Civil, professional and real estate enterprises in particular are part of the economically commercial enterprises.
1. In the division of 8 by 4, 8 is the dividend, 4 the divisor, 2 the quotient.
The dividend is strictly speaking the total to be divided, but when it comes to the distribution of benefit an enterprise's profits, the quotient is often called a "dividend". The distribution of the dividend itself is effected by a more complex key than a single division in the case, which is in no way compulsory, of so-called preferred shares, or of preference, or of priority for distinction from ordinary shares.
2. The enterprise in its own name lends itself to the amalgamation between Wage the wage of the operator and the profit of the owner.
To avoid this confusion, the owner and operator must divide his deductions between two accounts: one of the result distributed to the owner, the other of the operator's wage. As the service of the labor provided by the farmer is exchanged for wages, the service of the investment of capital savings provided by the owner is exchanged for profit. In both cases, the co-exchangers are the enterprise and one of its suppliers.
3. Let us insist again: surplus value and profit are different realities.
Capital gain and capital loss are respectively a gain or loss that a liquidation provides. Profit is the product of conservation. The sale that provides added value is certainly a economic exchange. Nevertheless, surplus valueas such is not a term of economic exchange, whereas profits and interest are, as such, terms of economic exchange.
4. The profit is a pension, in the primary and first necessary sense of this word: income periodic, fixed or variable, provided by a investment.
Interest Interest received by individuals and non-commercial associations is also rent. Pay-as-you-go pensions are de facto life annuities. The periodic income that profit provides is variable, although in very different proportions depending on the type of enterprise that serves it and the economic policy that prevails.
5. The rents received are the turnover of an enterprise.
The remuneration received by the owner of a leased property is only profit when it is equal to or less than the profit, all charges and provisions deducted, of the business that constitutes the rental. The determination of such a profit requires the keeping of complete accounts, which is difficult to make sufficiently far-sighted. This is why the fractions of real estate rent that constitute capital income are often overestimated.
6. Profit is not a contribution to the reconstitution of savings invested in capital.
Profit has, on this point, the same status as interest. The latter is, in honest trade, a price that presupposes the repayment of the principal. Profit is, in honest trade, a price that presupposes the preservation of the savings invested in capital by the enterprise that this investment finances. This retention is due to the depreciation of assets and the revaluation of the balance sheet due to currency depreciation, not to profit.
7. Since profit does not have as its raison d'être the reconstitution of a savings in capital, the duration apparently expressed by a rate of profit is economically senseless.
The period at the end of which a cumulative profit equalizes the amount of savings invested in capital is only the inverse expression of the average annual percentage of profit on capital. For example, when this term is 12.5 years, the average annual profit is 8%. But what does such a long period mean? Does the investment no longer have to be profitable when it is maintained beyond the end of this period? That would be fraudulent. In the points of economic logic called upon to govern these matters, the following two can never be repeated too often. Profit only remunerates the service of the savings in capital, but for as long as this service lasts. The only two means of economic accumulation by an individual are enrichment by inheritance and his savings fed by his income and capital gains derived from the liquidation of investments of his assets.
8. The losses are on several points asymmetrical with the profits.
As defined here, profit does not necessarily have the effect of increasing a stock of savings invested in capital. The loss instead of a profit necessarily has the effect of reducing such a stock by the same amount. Despite the still widespread illusion to the contrary, such a reduction can only be erased by a new investment, just as a dilapidated property can only be erased by new works. The absence of profit is a loss of income for the underwriter in equity or quasi-capital. However, it is not, in itself, a loss for him. On the other hand, the absence of profit is a definitive loss of earnings: whatever happens next, the long-term accumulation of profits received will be lower than in the absence of a period without profit.