On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 04:18:40PM -0500, Jon Carnes wrote: > > Yes Capitalism works, as long as folks are willing to spend money and > take risks and grow new business. If the rich sit on their wallets and > just collect that money without putting it back into play then everyone > suffers.
If they do put it into play it might go like this account of a venture capital meeting called the Supper Club in Mexico recently: - One of the companies presenting a deal to SC members had developed an innovative software package. Their proposed platform would be able to introduce Congress' newly approved Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) into the network of health insurance options already out there. Their company would lose money in their first and second years, they said; but they would make roughly $20 million in gross revenue by the end of the fifth year. - Whether the financial projections were realistic or not was the subject of much debate among the members, as you might expect. But watch how their plan unfolds. - The company employs six people. Three were present at the meeting...the CEO, CFO and VP of Marketing. The first two were straight out financial guys, quite fluent in the language of venture capital. The third was a specialist in all things human-resource related (We sat next to her at dinner, so we know. If we never hear another word about "consumer-directed health care", we will shed no tears.) - The key IT guy, who developed the software they plan to market, stayed back at their home office. Two other employees do the grunt work. Six in all. But in their financial plan - even as the company plans to grow to $21 million - they don't plan to hire a single employee. They already outsource any kind of programming support they need to a firm in India...and customer service is next. In other words, the company will presumably add $20-$35 million to GDP over the next 3-5 years, but they will not create a single job. (taken from www.dailyreckoning.com) I am a member of CED and they promote outsourcing as "the" way for entrpreneurs to get ahead. I think Econ 101 is due for a rewrite now that globalization is here to stay. -- Mike -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
