[Jeff Higgins]

As hard as you keep trying, David, you are still dead wrong. You simply could not be more wrong. Every way in which you have tried to support your assertion that "it's always been like this" fails. Because it is simply not true.

Many products were, at one time, built to a standard, not a price. Many remain so today. Not as many as in times past, but there are still plenty of examples. Aircraft used to be one of them.

My home is filled with artifacts which are the results of that manufacturing philosophy. Most of them are older, dating at least from the 20th if not the 19th centuries. Built at a time when there was pride in craftsmanship, cost and/or profitability be damned.

When I started my career at Boeing, profit margins stood somewhere around 2-3%. The pension fund was over funded, everyone got paid every couple of weeks, the lights stayed on, and we built aircraft to a standard, not a price. The CEO made about 12-15 times what the average engineer made, we paid dividends, everyone was happy.

By the time I left the CEO was making over 300 times the average salary paid by the company. The Board had consistently voted itself ludicrous "bonuses" that were not even performance based. Anything less than 10-12% profit margin was unacceptable, even if it required the sale of assets to meet those targets. Stock price, profitability, and executive portfolios were now the drivers.

So, no, even with all of your attempts at qualifiers, it has absolutely not "always been like this". Not by a long shot.