Quote Originally Posted by mhall View Post
Not ALL companies lay the pipe to people but some do. Some because of Unions and fat cats, some because they choose to so they can pay there upper management millions of dollars every year. Q, you and Jason make good points and you are correct, but there are those that are just plain sinful greedy and here in America some of this downfall can be directly linked to it in my opinion. I work for a small company and we have to sell products in today's terms at cost and sometimes below to keep the doors open, so I know exactly where you are coming from.
Ask yourself this....... 20 years ago a guy could buy a brand new truck, a nice one for about 8 to 10 thousand dollars. That same truck today was over 31 thousand dollars, was greed and decadence on a large corperate scale any part of that at all?????????
Good points there too Mhall...especially about companies paying millions to their management. We deal with one company that has passed down more than one across-the-board price increase this year, yet we hear tales of the upper management getting bigger bonuses this year...and they don't make small change to start with. That is also a "cost of doing business" to some of these companies, and I think it's one that is TOO HIGH in many cases. To "manage expenses" they look to cut jobs, they look to cut benefits to workers, they look to a foreign country for cheap labor, they beat suppliers to death for the best possible skinny margin they can give them on raw materials...but they never can seem to make any cuts to salaries and perks for the big boys up top can they? That's a crock, really.

There are so many things that have played into this mess we're in, you could write all day and never get it all spit out...it's a shame really.

Here's something else to think about: Look at how many companies started charging "fuel surcharges" for deliveries, freight, or service calls back when gas was unreal...my company did it...but how many of them have stopped charging the surcharge now that gas has come down to lower levels than it was when they started? Greed, or just a way to conveniently make a few more bucks to help the bottom line as long as nobody yells about it?