Unfortunately, you're quite correct.
The base problem is management's short-term, bean-counter mentality. All most of them care about is what the quarter will look like and can they get promoted prior to the end result of their stupidity being noticed rather than delivering a good product at a good price.
Henry Ford understood that unless he paid his workers enough to be able to buy his products, his market was limited.
Short-term, the profit numbers look great. Long-term, even though the profit per widget is high, revenue tanks because of decreasing sales.
Decreasing sales force companies to drop prices to try to recover market share and revenue... in order to further reduce prices, companies do even siller things like building huge factories in China and "paying" chinese $.50 a day.
The result is what we are seeing many places in the world: a combination of deflation, relatively high unemployment and low or even negative interest rates.
"manufacture products with a high ratio of retail price to shipping cost" shout be "manufacture products with a high ratio of shipping cost to retail price", i.e dog food, paper products, furniture. So it looks like:
Unless you are involved in an export controlled product, work in national defense, manufacture products with a high ratio of shipping cost to retail price, or provide services to those who are left, your US-based job is evaporating before your eyes. We're talking a major deflationary spiral in the works. This is gonna get ugly.
How did Wall Street gain a death-grip-control on US businesses? Many CEO's, I'm sure, would love to focus on making their company survive, long-term.