This generation of kids...

[Tiller]

Except for this guy.

Another man to admire. I personally have never heard of Mr. Feuerstein, but I do have admiration for Jon Huntsman Sr. I don't think either men simply got into business though in order to do good works, I imagine it was to create wealth. In Mr. Huntsman's case it was also to show what a real businessman should be. Should be, not is.

He regrets that their needs to be a lot of paperwork, and a good handshake isn't enough to close a deal. The thing is I don't think you can go back to anytime in history where business was done without the legal institution of contracts.

I think Pompidou stated it simply before when he said

They did just that - got as rich as they could while staying within legally and socially accepted parameters.

That's the way it has always been, and I think so long as human nature doesn't evolve to be different then it is today, that is how it will always be. Profit will always be the driving motive and ultimate responsibilities of a business, so far as the majority of business owners are concerned. And whether you call it enlightened self interest or you call it greed the trait isn't going to be leaving humanity anytime soon.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And just as I said before -- it's the socially accepted parameters that have changed for the worst, especially over the last thirty years. Mr Feuerstein was an exceptional man in 1996 -- but he wouldn't have been in 1936. He'd have been a man who understood his role in the community -- because, as he said himself, those were the values he was raised with.

 

[scottyrocks]

Many farmers wouldn't give a damn about say an endangered species of ground hog that is ruining his fields.

I hardly think that comparing ground hogs to people is valid. Ridding a farm of ground hogs to the betterment of the farmer's earning potential is not the same as paying a worker a fair living wage. As much as I want to protect animals, we need to be able to live, and being the virus we are, humans can only do so by invading, taking over, and then destroying its host.

Anyway, big business posts huge earnings on a regular basis. There's no excuse to not pay a good wage to employees.

 

[Tiller]

I hardly think that comparing ground hogs to people is valid.

I'm not. I was comparing something seen as a social obligation with another kind of social obligation. Some people think farmers are social obligated to protect certain endangered wild life that is on their property.Others think companies have a social obligation to open up a day care center for their workers children. The owner will make a value judgment, and the way they always make their choice is by measuring out if it will increase the productivity of their business.

My point was that a social obligation only matters if it passes enough people's judgment. I think forcing a farmer to use his land as a wildlife preserve for and endangered species because of some idea of a "social obligation" is wrong. Now their are certain ideas that people claim are social obligations now that should be followed, but their are others that simply should be up to the owners of the company, whether its a single farmer or a group of stockholders.

Anyway, big business posts huge earnings on a regular basis. There's no excuse to not pay a good wage to employees.

People should be paid for the value that people think their work is worth. If someone is willing to work for less then another person, and they have the same general level of talent, why shouldn't they higher the person willing to do it for cheaper? In contract work if I say I can get the job done at a cheaper price then you can, and they higher me instead of you, that is moral, but if the same exact thing happens inside a company it's immoral?

When a company values a job at a rate that is less then the value of the work that needs to be done, they see less production. If a person can not live up to their job responsibility they tend to lose their job.

People work for the value they believe their work is worth whether they want to admit it or not. I don't know many people who would accept a less paying job, when they had an offer for a higher paying job up the street. You may limit your potential by staying in a certain area, because of family and friends, but that is a value choice that you have made.

Mr Feuerstein was an exceptional man in 1996 -- but he wouldn't have been in 1936. He'd have been a man who understood his role in the community -- because, as he said himself, those were the values he was raised with.

Maybe I'm just simply wrong, but I don't think the big business leader of 1936 where morally superior beings, to every other businessman/woman who came before or since. Considering that a good percentage of them were the same robber barons who lived 20 years before I'm simply not buying into this idea that they saw their business as nothing more then a jobs program. Every businessman I've ever meet whether they are farmers, electricians, store owners, shop owners, or the own a construction company started their business in order to make a profit. I'm assuming that big business is no different then small, and that little has changed about human nature since mankind moved away from the Garden of Eden.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

The vast majority of country-western singers these days are a freaking joke. They are pop, boy band, N'Sync rejects who throw on a cowboy hat, get an acoustic guitar, a Stetson, and a pickup truck and sing about farms/small towns. To top it off, they have little talent and class.

Give me Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Buck Owens, Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, etc, etc, etc any day. These people had talent and class. They also didn't lie about their roots or forget about them.

There are enough examples of said stars who were the real thing to spread the illusion to the whole industry. I mean, you could probably google rap artists who were killed by gunshot, or rap artists who were arrested, and find no small percentage. Some say prison time even helps the career. As for country, I can't say. I don't follow either, but at least the plight of the rap artist tends to make headlines. The origins of a country singer would never flag my attention.

 

[Derek WC]

Here, here, Tom! Give us modern country singers who don't only sing (If it can be called that) of getting their pickup and 'having fun' with their girl friend like some idiot and whom actually have talent, and not just a bunch of these so called urban cowboys.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I used to be ashamed of my working class/ghetto background and tried to hide it. Then ghetto became cool and all the affluent kids and even many adults wanted to pretend they were from the hood. It reminded me of the trustifarians at college who drove new SUVs and parked them at the corner where they panhandled so they could follow the Dead because they thought being poor was cool. It's easy to be a tough guy or starving when you know it's just a game you can end at any time.

We definitely live in a classiest society, but for me, I agree with Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I worked my way through graduate school. It was very difficult. Some people in my classes had their tuition paid by their parents and went on expensive vacations. They drove nice cars and I had a hooptie. They were cheerful and tan in the winter while I was pale, haggard and ornery. My diet was mostly popcorn and pasta and I lived in a tiny inlaw house that the UPS man mistook for a shed while trying to deliver a package to me. One day one of the rich kids walked up to me and said I looked tired and should find time to relax. I didn't find that comment relaxing. :eusa_doh:

In retrospect I'm grateful that I've had to work hard for what I have. I know I earned it. The rich kids earned their degrees, too, I'm not knocking that or them. I'm not better than them any more than they are better than me. But I know I went to bat for myself and that's one of the few things any kids/adults can control. I hope that kids can be taught the same- that there isn't a level playing field for them, that it won't always be easy and glamorous, but that they will respect themselves and earn the respect of others if know they don't have to prove anything to anyone but themselves, and hopefully that's to do their best given the resources they have.

 

[Geiamama]

I used to be ashamed of my working class/ghetto background and tried to hide it. Then ghetto became cool and all the affluent kids and even many adults wanted to pretend they were from the hood. It reminded me of the trustifarians at college who drove new SUVs and parked them at the corner where they panhandled so they could follow the Dead because they thought being poor was cool. It's easy to be a tough guy or starving when you know it's just a game you can end at any time.

We definitely live in a classiest society, but for me, I agree with Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I worked my way through graduate school. It was very difficult. Some people in my classes had their tuition paid by their parents and went on expensive vacations. They drove nice cars and I had a hooptie. They were cheerful and tan in the winter while I was pale, haggard and ornery. My diet was mostly popcorn and pasta and I lived in a tiny inlaw house that the UPS man mistook for a shed while trying to deliver a package to me. One day one of the rich kids walked up to me and said I looked tired and should find time to relax. I didn't find that comment relaxing. :eusa_doh:

In retrospect I'm grateful that I've had to work hard for what I have. I know I earned it. The rich kids earned their degrees, too, I'm not knocking that or them. I'm not better than them any more than they are better than me. But I know I went to bat for myself and that's one of the few things any kids/adults can control. I hope that kids can be taught the same- that there isn't a level playing field for them, that it won't always be easy and glamorous, but that they will respect themselves and earn the respect of others if know they don't have to prove anything to anyone but themselves, and hopefully that's to do their best given the resources they have.

I used to be embarrassed as a kid too. We didn't have much, or rather any, money growing up and we had to appreciate what we had, but that's difficult to do when you're seven.

I remember I desperately wanted a bike for my birthday but my folks could never have afforded a new one. Instead my father bought an old second-hand bike, repainted it blue and added a little basket to the front. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Of course when I went out on it, all the other kids teased me. But I loved that bike so much, I just didn't care. It meant so much to me that Dad had worked so hard to get me that bike and spent so much time making it pretty for me.

Now I'm lucky. I have money to be able to treat my children to a new bike for their birthdays but it saddens me that children, even young children in primary school, are so spoilt that they view such things as a right not a privilage, demanding not just bike but phones and ipods and computers. I don't blame the children, I blame the parents. After all the children aren't the ones buying all this stuff!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe I'm just simply wrong, but I don't think the big business leader of 1936 where morally superior beings, to every other businessman/woman who came before or since.

I'm not talking about *big business* leaders. Most people in the thirties had a very jaundiced view of big business leaders, and for good reason -- the Samuel Insulls and Richard Whitneys and Ivar Kreugers of the world stood fully revealed in their true character. "Economic Royalists" were not popular figures at all, except perhaps with each other.

I'm talking, instead, about the kind of people who ran businesses like those of Mr. Feuerstein -- manufacturing operations rooted in a community, family owned, run by people who understood their responsibility and obligations to society. There were plenty of businesses like these that survived the Depression and the war out of that sense of obligation and committment, only to be sold out by second or third-generation owners who lacked the honor of their predecessors.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

It's interesting to compare today's culture with the culture of the '30s. Things that are today considered rarefied highbrow stuff -- opera, classical music, Shakespeare -- were among the most popular radio features among working class audiences. It was considered a mark of distinction in a working class home to have the Encyclopedia Britannica or Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf Of Books in the living room. Has working class culture dumbed itself down -- or have the people who package and sell culture decided not to bother with the blue collar folks anymore?

What we have today is a worst of both worlds: a society and culture that, on one hand, looks down upon manual labor and at the same time is markedly anti-intellectual in its outlook. While many young people eschew blue collar jobs as something beneath them, they also seem to have less interest in the more intellectually-oriented pursuits, such as reading, that are key to the training for the professional, white collar careers that they aspire to.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What we have today is a worst of both worlds: a society and culture that, on one hand, looks down upon manual labor and at the same time is markedly anti-intellectual in its outlook. While many young people eschew blue collar jobs as something beneath them, they also seem to have less interest in the more intellectually-oriented pursuits, such as reading, that are key to the training for the professional, white collar careers that they aspire to.

The irony, of course, is that this is by far the most "highly-educated" generation in American history, and yet we have a culture that fairly wallows in the crassest kind of stupidity. What are they learning?

 

[JimWagner]

^^ Narcissism.

 

[Derek WC]

Bingo, I believe we have a winner.

 

[Neophyte]

As a member of the generation of which you all are discussing, I have to say that the ideas put forth from post #814 onwards are practically identical to my own observations of my peers. Bingo indeed.

 

[John in Covina]

The irony, of course, is that this is by far the most "highly-educated" generation in American history, and yet we have a culture that fairly wallows in the crassest kind of stupidity. What are they learning?

Value systems that are skewed.

 

[sheeplady]

Having spoken to a number of people involved in unionizing some very dangerous workplaces, the idea that corporations have somehow overnight turned a leaf is unbelievable. One local manufacturer was known for breaking bones of his own employee organizers and threatening their families, including young children and pregnant women. This was in the 1940s and 1930s.

While I would like very much to believe that smaller local businesses are better for society and workers, they haven't always been better for the workers or society. It more has to do with who runs them than the time period, the industry, or the size.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not disputing that at all. The bloody New England shoe and textile strikes of the thirties are not forgotten here - even though all of those jobs are now long gone, thanks to consolidation and globalization. Certainly there were abuses -- but labor fought hard to overcome them. They didn't fully accomplish those goals -- I worked in a non-union factory in the late 1980s and saw some things that would turn your stomach -- but a great deal of progress was made nonetheless. It was becoming culturally acceptable in the 1930s for workers to stand up for their rights, and, increasingly, that's exactly what they did. And businessmen, although they fought it at first, eventually realized the value of working with their employees instead of against them. Even Henry Ford called off his goon army and finally signed with the UAW.

But, again, my main point is being missed here. I'll state it as clearly as possible: What I'm saying is that the idea that business has some responsiblity to the community beyond making a profit for its stockholders has been overridden by the idea that its *only* responsibility is to its stockholders. Milton Friedman wrote a book putting forward this theory in 1962, and elaborated on it in an article in 1970 -- and by the 1980s this had become the dominant school of thought in American business.

This theory existed only on the fringes of 20th century business culture before Friedman articulated it. And it's a theory that the average 1930s businessman wouldn't have accepted at all -- because the culture of the time wouldn't have permitted it. The average small manufacturer of the time saw himself as an integral part of his community -- perhaps in a patriarchal plantation-owner sort of way, but still with a sense that the work he was doing had a greater significance than the bottom line of a balance sheet. And his role in the community was as important to him, if not more so, than the size of his bank account.

I've yet to see any indication that the culture we have now is any improvement at all -- and I've seen a lot of indication that it's harmed us as a society in ways that we're only beginning to comprehend. The very idea that many young people today can't believe there was ever any other way of doing business is just one example of that.

 

[Derek WC]

"What I'm saying is that the idea that business has some responsiblity to the community beyond making a profit for its stockholders has been overridden by the idea that its *only* responsibility is to its stockholders."

Precisely. If it was not so than WalMart would darn near not exist. The second it moves into a small town, several stores go out of business, and than it sucks the life out of the rest that remain 'till their coffers are bone dry.

 

[Feraud]

Don't blame Walmart alone for that. The consumer has as much to do with it (probably more actually..) than the store. If no one shopped there, Walmart would be out of business. Simple.
You either give power to companies or not with your $$.

Starbucks is another company that is considered a bane to neighborhoods. When word gets out that a Starbucks is coming everyone complains. After they open everyone goes there...

 

[Derek WC]

I suppose so. I have to shamefully admit, I've gotten things at WalMart, but only when getting them anywhere else isn't feasible. Such is the instance when I got some Orange Crush there the other day - I've never seen it anywhere else.

Some of it is their fault though. If they wouldn't make their prices so devilishly low than less business would be attracted. When WalMart first started out it had good principles, such as only buying products made in the U.S.A.