For richer or poorer

I was running on the treadmill the other day when something on the tv screen in front of me caught my attention. It was a statement issued by one Multi-National Corporation (“MNC”) regarding their record profit growth for the year. Not long after that, statements by a few other global giants were shown. They too, achieved phenomenal profit growth.

Usually, MNCs will claim that their growth was achieved from effective management or well-structured financing or dedicated people or other sophisticated reasons. I may not be an expert in the business world but as far as I am concern, profit growth can only be achieved by a few methodologies:-

Increase the volume of sales while maintaining costs; or

Increase the price of products/services while maintaining costs; or

Reduce costs.

Of course, the most effective way of achieving profit growth is to adopt all of the above which is… increase price and sales volume and at the same time, reduce costs.

Ya’ know, all these big MNCs continue to be where they are simply because their profits keep increasing year by year; and it has to increase. A MNC, or any company for that matter, have to keep growing in order to survive in this ruthless world. More often than not, growth is measured by profit increase.

Leaving the reducing costs part aside, when a company increases the pricing of its product or service, there is only 1 loser… us. Maybe it’s too harsh to say that we’re losers, after all, we do enjoy the product or the service that we paid for. But then again, when you consider that our salary is not exactly growing at the rate of which the prices are growing, then we are quite near the losing end…

Now, let’s have a look at the ‘cost cutting measures’. Such initiative is often hidden behind the name ‘cost management’. It is interesting to know that when a global MNC decides to cut its cost perform costs management, it is usually being implemented in Asian countries. And trust me, Malaysia is a country always being targeted, probably because they know Malaysians corporate slaves will do whatever they can to please the big boss.

Anyway, what happen when you’re a victim of a cost cutting regime and you have to face increasing prices situation? Yeah, then you are the ultimate loser…
The above may not be the exact situation for you, but that is quite the trend on things happening around us. We always complain that our salary is not increasing but prices of things kept increasing but you know what? The thing is… prices are going to keep increasing while our salary will not be increasing in a rate that will match it. Well… perhaps some will, some might even have their salary increasing in a rate much higher than the increase of products/services. But for many many many of us… we will not be that fortunate.

We all know that we live in a world where the rich will always get richer; and most of the time, they get richer by making the poor gets poorer. But what we don’t quite know is that the poor, in the struggle to become rich… all ends up helping the rich to get richer. The above is a classic example; and there are many more. But that’s a story for another day…

P/S: The prices of bread just increased. Soon, every fellas who eat bread are going to increase the price of their stuff… what are you going to increase?