Now that you finally offered your POV, here's mine. I agree with everything you said with the exception of me just complaining. I agree that capitalism generally works. I also dont think the state should control everything either. However, when you see the middle class shrinking and the poorer class grow leaps and bounds, then there is something inherently wrong with the system and it needs to be corrected. Regulation is just a part of it. The other is to develop a social concious and steer away from the self entitlement and truck you mentality.
I really hate the words share holder value. All that means is giving fewer people a bigger piece of the pie than letting more people benefit from holding a job. The more people a country has employed, the better off that country will be. Greed clouds that outlook.
Even in a more social country like Canada, greed still runs amuck, usually at the hands of corrupt self entitled and self serving politicians. Another thing we have going on here in Canada's public service is the hiring of minorities based on ethnicity, sex, and language rather than on merrit of the candidate and their ability and qualifications to do the job.
I think 'shareholder value' is OK, if that's not the only goal- I have complained about WE Energies many times- it's a privately held utility and shareholder value is all the CEO cares about. Compoanies that became corporations often buy other companies, grow (or not), sell off and take what they can get. Sometimes, they make money, sometimes, they lose but in both cases, the accountants find ways to make it look like they did something good for the shareholders. I blame a lot of the BS in business on the glut of MBAs that started in the mid-'70s- they look at such small increments and consider the larger ones to be almost immaterial. I know someone who worked in the budget department of a bank and he said they analyzed the cost of every type of transaction and the actual cost of some were none places to the right of the decimal, as in $.xxxxxxxxx dollars. IIRC, this was the cost to process a check, which looks really bad when the cost of an overdrawn check is considered- they have the money, they could just pay it. Returned or successful, it's all just an accounting process. A WI based bank was nailed for their way of stacking larger checks in a day, rather than taking them chronologically- this resulted in people seeing more than $100/day in overdraft fees and when they were sued, they paid millions.
AMF owning Harley Davidson is another case where a conglomerate bought a company and knew nothing about how to run it. At one point not long before the successors bought the company, AMF considered selling off the assets and closing it. The new ownership group showed that it could be successful and it was, in spades.
WRT % of people who are employed- the US still has a large number of unemployed- don't let the news and White House reports fool you. The problem is in the way the numbers are counted and reported- I know many people in various types of businesses who can't find workers, good or bad. They just don't want to work. The ones who stay are often terrible employees and that leads to a lot of businesses closing.
It would be great to hold onto employees, but the large picture includes losses to crime and in many cases, the losses are huge- Home Depot loses Billions of dollars per year to shoplifters who run out with whole carts filled with power tools. Grocery stores are shutting down the self-checkout lanes because of 'skip scanning' and blatant theft. Drug stores, car dealers and almost all types of retail stores are being hit hard, more or less, depending on the location.
Here's an example- they came form Chicago and AFAIK, only one was caught-
Police say a group of teenagers believed from the Chicago area broke into a luxury car dealership in Wisconsin and drove off with nine vehicles worth more than a half-million dollars
abcnews.go.com
The world is far from what it was and people feel entitled to other peoples' property. Money and possessions are all too many want and it doesn't matter that they're destroying everything.
