONEY when it abandons productive activity (on top of the money lost rewarding the Robber Baron CEO).
It wasn't designed this way, but the new Upper Class of Robber-Baron CEOs managed to grab total control of Big Business due to the way corporations are organized--with Boards of Directors that can be packed with other Robber Baron CEOs. The corporate structure was designed by Big Government politicians, at the behest of the CEOs that use their company's wealth for campaign contributions (remember the Supreme Court's "Citizen's United" decision?). And with Big Business now owning Big Government, the small businesses that offered upward mobility and respect for the worker quickly fell victim to overtaxation and over-regulation. So don't blame Capitalism for the economic mess in America today: it doesn't exist without small businesses offering options to both consumers and workers.
And now we're back to basics: a tiny upper class taking almost everything, a declining working class that is squeezed more and more to pay for everyone above and below them, and a class of welfare poor that feels entitled to a far better quality of life than the workers who finance them have. Early Baby Boomers, you were probably the luckiest humans to ever live.
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