A lemonade stand selling capitalism.
Where do rich people get their money from?
Well, it’s simple… the lower classes. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, in a void. But outside of the void, and put back in context, things become a bit more complicated. Businesses as you and I know them, exist for one reason. Profit. Obviously, there are other reasons, but they all keep the need for profit in mind (or should anyway).
Take a lemonade stand. You see it’s hot outside, you have ice, lemons, and water. The whole objective is to sell your product at an advantage to make a profit. So let’s say everything costs you $10. You sell your lemonade for $1 a cup, it costs you $0.50 per cup to make, and you can make 20 cups for the $10 you spend. Bam, you make 100% percent profit! Now you can make two batches, and so you grow the business.
Now let’s say you need more people in order to sell your product. You need to spend an extra $5 on top of the $10 you spend on a batch. So now your profit is 50%. Your business can still turn a profit, but you miss that 100% gain. Along comes China, who says, hey look… we don’t have
proper rights for our workers and can generate your product for way less. $2 a batch to be specific. In the name of profit, you are now spending $2 per batch and $5 for labor. Now for every $7 you put in, you get $20 back, 185% profit. Year over year, you continue to turn a profit. The cost of living goes up, but your labor cost stays relatively the same. So much so, that the $5 you used to pay for labor is effectively $2 now. For the record, the score is $2 for labor and $2 per batch, bringing your profit to
an astonishing 400%. And scene.
Here we are… with corporations making massive gains. Or are we?
Well, let’s look at our favorite lemonade stand Starbucks.
In 2018, Starbucks recorded a $4.52 billion net gain… at around an 18% profit margin. Hmm, well that’s way less than the 400% we were making at the lemonade stand. Too true. Well, let’s take half of that and give it back to the employees and see what happens. If we did that, they would have gone home with about $7,500 extra in 2018. Too extreme? Taking half of net profit and giving it back to the people that earned it? Oh no, but then Starbucks would only be left with $2 Billion in profit for that year. Well… we could have given more… it’s just that, we have a problem. The CEO, Kevin Johnson, needed his annual $13.4 million salary.
Do not be fooled, no man or woman needs or deserves a 13.4 million dollar annual wage, full stop. These people had their lemonade stands, and it could have been good. At the top, a Kevin Johnson could have taken home a more reasonable (and arbitrarily set), $1 million. A full 189% above their lowest wage. But instead, they chose greed. Seeking lower costs, and keeping their labor pay low. This, however, is not only Starbucks’ problem. This is seen and has been seen, for a long time, with a lot of companies.
We can’t strike out the problem… but we sure can vote it out.
And it is HIGH time we vote to tax these people who are so unfairly leveraging their positions of power to obtain an obnoxious amount of money through gains. 2020, this is it!
They tax us every day with ghost wages, so now it’s time to tax the rich.
