Should business owners want to create jobs?
CBS News:
...veteran entrepreneur and contributing [Inc. Magazine] editor ...Norm Brodsky's position is that, while he and all good business owners are happy when they can give people jobs, creating new jobs isn't -- and shouldn't be -- a goal. I'm a long-time fan of Brodsky and his down-to-earth advice, and an admirer of his tremendous business accomplishments. But I don't fully agree with his argument, or at least the way he frames it.
In his piece, Brodsky focuses on job-creation as it relates to overhead and productivity. He says "no one operates a company with the goal of maximizing labor costs," and of course in that regard he is right. We business owners naturally want -- and are generally obliged -- to generate the highest possible return on every dollar we spend. That means getting the most we can out of our real estate, machinery and people. Certainly no one has "increase rent" as a business goal, and Brodsky is saying the same thing in his labor cost argument. He is looking at the expense angle (the very conservative approach with which I almost always agree), rather than the investment view of hiring.
I look at it a different way, and I don't think it's semantics or nuance.
...veteran entrepreneur and contributing [Inc. Magazine] editor ...Norm Brodsky's position is that, while he and all good business owners are happy when they can give people jobs, creating new jobs isn't -- and shouldn't be -- a goal. I'm a long-time fan of Brodsky and his down-to-earth advice, and an admirer of his tremendous business accomplishments. But I don't fully agree with his argument, or at least the way he frames it.
In his piece, Brodsky focuses on job-creation as it relates to overhead and productivity. He says "no one operates a company with the goal of maximizing labor costs," and of course in that regard he is right. We business owners naturally want -- and are generally obliged -- to generate the highest possible return on every dollar we spend. That means getting the most we can out of our real estate, machinery and people. Certainly no one has "increase rent" as a business goal, and Brodsky is saying the same thing in his labor cost argument. He is looking at the expense angle (the very conservative approach with which I almost always agree), rather than the investment view of hiring.
I look at it a different way, and I don't think it's semantics or nuance.
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