Apple out earns Goldman but.......
Goldman that makes nothing and that employs few people and arguable works against the interests of most people is nothing like as profitable as Apple and yet pays its people so much - "Go Figure!"
Amplify’d from www.newyorker.com
The main reason why Apple is so much more profitable than Goldman is a reassuring one. It makes tangible things—iMacs, iPhones, iPads—that millions of people want to buy, and for which they are willing to pay a premium price. (I am writing this post on an iMac.) Despite operating in a highly competitive industry, Steve Jobs’s firm has successfully differentiated its product line to such an extent that it now has considerable monopoly power: it can charge considerably more for its gizmos that they cost to manufacture.
Goldman, for all its reputation and smarts, has no such franchise. It does some things that its clients value and are willing to pay for—making markets, raising capital, providing investment advice, hedging risky positions—but rival banks, such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, provide practically the same suite of services, and pricing power is limited. (Not limited enough in some areas, such as I.P.O.s.) The only way Goldman (or any other investment bank) can increase its profit margins in a big way is to leverage up its balance sheet and live by its wits in the financial markets. But when banks all try this together, the consequences are usually disastrous.
Another thing that differentiates Goldman from Apple is how much it pays its employees. In 2010, Goldman’s 35,700 employees took home an average of $430,700. Apple doesn’t publish much information about its labor costs. According to the jobs Web site Simply Hired, the average salary at Apple is $46,000. Another Web site, Salary List, quotes a substantially higher figure—$107,719—but that doesn’t appear to include people working at Apple’s more than three hundred retail stores. Whichever number is more accurate, the basic message is the same. Apple employees earn a lot less than their counterparts at Goldman despite the fact they generate a much higher return—private and social—on the capital they use.
Go figure.
