The slippery slope of excess profits

HelenaCat95 · Post by **HelenaCat95** » Wed May 03, 2006 9:29 am

Time Warner (the parent company of Time Magazine and CNN) reported profits of over $1.4 billion for the 1st quarter this year.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ ... 3-07-36-20

Is this excess profits?
Exactly what is "excess" profits?
I wonder what CNN has to say about this.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Wed May 03, 2006 10:10 am

Good question. I guess that boils down to an opinion. Mine is when you make more money by charging more for something that is a staple or is nearly a staple (gas is nearly a staple IMO) and the more you make progressively, and adversly, affects the low income groups from the bottom up. Personally, I don't feel bad for myself that gas prices are increasing. My wish is that higher gas prices would cause people to drive less and pollute less w/o the by-product of adversely affecting anyone. Is that even possible? It's especially bad when those low income groups don't have an alternate mode of travel. I don't think Time Magazine or CNN are staples, but I don't know what all Time Warner has its hands on.

HelenaCat95 · Post by **HelenaCat95** » Wed May 03, 2006 10:30 am

Interesting and well-put point. I can see what you mean regarding "staples".
At the risk of sounding like the little kid who keeps asking her dad, "why?", I've got to ask what the definition of a "staple" is? Of course, one can agree that food, shelter and clothing fall into that category.
I think your point is that transportation falls into that category - I can see that.
What about information? You may be able to survive in this world without being up on the latest "goings on" in this world, but you can't get ahead with out being informed. You can see where I'm going with this, because Time Warner (CNN) reaped most of their profits from cable rates.

I think most of us would agree that if you take the profit-motive out of any particular industry, then you stifle if not stop growth and innovation. Assuming that we want growth and innovation (i.e., more and better "stuff" and ideas), then we need to be careful in defining "excess", and even more careful in identifying who and what we slap that label on.

iaafan · Post by **iaafan** » Wed May 03, 2006 2:17 pm

The trouble with the profit-motive in the oil, especially tobacco, and even the news industry is that improvement as we see it may not be improvement as they see it. The oil and tobacco industries keep coming up with innovations for us to use more of their product. The news industry is figuring out ways to get us to watch 'their news' and doesn't seem too concerned with what's news worthy. Like Terry Schiavo vs. the slaughtering going on in that country in Africa (see the news is so bad I don't even know the name of the country).

HelenaCat95 · Post by **HelenaCat95** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:11 pm

First Big Oil,

then Big Media, http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/ ... 3-07-36-20

then Big Education (tuition is up over 40% since 2000) http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage. ... ntId=60914

now Big Entertainment (click on each name to see how much they make each year) http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/53/Pay_1.html

hmmmmm.