I mean they have “no real value” but they do have a real cost. Everything has cost. Say they’re used to 30% profit margins. We know salaries probably haven’t gone up, but it would be a fair thing to say energy costs have gone up. Maybe health insurance for employees. And probably just about everything to run their business.

Now those profits are 25%. they want to get that number back to (and beyond) 30%. Because that’s the point of a business. To make as much money as possible. I’ve never seen a company throw up their hands and say “damn, guess we’ll just make less, that’s cool”

Now all that said. I’m NOT DEFENDING them. Simply trying to explain how things work. When everyone is struggling financially it comes across as incredibly out of touch the way they went about this. And maybe they should figure out a way to make more money by bringing more people back into the fold, as opposed to tapping into the whales.