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0 pointsphatskat2y ago0 comments

> That example does result in "better at making money" but that money can then be used to lower prices / increase quality / pay shareholders dividends / pay employees higher wages.

Out of these, we often just see

> can then be used to…pay shareholders dividends

During the welfare capitalism of the early 20th century, we did see lower prices, higher quality products, and higher wages. Then Jack Welch and his ilk discovered that you could axe entire departments, lay off thousands of workers, and pay that money to shareholders while your company crashes and burns.

Why invest in making better products than “the commies” if you can make cheap products on par with imports and fire factory workers/QA/research? They learned that if the consumer doesn’t have a competitive choice for a product that will break in 1 year vs one that will last decades, then why not sell 10s of the cheap one over and over?

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robertlagrant2y ago

> Out of these, we often just see

"Often" seems like weasel words? Look at e.g. tech worker salaries rocketing up. Or the year on year improvements in key items such as cars and phones.

What you're saying doesn't jibe with my understanding of the 20th and 21st centuries' explosion of innovation and quality of life improvements.

If you think Fords and VWs are no better than Ladas, or SpaceX rockets aren't better than Soyuz rockets, or people flock to countries run by "the commies" vs, say, the US, due to the better products and wages in said "commie" countries, then we might just have a fundamental disagreement on the state of reality. But my understanding is the opposite is true.

> why not sell 10s of the cheap one over and over?

Companies can do that, but in a decent economic environment a competitor or twelve can spring up and offer products at different prices and levels of quality. E.g. not every restaurant is McDonald's. Why is that?

phatskatOP2y ago

I guess I should have qualified that it’s not always the case, but we have also seen a lot of factory and middle class jobs gutted by corporations who favor profits over people. Jobs in manufacturing that paid well and offer good benefits don’t seem to be as common as they once were. The fact that a single income can’t support a family for a lot of Americans is a sharp contrast to previous generations.

That’s not to say that good jobs and food companies don’t exist, as you pointed out we have tech jobs that lay well and other sectors. The divide between what’s achievable for the middle and lower class now vs the upper is staggering though. Having to worry about affording a mortgage, health care, food, etc is a reality for many Americans while a handful simply have to say what they want and they have it without batting an eye or considering the cost.

We can both pick and choose which sectors to look at to support either the idea that jobs are great or that wages are bad, my point is that there has been a very tangible shift for a decent number of companies to move away from good wages and benefits to giving C-levels and shareholders more money than they know what to do with.

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