>Hi Dmitry,
>
>That's a great story.
>
>I've heard enough from people who lived under Communism to know that socialism is not the answer. Mind you, there is a difference between "socialism" and "socialized". Here we have socialized medicine and it is a wonderful thing.
>
>But I specifically said it was "the American way" as opposed to the capitalist's way for a reason.
>"The American way" of capitalism, as it has become practised in the last 15 years in the U.S. is 'capitalism run amok'. The MBAs have perverted capitalism to make maximizing profit the ONLY motive and everything else is expendable in the name of maximum profit.
>
>American business now sucks money wherever it can get it from, including things like the Federal government. state governments, municipal governments, government programs like medicare and pension guarantees (where they can), employees, pension funds, contractors, suppliers and customers.
>
>American business now operates from false fronts where they SAY certain things in corporate 'mission statements' and annual reports and board meetings but operate diametrically OPPOSED to those statements.
>
>Capitalism the American way cannot continue much longer along the same path. Capitalism depends on people buying goods and services but in order for people to buy goods and services they have to have money and their disposible income has to grow. For more than the last 10 years the gap between rich and poor has been growing, and it has been not only the rich getting richer. It has also been the poor getting poorer. The great American middle class is shrinking and the poor class is growing. Capitalism will wither under such circumstances.
>Henry Ford understood that the people need money to buy products and that's why he paid his employees the unheard of sum of $5.00 per day when he started his production line. There were NO MBAs in Henry Ford's day!
>
>By the way, capitalism the American way does not (repeat: NOT) pay people what they are 'worth'. Never has and never will. It pays people what it can get away with.
>There was a time when experience was valued. Now it is seen strictly as an extra cost not worth incurring. There was a time when knowing the business' internal procedures and practises was valued. Now procedures and practises are all but ignored if they stand in the way of an extra penny of profit.
>
>Profit ***IS*** good. But profit achieved by exploitation and cheating and lying and breaking promises is not profit, but rather blood money. Unfortunately, to today's MBAs, it's all the same thing.
>
>

Jim,

I absolutely disagree with everything you are saying. I am not trying to make you change your mind, you have set of views and ideas that are just opposite of mine. So making arguments back and forth would not be constructive. I don't know if you have kids or what you are telling your kids. But I am telling my children that nobody will take advantage of them if they study and work hard, everything is in their hands. If they don't succeed it is only their fault, nobody else. I want them to rely on themselves and I don't want them to be complainers and look for excuse whenever things don't go their way. I strongly believe in the fundamentels of this, American capitalism. Otherwise, I would move to Canada <g>.