Amazing how the media finds all this crap.
Posted on 08/31/2011 5:55:23 PM PDT by Kaslin
Business: A poll has found that nearly two of three Americans think the primary objective of a company is to create jobs. This gross misunderstanding needs to be cleared up.
A Rasmussen survey taken Aug. 20 and 21 found that 64% of the country thinks that the most basic goal of businesses is "to create jobs for the overall economy." Only 25% of the 1,000 respondents got the question right and knew the "primary objective of a business" is "to create value for the shareholders."
Americans need jobs. But businesses are not charities established simply to employ people. Businesses have to create wealth for investors or those businesses will cease to exist.
A company that focuses on hiring without concern for profit would soon go out of business. No one goes into business or runs one simply to employ workers. Everyone goes into business or manages one to make money.
Companies exist for one reason: Someone invested in a promising idea. This investment can be from a group of shareholders providing the company's financial capital. Or it can come from a person or a group that invests their savings and labor.
Either way, those investors have to be paid for what they put into a business. If they're not, they have no reason to invest.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Sad isn’t it. Years of dim brainwashing have finally resulted in the counry embracing socialism.
....and a society steeped in the expectatins of entitlements rather than hard work. I worry for our nation.
...expectations rather.... sorry for the typo
Interesting poll, but I wonder what percentage of the respondents knew the meanings of “create value” and “shareholders.”
Yes, and there isn't a quick way out of it either. Many Americans will be dupes for the first tinpot charlatan who promises more and better Gov't handouts (which can never happen in reality) and "hope and change...."
oh, wait a minute.... I guess we're already there.
The real reason to start a business is to make a profit for the owner of the business. Why is it that IBD makes the assumption that all business is conducted by compaines on the stock exchange?
The only businesses concerned with maximizing profits for stockholders are Corporations that have stockholders. Since the vast majority of American businesses are private without stockholders we must correct the answer. The business of America is business - for a profit.
Another word for money is Capital, that is why America is a Capitalistic society, focused on Private Property and Profits. If a private company can reach its profit and growth goals without borrowing then there is no reason to sell shares of stock to raise capital.
However, once a business “goes public” and sells ownership of the company to others, then the goal of the company changes from making a profit for the original owner of the business to making a profit for the new owners of the business or in other words - Maximize profits for the stockholders (shareholders).
Even propaganda from IBD. But they are in the business of selling advice on buying stocks.
Amazing how the media finds all this crap.
Ah, another public education success. Socialist teachers teaching socialism and economic fairy tales.
“IBD makes the assumption that all business is conducted by companies on the stock exchange ?” What nonsense. IBD said no such thing. There is no difference between a corporation with millions of shareholders and a sole proprietorship with a single shareholder. Either way, someone invested money and the business exists to return a profit to that someone.
The primary goal of any company is to make the most money it can over time. If vlaue for shareholders was primary (aka: dividends), then every company would liquidate itself and send the shareholder one very large dividend check - once.
But that doesn’t happen, because companies exist to make money over time. If it requires one quarter of poor dividends to triple the dividends the next... that is desirable. But it violates the principle stated in the article, for companies aren’t supposed to look to the future, but simply the now.
(64% of the country thinks that the most basic goal of businesses is “to create jobs for the overall economy.” Only 25% of the 1,000 respondents got the question right and knew the “primary objective of a business” is “to create value for the shareholders.”)
That was depressing. Apparently the majority of Americans don’t know enough to deserve to keep their economic freedom. We need to change those attitudes mighty fast, or it’ll be soon too late.
You wrote: “Apparently the majority of Americans don’t know enough to deserve to keep their economic freedom. We need to change those attitudes mighty fast, or it’ll be soon too late”
American Thinker
March 17, 2008
The Lawyers’ Party
By Bruce Walker
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_lawyers_party.html
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers’ Party.
Barack Obama is a lawyer.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.
Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.
Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer.
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different.
President Bush is a businessman.
Vice President Cheney is a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.
The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democratic Party is made up of lawyers.
Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich.
The Lawyers’ Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And so we have seen the procession of official enemies in the eyes of the Lawyers’ Party grow. Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all consuming. Some Americans become “adverse parties” of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class action suit. We are citizens of a republic which promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws, we are contorted by judicial decisions, we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to use, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers’ Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
FR Comments:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2463569/posts
A list of the cabinet officers and czars who went to law school is another good exercise.
You learn all the wrong lessons in law school:
(1) There is no such thing as unproductive paperwork. All paperwork is billable hours.
(2) Life is a zero-sum game: Somebody wins, somebody loses.
(3) Nobody needs to know math.
(4) If you lose, you get paid the same as if you win.
(5) You can benefit handsomely from someone else’s suffering.
(6) All problems can be solved by a legal proceeding.
(7) 3 years + no foreign student competition + no dissertation + no math = postgraduate degree!
We have far more lawyers per capita than any other country and it’s just getting worse.
Lawyers exist to complicate simple things, and to frustrate the attempt of good people to make laws which are clear. ... I would add that the humanities and social sciences are dedicated to the same purpose.
There are 2 doctors in the Senate, of course they are both Republicans - Coburn and Barrasso.
This whole health care thing is Doctors vs Lawyers. Guess why there’s no Tort Reform?
HERE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2463569/posts?page=6#6
Outstanding and bookmarked.
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