The Evil CEO That Elon Musk Is Copying | The Class Room ft.
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- Опубликовано: 12 апр 2023
- Elon Musk didn’t pioneer the mass layoff or the celebrity CEO. Jack Welch did. The CEO of General Electric is the reason companies off-shore jobs, do massive cost-cutting and layoffs, and pour all their profits into stock buybacks. He invented the American CEO.
#corporate #elonmusk #generalelectric #corporateculture
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Every company started to follow his lead. He is why there are no pensions, 401k’s are robbed, people who have illnesses, pregnancies or turn 49 are fired. These companies stalked and abused their best employees and tossed them out with nothing. I hope he is experiencing eternal torment. They destroyed workers rights as we know it. Set up HR departments just to document their lies so you have no legs to sue.
Also He created workplace PTSD. And an American work and corporate culture that is worse than the robber barons.
_looks extremely worried in 49_
Absent any freak tragedy, when I get to be that age, nobody will believe I'm that old. But I'm worried about the Appalachian mountains, where a lot more people per capita age like milk.
Why we should smack all of his followers.
Been there, own a few t- shirts! I've seen way too many people wearing that same t-shirt as well. 😢
While this guy was clearly a sociopath, it bugs me even more that everyone just didn't care and went along with it
Capitalism is a hell of a drug.
Me likey money
@@Martell-XO sounds like another sociopathic ultra wealthy guy with a room temperature IQ named Elon.
@@gwynbleidd1342 And Charles and David Koch were cooking it behind the scenes until the Citizens United ruling of February '010 provoked the world to look into them.
@Dominic Fucinari i mean reagan rolled out neoliberalism in the 80s, and revoked the tilman act which paved the way for citizens united. But leftists around the world have been saying capitalism is dogshit for literal centuries. America has just been so lost in the sauce and so damn good at indoctrinating its citizens with pro-capitalist propaganda, to the point that it's ingrained in our society to see actual leftist ideologies as evil.
Jack Welch is the single worst thing to happen to the American economy.
That $417,000,000 payout could have funded about 8,000 employee salaries for a year. This guy who wanted to get rid of corporate bloated was the problem.
Jack Welch didn't want to get *rid of* corporate bloat, he wanted to *be* corporate bloat.
So, basically the CEOS learned, metaphorically, to take much of the company's stuff to the pawnshop, run up the credit cards, and leave before it all collapses.
Sounds more like literally than metaphorically. lol
It's also why corporations collapse faster than they used to.
Leaving the taxpayer to pay the bill.
@W1erdThOughts - They always make up some economic theory as cover for every new way the wealthy loot the economy. The current term is "shareholder value."
Shareholder capitalism as its finest.
Allegedly, hostile takeovers by -venture- vulture capitalists had to get the ball rolling, too many ‘corporate statesmen’ who reined themselves in.
It's pretty obvious what happens when someone's entire plan is profiting through dehumanization and exploitation. this lesson has played out several times, even in US history. It's exhausting.
Dehuminazition and exploitation are very subjective.
@@Fister-kw5un
No they are not. They are very much objective. Whether you like it or not.
@@Fister-kw5un That's a subjective opinion from your side that happens to be objectively false. Don't get it mixed.
@@Fister-kw5un If One America News had their way, the general United Statish populace would be nothing but chattel to be bought and sold between billionaires. Based on what I know about Robert Herring, he could really be that evil.
*especially in US history; capitalism got its grips in the US super hard because of enslavement.
Tell me you're not Black without telling me. :|
I interned at GE in the early 2010's. Not quite Jack Welch's nightmare, but I remember getting an email from the CEO bragging about how they managed to legally avoid paying any taxes. That was the start of my realization that I couldn't stomach working for corporate America.
What was your alternative ?!
Fuck taxes.
@@hawkeye9793 Academia. It's not perfect but at least there's some semblance of working for the public good.
@@JohnJRM " Wisdom is better than silver and gold, I was hopeless now I'm on hope road..." Lauryn Hill , "Lost One " from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
As a fellow ex-ge employee I can say I recall that email. They also used the renewable windmill boom to get paid by the government and pay 0 taxes.
The super tanker to speed boat analogy is so perfect. Because speed boats don't work as business tools, only carry 1-5 people, and are much more fragile than a super tanker. Kind of like GE and most american businesses today!
What is troubling, simply put, is how many people think of him as a HERO
Of course all of the elite at the Universites love their neighbors at the school of business and economics. This is the philosophy of neoliberalism and Milton Freedman. Copied by Bill Clinton and sold to Gorbachev and Putin. . .
He is a hero. To villains. These companies aren’t our friends
@@kickhuggyThere’s plenty of working class people that still look at him like a hero.
I know. And all the simps that think of Elon as a hero. Let's make the billionaires extinct...asap.
I will never understand the American public's willingness to vote against their own interest.
And he made sure that no working class 25 year olds would ever be able to make the equivalent of 107k a year again
to be fair he was a professional, not working class. Chemical engineers earn basically the same now
@@andrewnell7358 107k back in the 80s or 70s was worth a lot more than now because of inflation, which means he earned a much bigger paycheck than todays chemical engineers
@@Sultan-bm7ey I believe the original comment is already adjusting for inflation.
The American dream is alive and well--for guys like him. For the rest of us: wage-grade or a contracted temp, working for nothing. It's real easy to chalk it up to kids being lazy. When they see crap like this all over the place, what are they supposed to think? I was able to labor under the delusion that they gave a crap about me and I made 6 figures in my 30s. The kids today know that they mean exactly Jack and sh!+ to a company.
@@Sultan-bm7ey
How about the late 60s when Lockheed and Boeing engineers were making $40,000/year. In today's dollars, that's $350,000/year. How many engineers are making that today? No wonder these guys were taking their wives and kids on vacation to Europe and the Orient.
I'm Gen X and have always thought of stock buybacks as a sign of weakness, a harbinger of doom, and something done as an act of desperation. When I learned companies were doing this as a matter of course, and openly without covering it up, I was pretty disgusted. At least it can be used to get a pulse on the nation's economy. There is propaganda, and then there are the actions committed by the market and corporations. It really is true. Follow the money if you really want to know what's going on.
It used to be illegal, viewed as stock market manipulation *because it is*.
The recent corporate tax breaks under the Trump administration created a huge incentive for buy backs. Companies suddenly were flush with extra cash which could have been used to grow the companies but was instead used to buy back stock creating a false impression of growth. Considering CEO's get bonuses based on stock value anyone could have predicted what was going to happen. What CEO wasn't going to give himself a multimillion dollar bonus?
"Follow the money" is a great mantra.
My son went to uni for five years and as a music and language student he was struck by how weird the finance and business students acted, going to class in suits and carrying brief cases..
Funny, what I remember about business majors was how much time they spent at the pool and how rarely they seemed to study. It was widely considered one of the easiest majors you could take. That’s undergrad though 13:29 , I can’t speak for those in MBA programs.
@@aliannarodriguez1581 my son was in a Canadian school, and recently
Walking into the business school at my university was like walking into a different world. The kind of world that Orwell would have written about.
The ethos of business has _always_ been, "It's nothing personal, it's just business." There was a period in US history (1930s-1970s) where employees were actually valued and management treated labor as an investment (or more precisely a tax dodging vehicle) rather than an expense. Jack Welch was the man who changed all that to the way it is today, using the influence of gullible businesses and their magazines.
Jack Welch is the guy who set us back 80 years because he wanted to be the richest guy on the planet (and after the tech boom of the 1990s, it's clear he failed). We're slowly re-learning the lessons of the 1920s and 1930s, like "Don't allow unrestricted market speculation" or "Don't allow child labor" or "Oligarchy BAD".
Ppl like Jack Welch, a culture of greed and selfishness destroys entire empires in just a few generations it seems.
Oligarchy is bad until they want you to support foreign conflicts with your tax money 🤷🏼♀️
it's always "just business" when they are firing, cutting benefits, and destroying working class lives. it only gets personal when the working class fights back and it's starts cutting into their "just business." just like how the billionaires pay media (ALL large media networks in the US are controlled by a few billionaires) to paint any working class leader, movement, and the like. it's demonization, the working class is "lazy, evil, terrorists" - that doesn't sound like "just business" to me.
Welch likely knew that NAFTA was coming and "buy American" was on its way out. Without American businesses held captive to the American worker, they no longer needed to pretend to be patriots and provide workers with benefits.
You know, Welch's business approach almost sounds like he "discovered" an already occupied country, then gutted it's indigenous populations before bringing in foreign workers (whom he paid slave wages) and then remade the country, -I mean company- in his own image to serve his overlords.
Yep. Capitalism, American-style.
And even during the 30s-70s, it's not like women's labor was appropriately valued, whether it served only men or the human collective as a whole. Humanity has been struggling with the concept of humane business and labor practices for a very long time. Welch is just one person that significantly made things worse.
As someone who's been a hardcore lefty most of their life, I've always kinda hated Reagan simply because I'm a lefty... But as I've actually *learned* how much he fucked over the American people, I've truly grown to loathe the man.
Also: F.D. Signifier + More Perfect Union = Yes please
@The Metamodern damn you came in just as it was being ripped away & you entered prime working years as it was being gutted every where. At least I was born into in 84 & by 1998 I was wondering why the hell no one saw the issues. By the time I got my 1st real job at 16 in 2000 I saw we our a debit based society bc nearly 8/10 customers paid for groceries w a credit card. No cash, no check, no debit card. Credit card hundreds of dollars in food & back every other day for odds & ends - always on credit. People couldn’t afford it without credit. If credit collapsed today we would be in a worse depression than 1930. Credit is the only thing propping anything up for anyone not the top 10%
I immigrated to the US in '98, and had no idea (colonized thinking and all that). It has been a process of learning that has brought me more and more leftward, and FD has been an essential part of that in the last year. I love seeing him collaborating with others in the YT community.
Me too. It seems like every single day (probably more like once a week, but...) I find yet another reason to hate him.
Union busting.
Mental health system destroyed.
Trickle UP economics.
Arms deals.
Wealth disparity.
Killing the middle class.
Killing the American dream.
@@winninglifeyoThe thought of a credit card makes me want to throw up. My husband and I live a cash only life. The house and all 3 vehicles are paid for. I haven't seen anything I am willing to go into debt and make a monthly payment on in years. So thankful.
@@randibgood all with this jovial good guy...self assuredness as he ruined the life of millions
The guy who filled his pockets with the money of the people he got fired was a "life-force made of love"😆
"life-force made of love", yes love, the love of greed!
😂
Now because of this guy, we have a rise in billionaires but decrease in the middle class. The only we you can make money is to be a shareholder and the only way you can be a shareholder is if you have money.
It's worth noting that GE is really a shadow of its former self. This fact is concealed by good pr and clever accounting. When you gut a company, it eventually becomes too crippled to compete on the same level. Of course, by then, the gutting CEO has collected his bonuses, sold his inflated stock, moved on to another company or retirement.
Vulture capitalism.
I inherited some GE stock from my grandmother when she passed. Not a large amount, maybe 10k. Thank goodness I sold it at a high point because now it's worth much less than that, and GE hardly even factors into international technology or industry anymore.
If one looks at the price of the stock historically, the GE stock was at it's highest when he left. It has not reached that point ever since.
And then they’ll pin the blame for the fall on unions.
@@BmoreAkuma Makes sense. He made a lot of decisions that drove up short term profitability, boosting the stock price to unsustainable levels because shareholders believed this could continue. In his quest to cut inefficiency he sabotaged the companies future. Which is why the scheme started breaking once he left.
It's crazy how a few greedy people can cause so much havoc.
And he praised for it as geniuses! While the tax payers hold the tab 😂 more greedy abs nefarious than genius. But in America 🇺🇸 these are the same thing.
when the government is structured in such a way of course - it's a bourgeois dictatorship. under a proletarian dictatorship the few greedy would have very little power (though they would still have their capital which would need to be given back to those who work it).
One match can burn the forest down
Occupy Wall Street 99%ers had the right idea. It was just an incredibly uphill battle they weren’t organized enough for and weakened by many individuals attaching their own additional causes too.
The Collapse of American banks has torn into global markets, with investors ripping up their forecasts for further rises in interest rates and dumping bank stocks around the world. I'm at a crossroads deciding if to liquidate my dipping 200k stock portfolio, what's the best way to take advantage of this bear market?
@Jane Viella I find your situation fascinating.
Would you be willing to suggest a trusted advisor you've worked with?
@Jane Viella Thank you for this tip. It was easy to find your coach online. Did my due diligence on her before scheduling a phone call with her. She seems proficient considering her résumé
What you said about GE owning insurance companies is related to my concern about Disney and Amazon buying up so many busminesses. Disney isn't just buying its competition, it's buying pharmaceuticals, media, food etc etc. To me this is horrifying
At a strike in France a few years ago some workers left the picket line and bricked up the door to the CEOs office! - to leave the office he had to climb down the outside of the building!
i wish that example was followed more widely
beautiful
Yeah we could learn a lot from the French.
The guy who starts a French strike/riot/protest history channel will be very popular
I fucking love the french. Viv la reblucheon!
Basically he took a credit card on the company and maxed it out and kicked the bill down the road
What's so interesting to me is that these huge financial entities seem to have endless credit, loans - the so called corporate welfare - and average citizens are very penalized for missed payments, a missed mortgage payment and the bank repossess the house.
When you talked about the Business Roundtable statement in 2019 I was sure you were going to say they reaffirmed Welch's philosophy since that's what they're actually doing.
For those not old enough to remember him, Jack Welch was basically business Jesus. Every CEO wanted to be him. He was revered as some kind of higher being by government types. When I was young I just assumed he was amazing. The more I learn about him the more I realize he was everything I hate about selfish business bullies.
Thanks for the lesson F.D.
I was laid off from my tech job. I wasn’t one of the highly paid employees. I can’t believe tech workers haven’t had a moment of realization that they need unions?!
In the US there's Union busting to the nth degree. Although I recently saw a RUclips video short about the slap on the wrist Chipotle received for those tactics. Chipotle - initially such dry meat in their burritos & quesadillas and then it seemed to me that they received a real wake up call from some peon Chef who opined in via the Open source grape vine that LA Carne es secca aqui ! Strange. It was as if their Latino culinary knowledge base wasn't initially utilized. Odd, that. Now I really enjoy their tortilla chips con sabor!
I also wanna get into tech and I hear many bad experiences of not having a union. I worked at Target and you know how Target are anti-union.
@@hyliannerd4541 I have heard that Google employees are unionizing which is great because it’s a huge company. If the bigger names get unions, it’s going to break the glass ceiling and going to have a ripple effect to other smaller companies! Let’s hope and support every industry’s’ unionization efforts.
@BeadMeCreative I hope so, too. Everyone deserves to be treated equally regardless of any background.
@BeadMeCreative ironically, I was gonna get my certificates from Google yet they're laying off their workers. They should have kept their promise.
I worked at General Electric during the time Jack Welch was CEO. He was a turd. GE was previously an engineering corporation but under Welch, it became a company that grew profits every Quarter. Welch sold off future profit making divisions for immediate profit (that meant that Jack Welch would be outperforming future GE CEO's).
The fact that foreign countries are eating our lunch is in no small part due to Jack Welch. By the way, the factory that I worked above (I was in engineering) had a one-week shutdown to save money. It was a GE decision yet if someone hadn't acquired enough vacation time, the state unemployment office setup a desk on-site to process one week of unemployment benefits for workers out for a week... Defense Contractor GE, a multi-billion dollar corporation at the time, never hesitated to exploit it's biggest customer : the US Taxpayers.
Thank you for your analysis ! 🙏 Can you tell me which major company Defense Contractors GE invests in ? Inquiring minds
@@hawkeye9793 Not invest, manufacture. GE makes Bombs (their factory got a cameo in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"). GE makes jet engines (fighters, transport, Helicopters, Littoral ships, even Tanks have turbine engines). GE has competition in jet engines, re: bombs, I am not sure. There are plenty more examples. GE is to weapons what USB port makers are to smartphones. Just a supplier to a bigger product but very profitable.
The Iraq War cleared GE's inventory of bombs. What "luck" for GE, bombs have a shelf life. "Smart" Bombs are a financial scam. Taxpayers are charged 20 times more for a "Smart " versus "Dumb"Bomb but it's a few dollars of parts on a "Dumb" Bomb, to move the fins when the laser sensor detects the laser that someone on the ground (for instance) uses to paint a target. Well over 90% of Bombs that the USA drops are "Dumb".
thats seems to be to be the mindset he started 'fuck the future make me money now!'
Thanks for your time Mr Drum. I have questions
Pre 1980s US made GE consumer products were some of the best, most durable appliances ever built...if you find an old item with GE on it, the thing probably still works. GE is now the ghost of a husk of a company...terribly sad.
I’ve worked in corporate America for 10 years bouncing between billion dollar operations and I gotta say this hits HARD. I learned (the hard way) that these mega corporations only care till the end of the fiscal quarter. I’ve been asked to do some really dumb things because it’ll “look good this quarter” but screw us over in the next. I was confused for a long time until I realized this simple fact.
Shareholder corporations act as if the entire company will be liquidated every quarter and make decisions on that.
Once you recognize this, all their decisions make perfect sense.
Fear based leverage of the bottom line mentality.
It's one of the things that makes capitalism so unsustainable: quarterly reports. The expectation is growth every three months, no down turn. I'm not into communism but Marx was right about capitalism being about infinite growth with finite resources. And these quarterly reports and legally required prioritizing sharholders ensures we are all tied to an unsustainable economic model run by sociopaths. It's going to be the end of us.
It's funny because of how desperate they act, while also exuding a sense of longevity and relevance.
"Shareholder corporations act as if the entire company will be liquidated every quarter and make decisions on that."
THIS point needs to be made MUCH MORE OFTEN.
@@Happytravellerkimmy examine communism without tying its previous mistakes to its future potential
This is one of the most life changing videos I've seen in the last two years. My jaw has dropped. You might want to consider adjusting the title to make it clear how deeply influential this brand and source of evil has been.
I work at a fortune 500 company (let's just leave it there) and there's been a lot of layoffs and cutbacks over the years similar to GE, I'm sending this to my coworkers
I knew I smelled the ghost of Reagan up in here
This is the way capitalism works. It a system that only serves the interests of a tiny minority of billionaire bosses.
He was known as Neutron Jack since he destroyed many American jobs. Way overrated since he underperformed the S&P 500. Unfortunate since Welch management team members influenced many companies. I was an engineering consultant in manufacturing and watched our manufacturing gutted over the last four decades. GE is in poor shape today.
Serves GE right.
@Tanya Davies but did Weltch get off to easy?
He was the mastermind. He should pay the most.
And he's also why We have Jim Cramer lmao
yup, I remember a work colleague (older than I) remarking on Chainsaw Jack after he’d been gutting GE. “There goes the social contract”.
Jobs? LIVES! The man is a killer... how many kids whose parents were fired by him and lost their income stream and medical services died? Tons.
Jack Welch used every trick in the book to get those earnings targets even if it meant putting the long term profitability of the company in jeopardy. The guys that took over after him learned the hard way what was Jack's legacy.
There is a reason why the backbone of the German economy are family-owned businesses. Nothing helps priorities sanity in decision making over short term gains more than betting the social status of your family on it.
Fascinating slice of history! The thing that surprises me the most is that so many people who aren't in the CEO class went along with it! It's still buckwild to me that companies aren't supposed to think of their customer first, then employees, then investors, in that order. Learning about why investors are at the top and not the bottom of that list is fascinating, in the way a wreckage on the side of the motorway is fascinating
He's sounds like such a chipper human being. Dude was a straight up Captain Planet villain
One of my uncle's on mom's side made a career at GE. They recruited him right out of college, he graduated magna cum laude as a mechanical engineer. Started in 1958 and rose to VP of Operations by 1970. He helped make them into what they were before Jack took over. He didn't talk favorably about the new CEO and retired soon after he took over. He just turned 90 last month, but he looks about 70. Clean living does that. Along with a healthy pension plan!
It also helps if you live your life so that you like the person in the mirror…and *that* requires clean living, social empathy, and honesty. Jack Welch had and did none of those things.
Awesome. That new Ceo was......lol. I am a product of this man. He fathered me. 😢😅
One of the biggest contributors to the ever growing disparity in wealth and the disappearance of the middle class. All of us and our loved ones live in a significantly worse world that we should , just because of him. May he rot in hell forever.
My first job after graduating college was at RCA. 6 months later, GE acquired RCA. Taught me at a young age to not trust my employer and take care of MY career, not my employer’s business. So I oet GE pay for my Master’s Degree and found a better job with a startup company immediately after upgrading my skill set. It took two startups and a long stint at a company that valued its employees to fix that attitude. Until I worked for a company run by Mark Hurd… I quit there even though I was considered a superstar (and highly paid) because I saw that company going Welch-style. So I took my desirable skills to a new company that doesn’t screw its employees.
THAT is what Welch-style management does. It incents your best employees to act selfishly and take their skills elsewhere.
Interestingly in his later days he had lots of interviews where he admitted in 2009 that "shareholder value" strategy is "the dumbest idea ever" and one should balance caring for workers, clients and business assets equally. But he created the meme, the damage had already been done.
Interesting. Maybe he developed a better sense of ethics in his later years. Too late unfortunately. Damage he did was already done.
Yes he may get a less sharp eternal poker up his a-🤬😈
Foxhole religion?
Yeah, sure. He suddenly developed ethics after ruining thousands of people's lives?
Nah. That's that death bed absolution BS. This guy was a ghoul, pure and simple.
If he felt some ounce of remorse later in life that's not sociopath behavior but privileged behavior. I'm glad more ppl unwind the idea that leaders earned their status instead of being bread and born into it
You should do a video on the anti-labor Vance Muse, who created the idea of so-called "Right-to-Work" laws because as a white male Christian nationalist oil barron in Texas, he was worried about white women and black men being members of the same organization. We shouldn't forget how much of an awful creation he foisted on workers and our economic system. Michigan only undid being a "Right-to-Work" state this year.
That would be a great video!
Kinda reminds me of Digital Equipment Corporation. In their peak, they were a leader in Big Tech, 2nd only to IBM. When they switched CEO's in the early 90's, it all seemed to go downhill. My dad worked for DEC, and I've seen others talk about it alot; they have all sorts of stories and nicknames for the new CEO, none pleasant. Kinda looks like he was just ripping straight out of the Welch playbook.
It drives me insane that this sort of behavior is exactly how the Great Depression happened, and people just keep doing and letting people do it. What do any of them think is going to happen?
I remember those days. It was so weird that people in the early 80s thought unemployment was because people were buying imports.
This report was dope, bro. It's life changing because it explains to me exactly why businesses run in the way that they do. I wanted to know how the stock buyback scam started and jack welch was the fucker who started it. i'm going to share this with everyone i know. keep up the good work!!
i would like to see a profile on the guy who kicked Steve Jobs out of apple, john sculley. i believe his presence in silicon valley changed the culture and philosophy there for the worst during the early 1990's. please focus on what he actually did at apple and how those changes affected the way business is done in tech. he was only in SV for a brief time, yet a lot of what he did has been adopted by every SV company since then.
Was Steve Jobs a good guy, according to you ??
@@DipayanPyne94 I'm not sold on the idea of letting Jobs' ghost take the blame for Sculley's malfeasance just yet.
No no. I am not aware of the deeds of Steve Jobs. Was he a good guy or bad guy ??
@@DipayanPyne94 I watched a couple documentaries And apparently Steve Jobs was a definite a****** according to many of his friends. He was really weird too, he took acid and got rid of all of the furniture in his house so that he was just sitting on the floor with nothing in the room.
Stock buy-backs used to be considered stock manipulation and was illegal till the regan admin stepped in in the early 80’s. Regan strikes again 😡 There is said to have been a 40,000% increase in stock buy backs since that time. A forty thousand percent increase!
Fascinating video! Jack Welch was a superstar in the 80s. They loved him but I always mistrusted him for his ruthless globalism. Glad his fraudulence and manipulativeness have finally been exposed!
You’ve done a great thing creating mainstream accessibility to a capitalism horror story typically reserved for outlets like The Wall Street Journal.
Layoffs can cause a lot of harm. I've had friends that have had their lives turned upside down by them. They came out okay eventually, but took 1-4 years to completely get back on track on average.
I'm willing to bet the large majority of layoffs in the US are not really necessary, that a workable alternative could be found if the ownership or management really wished to.
Didn't you just post the same thing a minute prior to this? The only difference is you said "1-3 years" in the previous comment.
@@adamofblastworks1517 yeah I amended it lol. It's probably been longer than that in some cases and then theres my case, which is kind of unique which I don't count as a layoff as part of mass layoffs, but it was a layoff/letting go over a fairly unfair issue which set off a long chain of bizarre setbacks for me.
This is what happens with capitalism. I highly recommend you read Michael Parenti, or Marx & Engels to get a really good understanding of why capitalism does this and it's inherent contradictions. Audiobooks of all the authors I mentioned are easily accessible for free on youtube.
@@gwynbleidd1342 oh I no I get it. The mindless drive for ever-higher profits spares no one. At a minimum we need this firmly regulated against. I haven't had a chance to read anything by these two yet but I look forward to sitting down and doing so. I've been on the left for quite a while now.
@• Happy Capybara Space Force 🌠 • 17 yrs ago forsure. Regulations can always, and historically HAVE always been reversed. If you really are on the left, then you're anticapitalist. Only in America does anyone falsely think they're a leftist when they're pro-capitalism lol. If you are really on the left, and not just a standard US liberal, then I highly recommend reading anything by Michael Parenti, and Wage Labor and Capital by Marx.
FD + More Perfect Union = Omega Based
There's a documentary series by Adam Curtis on this exact same subject, but from the perspective of the people who brought this mindset to British companies. It's called the Mayfair Set and all the episodes are on youtube. Men like Jack Welch and Jim Slater took an already fucked world and somehow made it worse, paving the way for leaders like Reagan and Thatcher to take the helm and complete what they had started
It's crazy how quickly we went from a world where paying your fair share or more was something to be proud of and brag about to whatever this dystopian bs is we have now.
He made "rank and yank" a common business practice: rank employees on a strict linear scale, then cut the bottom 10% every year. Does amazing things for morale. Works wonders for cooperation amongst coworkers.
It's also why GE went from a once mighty technology company with world-class engineering talent to a pathetic shell of company filled with bored consultants doing financial engineering.
There's a whole generation or two of MBA's that worship this wanker too. They LOVE the fact that he always made "snap decisions" and try to emulate it.
Exactly. I was one of that generation of MBA’s who was taught to “worship at the alter of the genius of Jack Welch” but, I can say that I never really bought it. Maybe that’s why I. Ever became a fortunate 500 CEO…but I digress. I always thought he was way overrated, even while I was learning keys to his success, like six sigma, and efficient capital utilization, blah, blah.
@@Analysta654 Jack Welch was not just overrated. Jack Welch was a SCAM ARTIST.
Jack Welch undermined a once powerful and profitable company called General Electric.
Jack Welch left a company that was HOLLOWED OUT, an empty shell of a company.
Immelt, Welch's successor continued Welch's disastrous policies.
GE is no longer a DOW JONES component.
Jack Welch ditched long term corporate success in favor of short term profitability.
Welch had only one thing in his mind: Keep the Wall Street analysts happy.
The tragedy that is GE today shows the folly of Welch's approach.
"Snap decisions" = Decisions made without dealing with consequences created for people outside of your bubble
@@Analysta654 he "introduced" those ideas and great methodologies to drive his arbitrary pseudo science. His premise was simple; look at what's making money what's not, without analyzing why GE was already so successful
Well if your an MBA by definition your a wanker.
congrats to MPU for getting FD Signifier to make a video shorter than an hour!
Do we know this guy isn't a fed? Anyone on Breadtube is suspect.
@@Thatsnotgonnawork How do we know that you aren't a Fed? Pick up your tin foil hat on the way out. You're on a social media platform. The Feds are already here. It doesn't matter. As long as you have a vote, there's hope.
@@Thatsnotgonnaworkhe is cornbread tube
Hey F.D., glad to see you here at Perfect Union too in addition to your own! BIG UP!!!
My father worked as an electrical systems engineer for RCA from 1957 or so until retirement in 1988.
He worked on the communications systems for the Apollo moonlandings. I was with him when he retired along with over 100 other RCA engineers, all collecting their lump-sum benefit, because GE had taken over RCA 2 years or so earlier. We knew about Jack Welch at the time.
Glad to see FD doing a video with More Perfect Union! Jack Welch was absolutely despicable. Unions also got obliterated during his rise in the 80s. His influence is indeed still costing the US jobs, less alone jobs that provide equitable wages and benefits. Its sad that the media championed this dude.
Until workers aren't seen as easily expendable poker chip pieces to be discarded as necessary - and it will take better labor laws to get that- yeah it will keep happening.
Until this shit is regulated away, these guys will help themselves to every cookie in the jar. No one else matters.
Unless the world goes completely against the U.S. the American worker will have diminished power.
The problem is that they own the government and the Supreme Court helped with all these SuperPacs!
@@mind_of_a_darkhorse for now yes, unfortunately. But it is possible to try to create a real People-first party here. Undisputed corporate rule is for the birds.
Regulation is not the only way to make meaningful systemic change. The French know how to protest. America doesn't.
CEOs are expendable. Not the workers. It's so damn backwards.
He made shareholders richer while bankrupting GE and thousand of people lives..i hope hes in a very warm place enjoying his success.
This is as good as a report can be…
You really hit it right with the focus on stealing billions from the very people who did the actual work.
Thank you for doing this.
There's usually a trickle of Reagan when these videos present where it went wrong in American capitalism.
The Reagan revolution = Race to the bottom
Yeah he did. I remember reading some bogus business success book a long ways back where he very openly defended it. Even at the age I was when I read it, long before I ever had any awareness of labor issues or had political views, I knew something didn't sound right about it.
All we need is a few laws on the books intended to prevent mass layoffs in all but the most severe conditions- which recognize the dignity and rights of all workers, and that reiterate that workers are in fact human beings, not simply smart drones, and their stability and income matters at least as much if not more so than CEO and shareholder profit, especially when profits are already well beyond projections.
What is needed is a system change because a few laws under capitalism usually get rewritten in favor of the capitalist class.
@@JohnT.4321 that is true - there's no guarantee they won't be weakened in the future, there is the risk of that under our current system, but we need to start there, and hopefully we can use these hopefully much-better laws as stepping stones to push for broader change down the road.
Also, I'm way on board with the need to push for freight rail nationalization. It's really pathetic that's it's been privatized all these years.
@@YourCapybaraAmigo_17yrsago A Republican told me this in the early 1990's, if it don't make a profit, privatize it. To make needed changes we have to vote Third Party since the two existing parties are in service to the capitalist class.
@@JohnT.4321 yep. 100%. The red-blue uniparty grift is a scam. They're for Wall Street/the big money, and no one else. Unfortunately 97% of current voters still don't get this, even tho it's been this way, with a few exceptions, forever.
@@JohnT.4321 Why would they have such a great outlook on running everything like a corporation even after they're aware of the conflicts of interest that profit motives sow in the public commons?
Welch was born working class and then decided to kick down the ladder of working class employees after he made CEO sounds about right.
Curse be Jack Welsh descendants. I had a horrible work experience. Feel disposable. Endlessly worry about being rated need improvement, and getting fired.
Bro what, I literally just started watching this legend for the first time today.
The algorithm is me. He's me fr fr 😭
My first experience with a mass layoff was my first full-time job with ABB Canada.
Head office laid off half the plant. When someone protested this and asked when the plant was going to close. He responded with, "Economics consultants determined that the plant was produced twice the amount work that was needed. And the plant is not closing. I just invested $3 Million in the plant."
I calculated the wage and benefits savings of all the lay offs they did in the 2 Canadian plants.... it was $3 Million.
He also had both plants closed within 10 years.
I actually think that in some scenarios those factories should be required to be turned over to the employees. Like they would get 60 days to form certain predefined structures and hold elections for a few positions and the plant would be turned over to them completely. So the cost of a layoff would be borne by the company not the worker. Like maybe if you lay off 10% of workers in 12 years it triggers. They'd have to plan a more stable growth strategy.
@@justcommenting4981 A system change most likely bring collective ownership. Under the present system it just won't happen. Especially in the U$.
The real dead weight is at the top.
@@JohnT.4321 I think people would be amenable here if put in these economic terms. Problem is that so much has been obfuscated by philosophical navel gazing about race and gender and what they mean. People understand when you put it in terms of how you get paid.
@@grmpEqweer Profits prove success or failure.
Thank you, for reminding people that this jerk exists.
He's not quite as bad as Kissenger or Bernays, but he's close. People need to be told about the gallery of real life Bond villains that have shaped 20th century US history.
The irony is that cynicism was fomented by short man complex.
@@hawkeye9793
What are you even talking about.
@CynicalLeftist Pay attention dear. BTW - Neutron Jack is deceased & your comment infers the opposite. But * Good Talk*.
@@hawkeye9793
No it doesn't, and nor is it relevant. Bernays is also deceased, and Kissenger is close, having (much to my amusement) lived just long enough to watch his own schemes blow up in his face.
Both of these monsters did irreparable damage to not just the USA, but the world, that continues to propagate to this day. It's the same for Jack.
Speaking of things blowing up in thine own face, stop talking before you embarrass yourself further, by further demonstrating the lower half of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Early career layoffs that were cost cutting measures that I was too young to identify have me indifferent about the pain of industries I used to work in. After two degrees and working an easy to keep job for 5 years, I’m finally ready to chart my own path. I have one “household” name on my resume. I accepted less in that job just so the longevity shown on my resume will open doors for *more* now. The short story for me is don’t entrust your image to temporary work, contact work or brands that are *not* global. You want that global company’s name to speak for you. If that company is global, it has many departments that you could have worked in. If you are seeking a new position elsewhere, the new company will take you more seriously. The global name requires less explaining in an interview. A competitor will put a good person in a different department if they think it hurts the competition. Move up by moving out!
The crossover I never knew I needed! 🔥
Not a fan of FD, but i'm glad he's joining this effort!
This is amazing!!!
Same, OP.
I agree.
And he left the tax payers with the clean up for their toxic superfund sites. So good to see you here on More Perfect :)))
The sad fact is that their grandchildren inherit the 🌎 they've excoriated.
I love the casual tone he talks about his friend who works in government now. The expression is very apt!😂
I remember when one of my mentor gave me a copy for Jack's "Jack Welch & The G.E. Way" book and describe as the future of business leadership. In the next 20 years we've made executive, shareholders, India and China richer. Today 85% of Fortune 500 uses most of Welch business model. It's just a easy model to follow and it actually works.
I remember a work colleague remarking on Chainsaw Welch’s first round of layoffs: “there goes the social contract”
Amazing, the downward spiral our world is in must look like a rocket to the top for CEOs like Jack Welch.
Someone (rightfully) read The Man Who Broke Capitalism. Keep spreading the good word.
Im liking this channel more and more, bringing on Second Thought and FDSignifier
I was working at Sprint in the early 2000s when across the company they recommended we read this book because it was the future if you wanted to move up and get ahead. So I dove in to it and checked it out and was disgusted by what it look like at the top. I left the company not long after of my own accord.
Yooo FD, glad to see him on here. Real good story too. Explains alot about our current mentality about jobs and layoffs in general. We've gotten so mired in the soup of capitalism most people can only look at workers like pawns. Theirs to push around and sacrifice.
They've tried to remove the humanity from their workers with predictable results. I've seen reports of health issues ie new diseases being experienced by citizens of Silicone Valley that seem straight out of a science fiction novel.
One reason this persisted is we lack a counter-argument to this strategy. If you dont want to make money what else should you do? Well the answer is take a long term view of company sustainability, but that is hard to measure. We need a framework to explain to new MBAs why reinvesting into your company pays off in the long run.
I remember working in Connecticut as a management consultant in the late 1990s-early 2000s. In that capacity I worked on a project at GE. While interviewing one of their managers, I learned about their practice of firing the bottom 10% every year. Let's ignore how challenging it is to realistically define who is a bottom 10% performer. Every new hire has a very short period of time to prove they belong, so survival is more important than anything, including learning how to do your job or building relationships that allow for the type of innovation and collaboration that enable major improvements in performance. Maybe the first year, you get rid of a number of folks coasting along, but pretty quickly you will be cutting productive people and managers will start colluding to get rid of folks they don't like. Also the fact is orderly quarterly growth is a numbers game, an accounting manipulation game, not the result of true innovation. On top of that, the corporate atmosphere became even more cutthroat and vicious. What else would it be when increasing shareholder value is all that matters? It was also clear that it was unsustainable.
Now, GE proper will soon be nothing but an aerospace company, with everything else that GE was known for now being made of separate companies, including a Chinese company making all GE-branded household appliances. This is what happens when you put profits and shareholders above everything else.
Wall street couldn't be happier. This is just the natural way that capitalism works. As far as the bosses are concerned their only concern is losing market share to China.
Is China bad or something?
@@MK_ULTRA420 YES!
@@slemire58 Sinophobia moment
@fitaddiction 369 Disregard this Chinese corporate bots!
Love seeing FDS on this channel. Seeing leftists have their own unified platform is one of the top priorities for the cause. Between this and Means TV, this is great to see.
I agree, I just wish they'd put channels like his in the bar instead of Breaking Points.
This is considered leftist? I thought it was just a very clear and careful analysis of damaging business dynamics. I learned a lot. While you can take it as an example of the failure of capitalism, it makes it clear that, prior to this bozo, the workers, economy and country were served well by GE. Is capitalism inherently the problem? Or is it the way we are allowing capitalism to be practiced?
@@aliannarodriguez1581 they make it clear that this guy inspired the new wave of ultra-capitalism that America is experiencing. And yes this is considered leftist, as the main creator of the channel is Second Thought, who is a socialist, and runs a pro-socialism channel. And this is FD Signifier who is also a socialist, doing a critique on a capitalist.
"GE was known as a supertanker. Welch wanted a speedboat."
To continue the metaphor, then he should have built/bought himself a speedboat. Supertankers can handle the storms they encounter on the open sea. Speedboats are fine for shallow, inland seas where they can take shelter if the weather is too bad, but traveling the open ocean is risky. There's a reason the American Economy can't weather recessions like we used to. Our economy is centered more on making sure the rich have plenty of toys than on making sure people have jobs and can pay their bills.
On the contrary, companies have an obligation to the customers and NOT the shareholders, who own a portion of the company proportional to the number of their shares. Customers have a legal contract with the company, as they acquire a company's products/services via monetary exchange.
I was 18 in 81 . Blue collar workers got crushed .
My dad was too it drove him to suicide in 1988. I was 5
He worked at acme
@@helenhettinger-hayes I just saw this . I'm so sorry 😔
Been in and out of poverty ever since. Mom died of hep c in 2000 due to HEROIN.
It's rough and Corps are one of the ones to blame.
My mother's father and my mother had those long term jobs - one job for their entire life, good pay and full benefits. When I hit the job market during the Reagan years I found fewer and fewer of these opportunities available.
Just as you said.
"The excitement with which he would talk about how rich and ruthless his company is...He's in government now....Where was I?"
🤣🤣💀
Tbh that "Let that sink in" was very funny 😂 people were so pressed
Isn't General Electric crashing right now? Like they were considered the safest bet when it came to stocks and then they started losing prices?
Short term gain long term loss. For the company at least.
They haven't made anything good since the 80s. None of those American manufacturers have. Seriously, look at Boeing, apparently they call those "airplanes" these days 🙄🙄
I wonder how many people went to his funeral just to make sure he was really dead. 🤔
I would've tried to piss on him if it was an open casket 😅
Weinstein you say?
Awww, I missed it 😐
This is incredibly illuminating, thank you for this information. And A Perfect Union and FD Signifier make a perfect team!
I remember seeing you early on and thinking I wish he had better production. Seeing you now this is fantastic and your hard work shows!
This guy is a great reporter! Love his casual vibe and sense of humor.
Glad I stumbled on this, you earned a new sub! ❤️
I watch a lot of videos on the subject.
This video is easily one of the best that explains our real problem in America.
I always wondered why GE products have always been crap when we've bought them, but my older family members still claimed it was a good and "trusted" brand.
I worked for a large bank that did this. BNYM. I walked away without giving anymore notice than I would have received if I had been in the bottom 10%.
12 secs after post. FD = insta click
Lmao that's literally my same train of thought.
This all sounds like “only I can run this very business and nobody else. No one can run this business better than me. No one” with a tiny sprinkle of “if I can’t run my business the way I want it to run, then no one can.”
that "..he's in government now." cracked me up..🤣🤣
Thank you! I've been waiting for years for someone to call out that evil scumbag.
Something about Stock Buybacks feels like fraud to me. Like, it's not making anything new, it's an accounting trick, wizardry, even.
thats the point, Companies want to make max profits without doing any actual work
What a coincidental collaboration, as I have recently subscribed to both F.D Signifier and just a few days ago now, you guys!
Great YT post! I remember how celebrated he was during the 80's and 90's. I knew something was amiss when none of his successors could duplicate his "success". Welch used every trick in the book to make the next quarter look better than the current one. Eventually reality and the world caught on.
RUclips needs more channels like this. People need to understand the inherent sickness of late stage capitalism.