thought no. 54

Here's a thought - Bacevich posits that the history of America is a history of expansion. This makes sense. Anyone familiar with American business knows that being a company that maintains its level of sales, production, etc, is to be a company considered in many ways to be a failure.
We are always searching for something new; new products, new markets, new niches, new demographics. Expansion is the watchword of any business. I've often speculated (without any kind of proof) that one of the reasons for this obsession was that bank loans were made based on expansion, rather than whatever the current situation of a business was; in other words, people get loans (and banks make them) with a payback schedule based on projected (expanded) future sales. If I'm right, then this kind of thinking may go a long way towards making the adjustable rate mortgage problem more understandable. Actually, I suspect a lot of those with adjustable rate mortgages were people that bought their home with every intention of selling it a higher price before the rates jumped up, but were caught by the (inevitable*) collapse.

Anyway, here was my thought (the preceding was set-up): The last time that Americans had to deal with an age of robber barons was about the same time as the U.S. ran out of frontier. We were left with nowhere to expand, so those in power set about expanding within our borders. As Wal-Mart shows, we don't care how we get more, as much as we care that we do get more. The time of the robber barons was also the time that led to the labor unions and workers rights because of the abuses of those barons in the pursuit of more wealth.
Now we find ourselves running out of room to expand again, not because we've run out of room, but because we're being hemmed in by the expanding economic might of Asia, and of our short-sighted planning which put our manufacturing capability into their hands. And so, once again, we have our leaders of industry, unwilling to settle for less (this is America, after all), looking inwards to expand their wealth, looking at us. And so now, as before, we have exploitation of immigrant workers, diminishing workers rights and benefits, and a growing disparity between the incomes of those who "direct" the production and those who actually do the producing.

Will things be allowed to get as bad as they did at the turn of the 20th century? Hard to say, but for those who complain of abuses in the workplace, I say, read your Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair. Then buckle down, because the ride could get a lot bumpier.

(what goes up, must come down)

Watch the stock markets: a stock's price will often fall upon the news that it didn't make profits as high as expected.

It is no longer enough for us to start a business and be our own boss, to have a company, store or service that provides a comfortable living for you and your family. Now, we want to start a business that does one of two things: a) goes on to greater business glory, destroying the competition and making you very, very rich in the process; or b) doesn't quite do the above, but does well enough that the competition buys you out, making you very, very rich in the process.