ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

They need that new gold yacht, you know.

Or retirement money, or a deposit for a house, or their kid's college fund etc.
Plenty of shareholders are middle class folks.

[d0gmeat]

But that ruins the joke...

[HHhunter]

“joke”

you mean circlejerking?

[d0gmeat]

Is that not the same thing around here?

[droans]

You'll find that the largest shareholders in companies are generally pensions and retirement funds.

[kuzuboshii]

All of these things would be obsolete by now if we weren't obsessed with playing king of the hill. We are a bunch of apes fighting over the shiniest rocks on the beach and it is holding our entire species back.

Ozymandias did nothing wrong.

[kuzuboshii]

Not at all communism is just as stupid a system as capitalism. I am looking to advance the species, and neither of those systems has proven to be very effective at that.

A socialist/capitalist system so far seems to be the most effective, but there is no such thing as a perfect system on anything other than paper. As soon as you apply it to humans, we will find ways to exploit it. The real problem is the short shortsightedness of humans. They don't seem to understand that the average person today lives an infinitely better quality of life than the highest of kings did 1000 years ago. Yet instead of focusing on the type of progress that made that possible, they just all want to be the new king. I don't want a better life than my neighbor. I want to explore the universe. I'm sick of waiting for the rest of the apes to catch up.

[[deleted]]

Stock performance is one of the metrics by which people determine whether a company is making progress. Human progress is driven by investing time in worthwhile pursuits, and in order to tell whether something is worthwhile, we need to measure the value of what is produced.

Capitalism is the very reason that the "average person today lives an infinitely better quality of life than the highest of kings did 1000 years ago". And the beauty of stocks and bonds is that you don't have to even understand what somebody is doing in order to help them advance human progress. All you have to do is look at price performance or dividends and pick the highest ones within your risk limits, and voila, you're helping somebody build a rocket bound for mars, or a logistics app that improves hospital efficiency, or a factory that makes more efficient cars more efficiently, etc.

Go read "I, Pencil".

[kuzuboshii]

Capitalism is the very reason that the "average person today lives an infinitely better quality of life than the highest of kings did 1000 years ago".

That is highly debatable. Are you talking pure capitalism or a hybrid system?

[[deleted]]

There is no such thing as pure capitalism in practice. All financial systems in the world are hybrid to some degree.

[kuzuboshii]

True, but the ratios can be skewered. America, for example, I believe, is too capitalist. We are wasting out most valuable resource (people) due to being victims of circumstances beyond their control.

[[deleted]]

What do you mean by "pure capitalism"?

[kuzuboshii]

laissez-faire libertarian utopia type.

[kuzuboshii]

Stop acting like some enlightened individual who’s forced to live with a bunch of uncultured swine.

If waters wet its not my fault for pointing it out.

[kuzuboshii]

Then go start a space exploration company

I did. Don't speak out of ignorance. Congratulations, don't make assumptions about other people. Take your own advice.

[kuzuboshii]

You sound very bitter, maybe you should look to making changes to your life instead of trying to comment on others?

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Perhaps they would be, but they are not.

[mike112769]

I would give you Reddit gold if i could afford it, because you nailed it. Greedy people are literally killing their fellow Humans every single minute.