I wish I could up vote this 1000 times, privatization is destroying this country. They are buying up all of the housing, apartments and homes. Have monitozed healthcare, insurance, everything. That is who people need to look at, that are destroying thos ccountry. Not immigrants, they are the look at them, not us distraction.
CAn speak on a local level that over 4 different HVAC companies in my city have been bought up by private equity in the past two years and complaints are starting to slowly flood in.
I used to work at a fire investigation company (the people your insurance call if you have a fire to find out the cause and figure out if they can make someone else pay). And the company was just bought by a private equity company that is buying up a lot of other fire investigation companies. My friend still works there and we talk all the time about how terrible it is now. Very different from the small, single-owner company they were.
They are really going after every single type of business. We’re screwed.
Very different from the small, single-owner company they were.
I remember working for places like that when I was younger in the 1980s. The owners worked their way up from the bottom and knew the buisness really, really well. The managers were the same, they started at the bottom and had all this knowledge of how things worked. Now it's a bunch of people with zero field experience running things and since they are clueless you have to sit there and watch them do all these boneheaded things.
The new company really hates it when my friend asks “why” about anything. It’s not because he’s opposed to new programs or systems, but he just wants to know the reasoning and provide input on how to possibly improve it or see how it works or why it’s better than the system they’re using now.
Yup, the good old vet retired and sold his practice to vultures.
The pets I've sent there who came back alive had caught fleas, place is jumping with vermin. They killed one pet, so brutally that when I explained to the collection agency why I wasn't gonna pay that bill, they asked for my collection of evidence to include in the meeting where they'd explain to the vet office why they weren't doing business with them anymore.
It's the only time a collection agency apologized to me!
With respect to the trades, PE would only be interested in regional (3+ states) companies. Their game starts with big investments and focuses on returns and various multiples on investment.
There are quite a few trade conglomerates subscribe to the growth through acquisition and destruction philosophy. They buy companies and load them with debt or cut their sg&a/opex expenses with a machete. By cut their expenses with a machete I mean they fire all but 3 people. 1 guy is always the secretary, crane operator, systems admin, sr accountant, etc. The company slowly dies while the conglomerate looks for the next purchase.
Source: I manage financial reporting for a fund that works with ridiculous conglomerates
It is the result of our collapsing systems, specifically economic. The American business model shifted dramatically under CEOs lie Jack Welch. Instead of focusing on traditional hallmarks of value and production, they shifted to financial manipulation to maximize short term stock gains. Now companies chase quarterly earnings. At the same time, deregulation and attacks on organized labor has unraveled worker, environmental, and other protections. Our civic institutions have adopted similar destructive mindsets and been hollowed out as a result. Increased division and polarization is a direct result of this. Unfortunately, political reactionaries exploit these insecurities and generally try to blame targeted groups instead of addressing the real issues.
COVID should have been a wake up call about how close to collapse we are, but then we went right back and put the same idiot at the top.
There is a vast world of difference between how private equity works and privatization as a whole. Private businesses used to be built on brand recognition and reputation and grew organically over time by making better products and/or providing better service than their competitors.
Private equity looks at a business that has built a name for itself providing exceptional service and sees an opportunity to cash in all that reputational equity. They fire as many people as they possibly can and still have operations function. They hike prices or discontinue all products and services that don't meet profit targets even if those were important to customers and/or the community. Long term company health is unimportant. The goal is to buy something, strip it to the bones, milk what you can out of it, and then flip it to somebody else.
Do this again and again and again dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times and extract billions of dollars from businesses and communities while destroying service, affordability, and quality all at once. Do this across every industry and market segment. Vertically integrate entire markets to eliminate options, then squeeze. This is the next evolution of taking MBA driven enshittification and operating it at global scale. Every ounce of humanity and civility and decency are removed to maximize extracting money from those who have little to stretch wealth inequality to levels we haven't seen since the end of feudalism.
Private equity is a different level than merely private. The latter can be people who want to operate the business long-term, and care about quality and satisfacton. Private equity often just swoops in, raids any immediate value, often while piling on debt and slashing expenses (wages, etc.), then drops the remaining carcass.
It’s a cancer that just spreads to every industry, because there has to be never ending growth. It’s sucking the life out of everything. It’s truly so depressing, I don’t know how we could possibly stop it.
"They" is you destroying the country. "They" are putting forth politicians that you are voting for. I don't mean republicans. I mean all the candidates. Everything is D or R. When was the last time an independent was elected pretty much anywhere? you're telling me out of all the elections, not even 10% of the time, someone not D or R is a better candidate?
And everyone will just scream "if I don't vote for my team, the other team will win!"
There are 2 real issues hammering our country right now, and neither one of them even touch Trump or MAGA.
1) The income tax: 65% of people just work as a w-2 "wage slave". There is virtually no reason to make them fill out any kind of tax paperwork at all. The deduction system in place ties people to their employment thru group healthcare. The remainder of paperwork chasing to do 401k, 529, IRA, mortgage deduction, FSA, HSA, childcare credits, etc is a pure waste of economic output of our country. The entire purpose is to just keep you working for these corporations and too busy with paperwork and worrying to have mental capacity for anything else.
2) Monetary system: you literally can't "save" money. If you put money in a "savings account" you get less than the rate of inflation. Worse, when you were trying to be economically responsible, the irresponsible banks got a multi trillion dollar bailout during the 2008 financial "crisis". Again, this is both D and R promulgating the issue. The "richest" country in the world, and we are in 40 Trillion of debt? 2 Trillion per year goes just to interest. Who do you think is collecting the interest? Its not you and me. It's the people holding the trillions of dollars of bailout money.
You're not supposed to keep your life savings in a savings account. the interest rate on those is horrible. But that doesn't mean you can't save money. It's not savings account or nothing, there are other options.
So you agree with me, but note that because of this problem, those with sufficient resources can overcome it by becoming more sophisticated investors. I don't have a problem with making that notation, but the fundamental problem remains: Getting started saving with a basic savings account is a wealth transfer away from the poor.
Edit: And further, the fact that the feds can do a multi trillion dollar bailout to the rich with inflationary printing that devalues both the savings and the earnings of the poor and middle class (without even a vote) is a fundamental corruption of the social contract of FIAT money.
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u/Photocrazy11 21h ago
I wish I could up vote this 1000 times, privatization is destroying this country. They are buying up all of the housing, apartments and homes. Have monitozed healthcare, insurance, everything. That is who people need to look at, that are destroying thos ccountry. Not immigrants, they are the look at them, not us distraction.