thinker2
Define excessive profit.

What are you saying should be the connection, if any, between the price of something and what it cost?

Belly, we agree again.

I have never found any reason to shop at a big name store. A while back, when I needed a new fridge, I did check one of them out, as their sale brochure had landed in my letter box.

Their sale price on the one I wanted, turned out to be almost $300 more than the price at the hole in the wall little retailer, I bought from.

Thinker, job security, why?

If I have a job, I can hire someone to do it. I will usually have to spend quite some effort, time & money training them to do my job. It can take months to make them productive.

My staff can leave me at a weeks notice, & take my training & expertise to a competitor, any time they like.

A competitor, using my expertise may take half of my business, but I am expected to offer the remaining staff "job security".

Why am I expected to offer anyone a job for life, when they can leave on a whim, any time they like? Doesn't seem quite fair to me.

thinker2
Define excessive profit.

Now I don't want this to become a 'staff bashing thread', however, unlike business owners who often take huge risks and place thier nuts on the line, staff risk nothing, yet get hansomly rewarded plus some!

So, if a company invests say 20 billion dollars to make a half a billion in profit, how is that being greedy?

After all, business owners, like any other investor are quite entitled to a decent return on investment, don't you all think?

Now as for staff having the freedom to come and go as they please, well, apparently fairness has no place when it comes to employers being dupted.

It is also one of the many reasons why we have such a skill shortage. Why 'over train' someone who may well become your competitor.

It's not as if you get rewarded for you efforts.

The excessive profit I'm referring too, Rehctub is margins such as 150-200% in retail essentials like clothing for example. Why ?.

And I would think, that it is the search for excessive profit that drives the yo-yo petrol price cycle and the supermarket duopoly.

I know that business people put their lives on the line Rehctub, and would also not want this post to become a business operator bash either.
But I am saying that the trade practices situation in Australia today allows for corporations to rule over the consumer
"and along with that consumer, the small business person" who can have their margins reduced and their ability to employ people curtailed, or even to compete, simply by the preference of their larger supplier, who can increase the pricing fee's and charges at will. Without justification, other than their own best perceived interests.

At the Corporate level this is clearly out of control, the size of their profits are obscene, forget that I said excessive.

Of course increasing imports of goods has also removed our need to manufacture things, therefore we've seen those jobs disappear.

But my underlying point is, "that the living standards of the average Australian have been eroded the most by the corporatization of our economy."

Our richest of the rich (except Richard Pratt) operate with seeming impunity, and given a toothless law environment in which to operate, proceed to do so without effective competition, regulation or enforcement of breaches in law.

Example 1: Downward price pressure placed by supermarkets on milk producers at the cost end by anti competitive pricing is disguised or offset by the profits at the petrol pump, their margins ever increasing.

I think the " fair go " is gone Rehctub. I'd kinda like to see that make a come back.

Well put thinker 2.

What ever happened to win-win. Profits for the retailer, manufacturer, wholesaler; and value for money for the consumer as well as fair pay and working conditions for employees.

Like old Con the Fruiterer used to say "a little bit for him and a little bit for me". The me-me Business School is out of date and we need to get back to honest business principles.

I get a bit tired of hearing derogatory remarks about employees as though their labour has little value in an economy. Labour is just as important if not more than property rights. One's labour is a form of property rights and you don't sell your property for little value just as you don't sell your labour for less than a fair price (in an ideal world). There is something wrong with an economy that fosters growing income disparity resulting in two and three speed economies and a ensuing reduction in living standards for the lowest paid.

Labour is one value in the business chain, it is often the first to be devalued in negotiations through downsizing or pressure to reduce the minimum wage or bring back draconian IR standards. The idea that perhaps 'excessive' profits for each player along the chain of business (not always fairly distributed - think farmers) is the real problem. Greed begets greed whether it be from unreasonable demands from employees right through to executives, CEOs, shareholders and owners.

The penny is dropping but it is taking its goodly time.

Thinker 2, I agree with what you say, or at least most of it.

You do know of cause who caused this anti competitiveness, WE DID!

You see this problem with the big retailers started back in the 80's.

We used to see our towns dotted with small fruit shops, butchers, family run hardware stores, but hey, we wanted more. We wanted cheap goods and, despite the fact that we knew the underlying result would be a monopolised retail sector, we continued to support these big guys more and more.

So, given that these huge companies also employ lots of people and generate huge amounts of tax for the government, they to (the government) are doing exactly what we did. They are supporting this knowing full well that it will end in tears.

But we were warned, time and time again, yet we continued to allow these guys to gain market share.

Now we want government to fix the problems we caused, while at the same time loose billions in revenue.

It's not so much a case of 'won't happen', it's more a case of 'can't happen'.