To many people, even today, high profits are often attributed to high prices charged by those motivated by “greed.” In reality, most of the great fortunes in American history have resulted from someone’s figuring out how to reduce costs, so as to be able to charge lower prices and therefore gain a mass market for the product. Henry Ford did this with automobiles, Rockefeller with oil, Carnegie with steel, and Sears, Penney, Walton and other department store chain founders with a variety of products. A supermarket chain in a capitalist economy can be very successful charging prices that allow about a penny of clear profit on each dollar of sales.
– Thomas Sowell, Ph.D., Basic Economics (2015, Basic Books), p. 165.
Wilfred Reilly, Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University.
Books by Wilfred Reilly:
Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About
Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War
Wilfred Reilly on Twitter
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