"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

money is a tool
March 03, 2004 - 11:07 am

it's been happening for a long time, but didn't get much attention nationwide until 'white collar' jobs started to flow overseas.

of course, places were businesses and plants closed to go overseas got lots of attention.

from an unbiased economic standpoint, it's a good thing. from the person i just lost my job standpoint, it's not so good.

if you're curious how economically it's a good thing, i try and explain it to you.. so drop me a line.

but.. what i feel the urge to talk about is something slightly different - one reason companies are sending jobs overseas are profits.

simply put, even with the cost of shipping things from, say, southeast asia to the states, it's cheaper to make the item there. they sell at the same price and make more money.

profit is king in western business.

whose fault is that? easy to say it's the greedy corporations - and yes that's partly true.

but the CEO, CFO, COO, president, etc of a company are the managers of a company. they are not really the owners. they are elected or appointed by the board of directors.. who generally have no other link to the company.

the owners of the company are stockholders. now, yes most managers have sizable shares in the company and that makes sense.. they then have a vested interest in making the company as profitable as possible, so the stock price goes up and they can sell the shares to make money.

but most ownership of major companies is held by individuals or non-managers. why do people buy stock? the same reason the managers have shares, they want it to go up so they can sell it and make money.

so in the neverending quest to please shareholders, the owners, companies continually seek out how to either make a better mouse trap to sell or how to make the current mouse trap for less money.

in other words, corporations arn't really at fault for this - we are the victim of our own culture.

profit has become the bottom line in america and as technology increases, it only makes sense to make your good or offer your service from the lowest cost place - that's not going to be here.

companies are doing what shareholders demand they do.

if a company posts too low of a gain or, heaven forbid, a loss the managers can expect to be shipped out pretty damn quick. so they want to keep their jobs.. they want to make money, just like all the other owners.

so.. while big bad corporations are looking to cut costs, keep in mind the reason they are.. is the expectations of the american people. they are only guilty of carrying out the mandate of the common folk.

perhaps one day.. money won't be the be all, end all of our society, but i don't see that happening anytime soon.

and yes, i truly do consider money to be one of the root causes for all the fucked up stuff that happens in society. we value something - a peice of paper with green ink on it - over nearly everything else.. and then wonder why we have fucked up value systems.

money is a tool that has become our master.