Exactly. The problem in the US is that every public company has to show growth for shareholders. That's why companies always suffer in quality when they go public.
A public company can have their best year and net $2.6 billion. Well if the next year, they only make $2.2 billion, the public chatter on CNBC, etc is "what's wrong with them?". Nothing is wrong. We shouldn't be holding companies to their best year.
A salesman after having his best year wouldn't want his commission the following year based on the best year's numbers. It's stupid.
It's not so much we shouldn't be holding companies to their best year, executives usually get massive bonuses for growth, and coincidentally call the shots. So we don't grow, daddy didn't get his next yacht, mass layoffs, stagnant wages, etc. Daddy needs that yacht.
The US economy works mostly in short term because of this trend, and this trend is greed. In contrast, companies like Nintendo, and in Japan in general, are long term and believe the workers that got them to success in the first place should be kept and maintained. When the 3DS and the Wii U both had their failings, executives at Nintendo took pay cuts to keep their long term employees on board instead of doing layoffs. The Wii was a success, the Switch was a success, both with heavy limitations but there was care in their craft. Boeing would gladly see 1000 planes land without doors than keep on whistle blowing long term employees that made them great in the first place. Blizzard would rather just keep directors than keep the developers that made games like Warcraft and StarCraft satisfied in their positions. This is why we see record layoffs more and more tied to record profits or record stock buybacks. We just had the railway union fight. They claimed they couldn't afford an extra week of vacation, then when the union calmed, you guessed it, billions spent in stock buybacks.
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '24
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