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You wrote it more elegantly than I did, but I agree that many of US companies are going through this. Wal-Mart has been doing this for years and even my wife, who used to go there every week (usually more than once a week), now goes there less and less.

I may stop in Wal-Mart 3 times a year. Saving one dollar is not worth 30 or more minutes of my time. They CAN and COULD have afford to pay for the extra help and probably would have made more money, but they willingly choose a different path. Their cheapness is now starting to cost them and it will be much more expensive for them to reverse the trend now that the damage is done.

McDonalds is another example of crating their standards to make a buck. Almost any other chain with their troubles would have gone bankrupt by now. They are coasting downward of the past reputation.

McDonalds needs to do three things to reverse the trend.
1. Eatable food - Sad that they can’t figure this one out.
2. Service - It sucks and gets worse every year
3. Kill off hald the bloated menu and go back to selling what you are. You are a burger joint-not a health food store.

There is a 24 hour Wal-Mart within a half mile of me, but about three years ago, it began rearranging its shelves and dropping old product lines, some of which had drawn me on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal described this streamlining as a cost-cutting move but it left me alienated and sometimes at a loss to find what I wanted.

Now I make a local shopping circuit about once a week, with Wal-Mart often not included. When I do go, I notice that the local Wal-Mart is looking a little like it used to, with some of the old products and brands back on the shelves. The arc of ill-considered changes that do poorly and are then reversed in large part seems like a theme of the Obama era.

You are all too correct about McDonalds. As US companies get large, regular earnings growth seems to become ever more important and to come at the expense of reliable quality product and service, long-term growth, and sound corporate strategy. I can easily see MacDonalds going belly up if they do not get their product and service equation right.