>One day we will return to the value of building quality products and value the people that do it as the engine rather than the financial part of the company as

>One day we will return to the value of building quality products and value the people that do it as the engine rather than the financial part of the company as the engine. You can't have financial success without happy workers and thus good products being produced. After globalization is more baked in, it won't be as easy for companies not valuing quality work. We don't want to finish that stage with a depleted consumer base. This is certainly what drives real economic growth (as opposed to that phony stuff caused by ramping up consumer debt to heady levels). However, I don't think that the "MBA short term metric builders" (as you put it) are at all concerned with real growth. I think they would far rather see steady and slow stagnation of their companies and the economy as a whole where their position in the hierarchy is kept intact rather than fast growth where their position is more uncertain. This is why I'm not so optimistic that valuing quality work is a state that the country will naturally return to driven by market forces. I think the decline will continue unabated until there is some kind of enormous keynesian kick from the government (in the past it was war and a federal public works program).