Capitalism is crazy.
NY Times documents how a company is destroyed sending jobs
overseas. California Teachers Retirement
System is part of the destroyer team.
Timken Steel of Canton Ohio.
…If he can’t, or if another
company comes along with an offer too rich to refuse, Mr. Timken acknowledges
what many in Canton would rather not say out loud. “If the number is big
enough, the board is going to have to look at it and say, ‘Ugh, O.K., unless you
can show me a plan that’s better than that, we’re going to take it,’ ” he
said. “We’re a publicly traded company.”
As in all publicly traded companies, TimkenSteel’s board and top
executives have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize both profits and
investor returns. For many companies in the region, that has meant cutting
costs and moving production to places where labor is cheaper. Goodyear Tire
& Rubber, for example, was founded in nearby Akron in 1898, but Goodyear
hasn’t made regular tires in the onetime rubber capital of the world in more
than three decades….
“The professor said we’d
all be bankers and consultants and lawyers and health care professionals,” Mr.
Timken recalled. “There’s a role for those people, but the ripple effect of
manufacturing is dramatically higher than the ripple effect of banking. It
creates wealth. And countries that have let it slip away have suffered.”
