I'm going to go out on a limb here, so here it goes:
I think one big reason for the decline in quality of merchandise and the
relentless pushing of useless crap these days is that most big companies
are publicly owned and most Americans have their retirement funds
invested in the stock market. When I was a kid a much smaller percentage
of companies were public and a very small percent of the population had
any dealings with the stock market.
I've seen from some of the companies that my wife has worked for, how
much pressure there is to turn in that quarterly profit. The companies
come right out and say that their #1 responsibility is to their stock
holders and the workers are expendable. As a small business owner myself
I find there to be something terribly wrong with that picture.
We also now have CEOs making astronomical salaries because in part they
have successfully cut out the American workers on the factory floor. If
the CEOs' salaries were lowered to something reasonable we'd be well on
our way towards being able to have some viable American manufacturing again.
I don't know if I'd lay blame fully on Stanley and some other American
companies for making the crap that they make these days. They are being
pressured by WalMart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. to sell them the same
hammer this year that they did last year, but for less $$$ than they did
last year. That goes on year after year. They tell them that if they
don't come in with the lower price that they won't buy from them.
Somewhere there is a story about a sprinkler manufacturer that had been
manufacturing in the Mid West for decades and they had no intention of
closing their American factories, but WalMart kept pressuring them to
sell for cheaper and cheaper and they eventually had to go overseas or
close up shop. WalMart and the other big box stores have closed down the
Mom and Pop hardware stores so there is no other place for these
manufacturers to sell their goods other than these huge publicly traded
big box stores.
It's really a pretty sad state of affairs. How cheap is that cheap
WalMart toaster if you have to replace it every year? I've had a few
electric fans that have belonged to my grandmother that must have lasted
20 - 30 years or more and when they finally broke I was able to fix them
myself or get them repaired. I can't find a fan that will last one year
at Lowes or Home Depot and no one will repair any of that crap because
its cheaper to throw it into the landfill and buy another one that will
last only 3 months.
I'm rambling now and I'm certainly no economist, but this is one of my
pet peeves. This and "Press 1 for English". The short sighted, just
looking at the next quarter's balance sheet without regard for anything
else mentality is paving the way for our decline and China and India's
rise. China has been taking the money we've been sending over there for
plasma tvs and other junk and building up their military. Didn't we
spend years trying to defeat Communism? Now our greed and short
sightedness is fully funding it.
That's my .02
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming................
> 4) Nails, tools, etc. are trickle-down problems
> perpetuated by the birdbath in the yard. The Chinese
> birdbath rusts in your yard because you bought it and
> put it there. You don't need a birdbath. You wouldn't
> pay triple what you did for it if it were made in
> Cleveland, so it's made in China so you'll buy it.
|