Inflation here? gas/grocery prices just continue to climb

superchuck500 said
Henry Ford was sued by his shareholders over his plan to use corporate profits to increase production and raise wages without passing costs to the buyers because he thought it was patriotic.

The shareholders won and the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Ford's plan to use corporate surplus in such a manner violated the company's duty to shareholders.

Ford could have argued that allowing more consumers to buy cars (in the mid- 1910s) would mean greater future sales because many of these buyers didn't own cars at all yet and would be hooked on Ford for future purchases . . . but he didn't. He believed in the principle of that matter, but his principles were inconsistent with profit-making and distributing.

In other words, that quote is at substantial odds with the US model of corporate moneymaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Aaaand, this.

I can see why some might think that the argument I've been making against the mustache-twirling is simply semantics. But I think it's more than that. So long as people have this idea that the root of the problem is just a cabal of uber-rich board members and executives trying to line their own pockets, the problem will never get solved. That's just the eye-candy. As I argued above, it's much more fear that drives corporations than it is greed.

The root problem lies in the above quoted post. A short-sighted and short-term view of profit...and one that is getting shorter and shorter with algorithmic trading and hedging. I certainly don't have the solution, but that's the problem. And "free trade" agreements will be problematic so long as corporations can leverage workers of the world against one another.

I am no communist. And I am certainly not a big fan of tariff-based economics. But this house of cards is going to fall soon without a major shift in approach. And reducing the issue to personal greed just delays a solution because it hides the actual problem.