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The time required to start a business is the number of calendar days needed to complete the procedures to legally operate a business. This chart is from 2017 statistics.
Small business vendors at a public market

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired except for limited liability company. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company (such as a corporation or cooperative). Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌkə-/) is a behavioral science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economies, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact these elements. It also seeks to analyse and describe the global economy. (Full article...)

Selected article

John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. He advocated political and social reforms such as proportional representation, the emancipation of women, and the development of labour organisations and farm cooperatives.

The Columbia Encyclopedia describes Mill as occasionally coming "close to socialism, a theory repugnant to his predecessors". He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. A member of the Liberal Party and author of the early feminist work The Subjection of Women, Mill was also the second Member of Parliament to call for women's suffrage after Henry Hunt in 1832.

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John D. Rockefeller as an industrial emperor, 1901 cartoon from Puck magazine.
Photo credit: Dontworry

John D. Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist and founder of Standard Oil. This cartoon from Puck magazine satirizes Rockefeller as an industrial emperor.

Selected economy

Lima, the financial centre of Peru

The economy of Peru is an emerging, mixed economy characterized by a high level of foreign trade and an upper middle income economy as classified by the World Bank. Peru has the forty-seventh largest economy in the world by total GDP and currently experiences a high human development index. The country was one of the world's fastest-growing economies in 2012, with a GDP growth rate of 6.3%. The economy was expected to increase 9.3% in 2021, in a rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Peru has signed a number of free trade agreements with its main trade partners. China became the nation's largest trading partner following the China–Peru Free Trade Agreement signed on 28 April 2009. Additional free trade agreements have been signed with the United States in 2006, Japan in 2011 and the European Union in 2012. Trade and industry are centralized in Lima while agricultural exports have led to regional development within the nation. (Full article...)

Selected quote

The majority of these men beheve that the fundamental interests of employees and employers are necessarily antagonistic. Scientific management, on the contrary, has for its very foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one and the same; that prosperity for the employer cannot exist through a long term of years unless it is accompanied by prosperity for the employe, and vice versa; and that it is possible to give the workman what he most wants — high wages — and the employer what he wants — a low labor cost — for his manufactures.

It is hoped that some at least of those who do not sympathize with each of these objects may be led to modify their views; that some employers, whose attitude toward their workmen has been that of trying to get the largest amount of work out of them for the smallest possible wages, may be led to see that a more liberal policy toward their men will pay them better; and that some of those workmen who begrudge a fair and even a large profit to their employers, and who feel that all of the fruits of their labor should belong to them, and that those for whom they work and the capital invested in the business are entitled to little or nothing, may be led to modify these views.

No one can be found who will deny that in the case of any single individual the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency; that is, when he is turning out his largest daily output.

Frederick Winslow Taylor, The principles of scientific management, 1911

Topics


  • ... that Dane Hansen started a road-construction business with about 100 mules that he was unable to sell to the US Army after World War I ended?
  • ... that the Darwin Rocksitters Club had "no funny business" as their first, third, and fifth rules?
  • ... that the Chicago Community Bond Fund sought to put itself out of business by eliminating cash bail?
  • ... that political consultant Jim Rivaldo said that moving to San Francisco made him realize that "there were gay lawyers, gay businessmen—a lot of people like me"?
  • ... that the 2013 book Brick by Brick, about how The Lego Group reinvented itself, became a popular business text?
  • ... that Stan Lee modeled Tony Stark after 20th-century business magnate Howard Hughes?

On this day in business history

July 5:

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The following are images from various business-related articles on Wikipedia.

More did you know

  • ...that the melting and export of cents and nickels can be punished with a fine of up to $10,000 and/or imprisoned for a maximum of five years?
  • ... that the GDP deflator (implicit price deflator for GDP) is a price index measuring changes in prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy.

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