Comment on Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit

• NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It helps with cash flow sure, but if it’s not profit you’re going into debt to pay that.

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  • Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, non profits exist. Of course it’s not the case for Amazon, but you don’t need to profit in order to exist as a company, and people still get to make money.

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    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Non profit doesn’t mean no profit.

      Non profits make enough profit to pay their employees, or they get money from other sources. They still make money.

      For a company to succeed, there must be profit, or have an outside source of funding.

      You cannot pay rent with revenue and no profit.

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      • Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Non profit means no profit. Salaries, rent, etc are not profit.

        That is fundamentally what profit is, revenue less expenses.

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      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Heh, “revenue is not profit”.

        Non-profits are specifically not allowed to have revenue in excess of expenses. If they take in too much money, the excess has to be put back in for operational expenses in the future, an endowment or something like that.

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    • tpihkal@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      All companies have to earn a profit, not just to pay for the expense of the goods plus all of the overhead, but also to be able to reinvest and grow. There’s a difference between earning a livable wage while the company as a whole remains poor and earning barely enough to live on while the investors pull in massive gains year over year.

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      • Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A company taking excess revenue and reinvesting it isn’t profit.

        There may be phrases with the word profit in them that include that value, but the general accepted definition is profit is the money that gets distributed to the stakeholders after expenses are covered. This is things like dividends for publicly traded companies, or for private companies, it’s just straight up paying out the cash to stakeholders.

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  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What do you think profit is? It seems like you’re conflicting profit with income.

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    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Profit is revenue - cost of goods.

      If you make a widget and it costs you $100 to make, and you sell it for $110, you have $10 profit. Then you have all the other expenses that it takes to run a business, lets say that’s $200.

      Your revenue is $110

      You profit is $10

      Expenses: $200

      You NET profit (AKA Net Income) is $-90

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