3 ms·
A company that's willing to make a product for a 20% margin might not be willing to make that same product for a 5% margin. Would you put all of your savings i
by marcoperaza 11y ago
A company that's willing to make a product for a 20% margin might not be willing to make that same product for a 5% margin. Would you put all of your savings in an account with 1% interest and zero-risk? The opportunity cost is important too. Also, remember that your pay as an employee depends on the success of the company, just as much as the dividends for the owners do. Not to mention that the owners include just about all of society, through mutual funds, pension funds, and retirement accounts. The more you raise burdens to business and profit, the poorer your society gets.
That's not to say we shouldn't regulate pollution, but we can't ignore the trade-offs involved. It's not just a matter of the rich taking less of a cut; that's not how it works.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago>A company that's willing to make a product for a 20% margin might not be willing to make that same product for a 5% margin. // Generally those doing the actual manufacture are probably perfectly happy to do it if they get the same wage. The share-holders perhaps won't want to invest, but then we're back to profit motive. A company can in theory continue to pay all the employees and make zero profit, it can succeed in all it's goals except in paying out a large return for investors.
- marcoperaza 11y agoEven if, in theory, you can have a static society by forcing everyone to keep doing what they're currently doing--which you can't, because many peoples' business is providing services to new or closing businesses, and any unexpected events will cause cascading effects that your static society can't accommodate--I don't see how that's at all desirable or relevant to real economic issues. And of course the profit motive is central. It's the whole reason why anyone makes products in the first place.