How Much is Too Much?

2 min readMar 29, 2022

I once heard a joke about the CEO of one of the Big Three automakers telling someone “Our company is in business to make money.”

“That’s funny,” replied the other man. “I thought your company was in business to make cars.”

A profit is necessary for a business to operate. If a company constantly runs at a loss it doesn’t stay in business for long. That is generally well-known knowledge.

The big question that must be asked is: how much profit is too much profit?

At what point should those running the company reinvest their profit back into the company?

Walmart makes billions in profit, yet their employees are instructed how to apply for food stamps because they aren’t paid enough to be able to support themselves. Surely Walmart can afford to pay their employees more, even if it means lower profit numbers. They aren’t on the brink of going out of business.

Too often companies boost their profits at the expense of their employees. I worked at a company who pushed tens of millions of dollars’ worth of product out the door every month, yet their salaries were extremely low. The employees knew how much was being shipped, but they never saw it in their paychecks. The company couldn’t keep good employees there. The area I worked in saw roughly 20 employees come and go in the space of a year and a half. There was a supervisor position open the entire time I was there, and I was looking for a better paying position for over half of that time. They were spending a lot of money recruiting and training new people, and it showed.

They still managed to make a good profit, though, and that was all that mattered.

I’ve worked many places, and have seen the same thing.

Companies making billions of dollars in profit have moved their manufacturing operations overseas to Mexico, China, India, etc. to boost their profits at the expense of the American worker. They’ve put in machines, automated kiosks, and have convinced the customer to work for free in self-check-out lanes in order to boost profits. They’ve convinced workers that unions are bad, and if they don’t have the right skills, they don’t deserve a living wage.

All in the name of increased profits.

Now profitable corporations are raising prices in the name of “inflation.” Oil companies have raised their prices and claimed it was because of the war in Ukraine, or President Biden’s policies, or any other reason they can think of. The reality of the situation is that the price of oil rose briefly, then went back down and is currently under $100 a barrel. We saw gas prices rise with the rise in oil prices, but no corresponding decline as oil prices went down. Oil companies have 9000 drilling permits that they are not using to keep supplies low and prices high.