Consumers pay wages

By Letter to the Editor on September 5, 2017.

Henry Ford’s timeworn adage that businesses don’t pay wages, but rather consumers do, has been all but forgotten.

One must expand the idea to include all costs associated with running a business. Labour, material inputs or goods to sell, mortgages or rent, insurance, utilities, taxes, a seemingly endless list. Every cost is counted in the sales price to the consumer who, in the end, pays the freight. If the price is bigger than the cost, there is profit and survival, if not, bankruptcy.

This is especially true for the majority of small businesses that live at the margin and are particularly vulnerable to even small cost increases. Governments have little concept of how private enterprise works, looking upon business as sheep that must be fleeced. More fees, more red tape, more regulations, more taxes. A convenient source of income to waste. Never a thought that you and I actually pay, not business.

Government and private enterprise should not be in an antagonistic relationship. The common goal should be economic growth, opportunity, and a culture of possibility for our children and grandchildren. Entrepreneurship is the future, forever jobs are the past.

Immanuel Moritz

Medicine Hat

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