Enough is enough.
There is now ransom going on in this country: we are paying for the rich and powerful’s problems and having our jobs threatened at the same time. Capital markets are supposed to be competitive and when excess happens, companies fail. But when the government is constantly backstopping you from failing, you’ll take any risk, take any chance, have your profit be private and your bailout be public.
In the meantime, Cubicle Warriors everywhere get thrown out on the street with corporations more concerned with costs than with customers. Companies cancel pensions, fool with health insurance for those who have it and bypass the benefit for their workers if they don’t. We’ve become a self-service nation. Companies no longer believe service matters because it costs money that eats into profits. Our innovative ideas become the property of corporations to use for their own good.
All the while CEO’s extract exorbitant sums from failing companies. Millions and millions of dollars are paid by companies to executives while laid off workers get one week’s pay for each year of service – if they are lucky.
The lack of regulation in the marketplace has turned America into a country that has socialized its biggest financial institutions and has provided loans for private companies taking over the debt of others. Our federal bank has pumped billions of dollars into the system to help it stay solvent – paid for by bonds with the funds coming from the very countries we compete with on the planet who managed their economies better. All the while the taxpayers – us – are the ones holding the “pay” ticket to back the bonds.
Regulations support the very best that companies can give, not take it away. Football teams play football – but there are rules and regulations for the games and referees to watch the play. Teams are penalized if they don’t play by the rules.
What we’ve done in our financial marketplace instead is be the parents of teenagers who go off on vacation for a month while the teens stay home. If the teens are supervised, you will come back to a house that is probably OK. If they are not…
Our businesses have become the unsupervised teens of the marketplace – doing whatever they want, whenever they want, and trashing the workforce while they do it.
You and I are not going to change that culture until there are some referees that enforce rules that protect customers and employees. We can build our personal brands, continue to build new job skills, and salt money away to protect ourselves from management that doesn’t know how to manage. We can try and protect ourselves by working for companies and management teams that adhere to an internal culture that craves customers and values their employees.
Saving companies running after the last cent of earnings per share with by taxpayer dollars simply reduces the pain. It doesn’t cure the disease.
We pay the price.
Scot
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