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Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

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notacoward·

Just for fun, here are the profit numbers.

Gazprom 1410

Exxon Mobil 1302

I&C Bank of China 1021

Shell 980

Chevron 852

China Constr. Bank 830

Apple 822

BP 814

BHP Billiton 749

Microsoft 734

Two banks, two high tech, the rest oil/gas/mining. Kind of depressing. List and figures from

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/perfor...

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> Two banks, two high tech, the rest oil/gas/mining. Kind of depressing.

Why is this depressing?

It looks like the people manufacturing things for the economy are being rewarded. To me this seems like the economy is working properly.

Oil/gas/mining don't exactly leave the world a better place. Banks one could argue for both sides, though I tend to lean on bad too.

Ehhh. Those companies and others like them (Aramco, etc) represent the heart of the modern industrial economy, for better or for worse. Are consumer companies like Apple even imaginable in their absence?

No, it seems like the people manufacturing one thing are being rewarded more than the people manufacturing other things . . . until you realize it's not manufacturing at all. It's resource extraction, which is necessary but still a different thing. Also, why overlook the banks? They might not be totally without value, but they're not manufacturing either. I'd much rather see such a list dominated by people who actually build stuff higher up the value chain, not their suppliers and facilitators.

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