@sickburnbro no real economic growth + no culture of employee-employer loyalty means both parties are willing to hop out of the frying pan not realizing there’s only fire below. They have to start paying employees in something more than money and employees have to produce more than raw economic output.
@Griffith@sickburnbro The main problem is that the cost of living has been going up exponentially the last couple years. Even if employees wanted to "be better" they will still be living in a shoebox if they aren't always chasing the dragon
@Groomschild@sickburnbro This is what I mean. Bosses can’t offer more money in a way that will reasonably fix the standard of living issue. Short of giving everyone a $10/hr raise across the board, no one’s getting to the boomers level of prosperity. The reason businesses are struggling also has little to do with their employees being lazy bums (IQ dropping due to diversity is another issue). Making people work harder for fewer hours won’t solve their problems either, so both parties have to find ways to incentivize the other.
Then that means the pie has shrunken silly. It's like with the consolidation of railroads during the latter half of the 20th century. Companies like Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, Genesee & Wyoming are many many times larger than even their immediate predecessors but nobody can call rationalization like that growth.
No Jeff. After the second world war, there were about 300 class one railroads operating in North America. Today there are 7. The consolidation doesn't mean these new companies are larger than their predecessors, they employ far less people, move far less freight, with a far lower frequency of trains. (The PRR by the turn of the century was the single largest employer in the world) Beginning in 1950 there has been a terminal decline in the volume rail freight traffic and passenger traffic, meaning that by the 70s most of these businesses could no longer operate profitably. The remaining seven serve a wider area than any of their predecessors ever did but they only exist to carry the cargo that road freight cannot. As such they're managed as a rolling retreat to eek as much money out of their inherited assets as possible by way of deferred maintenance and hideously dangerous "mega trains" because none of them as they are can reasonably expect to keep making a profit beyond the 2040s. I expect in a decade or so we'll have one final merger among the remaining seven leaving two to three class one railroads This pattern of declining revenue and consolidation can be applied broadly and correctly across our economy and cannot be called anything other than a sign of a shrinking pie.
Add comment