In the wake of most American company decisions to ship out thier labor to foreign countries, I was surprised to read about one corporation who has sided against that route: Mag Instrument Inc., makers of the famous "mag lite." In yesterday's edition of the Los Angeles Times Business Section, the front page article was mind-blowing, if not inspiring. Anthony Maglica is 75 years old and is the sole owner of this company. Hailing from Yugoslavia, he is 'holding the torch for his workers' by dropping $80 million dollars on a new California factory and to triple his number of workers to roughly 2,400 people.
Michael Hiltzik writes: "The 75-year-old Yugoslavia-raised entrepreneur sometimes sounds as though he's expanding here not to take advantage of local conditions, but to spite them. His complaints about the business environment resemble those of other business leaders-taxes, workers' compensation, regulation-but he has an unusual flexibility in dealing with them: As an entrepreneur spending his own money, he can do as he pleases."
Anthony Maglica: "If I was working for a public company, I'd probably be fired. They'd make me go overseas so I could make more profit. But what would I do with the people who worked with me for 40 years and built their homes here? My conscience would bother me. They helped me to build the company."
Wow.
Taking this kind of attitude in business is so hard to find I think even the most dilligent researcher would be hard-pressed to find another CEO such as this. Is it because he is from outside the United States, where people accidentally grow consciences? Why are our CEOs so afraid to cut back thier lifestyles so that the legs that they stand on have a chance to live as THEY please, or at least above the poverty-line? Why is the upper 1% so damned greedy and self-serving?
The American dream is turning into a capitalist nightmare. I wonder what it would take to awaken us from it.
"Can the pleasure of sweetening our tea with the sugar grown by slaves make up for all the misery produced among our fellow creatures? The butchery of the human species by this detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?"
~Benjamin Franklin
Michael Hiltzik writes: "The 75-year-old Yugoslavia-raised entrepreneur sometimes sounds as though he's expanding here not to take advantage of local conditions, but to spite them. His complaints about the business environment resemble those of other business leaders-taxes, workers' compensation, regulation-but he has an unusual flexibility in dealing with them: As an entrepreneur spending his own money, he can do as he pleases."
Anthony Maglica: "If I was working for a public company, I'd probably be fired. They'd make me go overseas so I could make more profit. But what would I do with the people who worked with me for 40 years and built their homes here? My conscience would bother me. They helped me to build the company."
Wow.
Taking this kind of attitude in business is so hard to find I think even the most dilligent researcher would be hard-pressed to find another CEO such as this. Is it because he is from outside the United States, where people accidentally grow consciences? Why are our CEOs so afraid to cut back thier lifestyles so that the legs that they stand on have a chance to live as THEY please, or at least above the poverty-line? Why is the upper 1% so damned greedy and self-serving?
The American dream is turning into a capitalist nightmare. I wonder what it would take to awaken us from it.
"Can the pleasure of sweetening our tea with the sugar grown by slaves make up for all the misery produced among our fellow creatures? The butchery of the human species by this detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?"
~Benjamin Franklin
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
There flowers no balm to sain him
From east of earth to west
That's lost for everlasting
The heart out of his breast.
Here by the labouring highway
with empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
Lie lost my heart and soul.
A.E. Housman
too bad it turns a funky black-brown when it dries out.