Profit survey

[asterroc]

1) What do you think is the most profitable industry or organization? By this, I mean if you counted the profits they made and divided by the money they spent, who do you think gives the biggest number?

2) What do you think is the most profitable physical product? You can't say "information," but you could say "textbooks." Music on iTunes doesn't count, but physical music CDs do.

Who knows (or cares) what the right answers are, I am just curious as to people's reasons. And whether anyone will answer me at all. :-P

Comments

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Well oil definately has the biggest profits overall, but the return on money spend I am not sure about. Depends on how you figure it. A 50,000 bpd heavy oil upgrading or dcl plant costs about $2b to make. The operation and feeds cost about $35/barrel, with oil going for $60+/barrel, thats a nearly 2:1 profit, and it breaks even in a year.
Of course agriculture makes alot of money because other than fertalizers and some illegal immigrants to do harvesting/field maintance, you have little overhead.
But I think oil still wins in the physical product area. Although software makes alot too. Or maybe specialty chemicals.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I expect the software and music industries make a decent amount of profit, since the majority of their "product" is not a physical item that needs to be built. But I woudln't rank them that high on the second question because of that very same reason.

Many natural resources do require a bundle of money to process before you get to an end product - sand into silicon chips is an example that jethereal mentioned to me.