Profit Perspectives 

Opening Montage: Set out the problem of profit visually:  Show some people, news interviews, speeches (e.g. Bernie Sanders Octavia-Cortes) images that inform the viewer that of the problem of profit—profit as a good thing, profit as bad thing, “profit over people” (Chomsky)  profit over the environment, “abolish profit”, profit as opportunity for poor people, profit for retirement. Etc. etc.   News Stories, Clips from movies Images of Article titles on how profit is undermining society, how it is good an important. 

    " I would try to find people on all sides, people making reasonable cases, and people on the fringes. We want to show profit is everything all the way to profit is evil with other mixed views inbetween.  I would use religious figures, actors, musicians, politicians, protestors, economists,  theorists like Chomsky, book covers etc. etc., etc. etc. etc.    Basically we are wanting to make the argument that there are a number of views about profit and do it Visually instead of saying it" 
    Michael Matheson Miller
     
     

    Politicians

    Bernie Sanders

    • 03:38: people are walking into their pharmacies today and seeing the price of the medicine they've had for twenty years double for no explanation other than the fact that the drug companies can do it or doing it so they can make outrageous profits

    • 04:05: there are thousands of people in this country every year who are dying because they cannot afford to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while last year the pharmaceutical industry made fifty billion dollars in profit. Top five companies fifty billion billion in profit.

    • 09:27 mr. president while nearly one in five Americans can't afford to fill their prescriptions. the top five drug companies made a combined fifty billion dollars in profits last year. there are many reasons why we pay such outrageous prices but one reason is we continue passing laws written by the pharmaceutical industry and their lobbyists year after year after year.

    • 09:26 mr. president let me be clear. millions of Americans have lost their jobs their homes their life savings and their ability to send their kids to college because of this horrendous Wall Street recession. We cannot continue to allow big oil companies to make out like bandits...during the last ten years the five largest oil companies ExxonMobil Shell BP Chevron Texaco and ConocoPhillips earned over 750 billion dollars in profits ten year period. 750 billion dollars in profits that is not chicken feed. during the first quarter of this year Big Oil's profits increase by 85-percent. not bad. eighty-five percent. mr. president instead of using these profits to invest in renewable energy and to prevent oil spills big oil and gas companies are primarily using this money to buy back their own stock and enrich their CEOs. 

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    • 6:00, I do think that right now when we have this no-holds-barred wild-west hyper capitalism what that means is profit at any cost. capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world. when this country started we were not a capitalist we did not operate on a capitalist economy

    • 06:35 neighborhood of the Bronx have gone up 145 percent in the last year those developers take take over those foreclosed properties flip them they’ll develop them they profit off of them and then they take those profits and pump them into our electoral system. the only way that this is going to end and the only way that life is going to get better for us as working-class Americans is by electing people who don't take corporate PAC money 

    President Trump

    • DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Trump profits off of his presidential campaign
    • 32:28 "...Now, we've got a little bit of uncertainty because of trade. To me, there's no uncertainty. And to other people that happen to be smart, there's no uncertainty. But we can't allow the European Union to take out $151 billion out of the United States. We can't allow Mexico to have a NAFTA deal that gives them over $100 billion. And I call it profit. You know, you can divide that up any way you want to do it. I call it profit...."
    • 31:10, "...We're going to reduce the tax rate on American business so they can keep our jobs in America, create jobs in America, and compete for workers right here in America, meaning higher wages and greater profits for companies. [Applause] It's finally time to give the American worker a pay raise. That's what we're going to do. [Applause]..."
    • 24:11 "...Please remember this: I will never put personal profit before national security. Nobody should.
    • See more here...

    Intellectuals

    Noam Chomsky

    • 0:00, suppose a bank lends money. it cares about one thing its own profits...
    • 05:27 a huge effort on the part of the business world that undermineds markets but to keep the aspect that's useful for profit and power namely separating people from one another, focusing on individual choices not working with your neighbor
    • 03:07 your role as CEO of a corporation you are compelled to maximize profit and to ignore what economists call externalities that is the impact of your transactions on others. well that's why we have repeated financial crises ever since Reagan and Thatcher the deregulation of the financial institutions means that the people who run them have to ignore what's called systemic risk. the risk that a transaction is going to bring down the system and since you ignore it, you’re increasing the probability of it and
      therefore repeatedly happens
    • 1:20 private enterprise works just the way Milton Friedman says you give the worst possible service at the highest possible profit. that’s what it means to be in the business. 
    • 01:37 (audio only) inherent to markets the Exxon Mobil that will try to maximize profit independently of what happens to the fate of the species and they're doing that... 
    • 06:13 American energy companies are poised to unleash a further flood while they lead us exuberantly to the precipice scientists are well aware that most of the oil must be left in the ground if there's to be some hope for a decent life for our grandchildren but who cares as long as there are spectacular profits for tomorrow
    • 56:25 in their institutional role as managers of major corporations they have a duty in fact a requirement even a legal requirement to maximize profit and market share and to ignore what economists call externalities. the impact of a transaction on others that doesn’t enter into market calculations. well in this case the externality happens to be the survival of the grandchildren but they cannot in their institutional role attend to that problem because their task is to maximize profit and market share
    • 51:34 unaccountable private institutions which are devoted in principle to profit maximization our maximization of course that means undermining democracy
    • 39:34 you're not allowed to pronounce the word profits that's an obscene word so it's pronounced jobs. that’s one of the devices like free trade and others that are used to mask policies that are in fact directed and oriented towards the masters of mankind and their welfare

    Dr. Cornel West

    • 25:52 more and more rendered if not silent too relatively impotent and powerless as the middle classes engage in unprecedented opportunities with technological innovation overwhelming and with Vanguard moments in the economy the silicon valley's and others engaging in experimentalism and also tied to profit maximization as the real economy more and more is left behind with swage stagnation decrepit

    Business

    Amazon, Jeff Bezos

    • 04:52 let's talk about profit or in your case the complete lack thereof famously 

    • 05:17 the reality is that Amazon is a collection of several businesses and initiatives and we have some very significant very profitable more established businesses that are free cash flow generating very significantly and then fortunately the way I think about it we have lots of opportunities to invest in new initiatives and we'd take advantage of those opportunities

    Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, 

    • 00:08 I started off the the shareholder letter saying the profits are not our primary goal and then I got a little bit of some of the board members to question that statement and I was like well it's true you know and

    • 49:28 we're not trying to maximize profit at this point, because it, it, it would constrain the business, the growth of the business and. Constrain the overall objective of transitioning the world towards electric cars. so, I got nothing against profit in, in general, but it's just, it’s just, it's not I mean I actually don't think it's the smart move. If, if one were to take net present value of future cash flows, I think maximizing profit at this stage is actually not the smart move.
       

    Economists/ Investors

    • Warren Buffett

    • Michael Bloomberg

    Tycoons

    • Westinghouse
    • Rockefeller

    More Businesses

    • Bill Gates...
    • Apple, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs...
    • Virgin Group, Richard Branson
    • Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg
    • Google, Sundar Pichai

    Events

    Corporate scandals

    • Enron
    • Wells Fargo Scandal
    • Volkswagen emissions scandal

    Financial events

    • Financial crisis of 2007–2008
    • The great depression

    Protest events

    Print

      Books covers

       Magazine covers

      •  

       News

      Movies

      Documentaries

      Feature Films

      Speeches

      Other clips....

      Organizations/Gov

      Institutions

      • World Trade Organization
      • World Bank.
      • International Monetary Fund

      Government

      • Gross Domestic Profit
      • Tariffs
      • Trade Deals, NAFTA, extra

      Industries

      • Banks
      • Agriculture
        • Chicken Farm 

      Topical

      • problem of profit
      • profit as a good thing
      • profit as bad thing / evil
      • profit over the environment
      • profit as opportunity for poor people
      • profit for retirement

      Anti-profit

      • Profit drove business to lie and cheat
      • people on the fringes. extremist 

      Pro-profit comments

      • People making reasonable cases, 
      • Other mixed views in-between extremes 

      Quotes

      • "It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice. I consider the real vice is making losses." Winston Churchill
      • "When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would disappear." Dwight D. Eisenhower
      • "Given the fact that we are in a capitalist society, we still do not want to overlook not only what a corporation produces and its profitability but also how it impacts the environment, touches human life and whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person." Dean Smith
      • Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital. Jeff Bezos
      • We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business. Jeff Bezos
      • If your goal is anything but profitability - if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader - you'll hit problems. Michael Porter
      • "Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them." W. Edwards Deming
      • There are many who still do not believe that global warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder: because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming out of a fear that their profits might be affected if they had to stop dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere. Al Gore