Profits

Last night President Obama said:

But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Excuse me, but profits come after overhead.

This is what happens when one’s only experience with budgeting is non-profit.

With a non-profit budget, if one doesn’t spend all of the money in the budget, one may face a decrease in the amount of next year’s budget. Non-profit and governmental budgeting seems to actually discourage cutting waste and saving money. People feel that they’ll lose in the future if they save today.

For-profit businesses only gain from cutting waste and saving money. There’s more profit to reinvest in the business, more profit to share out with stakeholders.

President Obama put profit at the head of the “overhead” list.