Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For
Yep, the water’s pretty much free, just bubbles up out of the ground.
It’s the bottling plants and the transport which add the value. The bottling plants and the transport being done by Nestle. Why shouldn’t the people adding the value get the value?
So, let’s consider that other essential for life, oxygen. Say you’re in hospital, and need an extra supply. The people who stuck that compressed oxygen into that bottle and transported it to where you need it not to die. They got it for free! Just sucked it out of the common atmosphere they did!
So, should the people who did the work to get it to where you need and want it gain the added value? The profit? Or should it be just, y’know, a free resource which your failing lungs can try to suck out of the atmosphere?
Actually, it would be fun to try starting an NGO which campaigned on this and see if anyone’s idiot enough to contribute. My bet is that there are some who really are that stupid.
And no-one is forced to buy bottled water anyway…
Local governments are too cash-strapped, therefore they don’t levy a charge for water extraction rights? Logic is not their strong point.
Is this Bloomberg rag connected with Noo Yark’s Marxist prick of Mare (sic)?
Cos they seem to have attended the same brain surgeon.
‘Nestlé has come to dominate a controversial industry’
It’s not controversial. They are bottling water, forchristsake.
If Leftards were running the business, they would try to find the most expensive source of water they could find.
‘There’s also the issue of scarcity. The United Nations expects that 1.8 billion people will live in places with dire water shortages by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under stressed water conditions.’
Non sequitur. Having double ought nothing to do with Nestle bottling water in Michigan.
And WTF is ‘stressed water?’
‘There’s also the issue of scarcity. The United Nations expects that 1.8 billion people will live in places with dire water shortages by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under stressed water conditions.’
So we want to discourage the likes of Nestle from transporting water from where it is abundant to where there is a demand because…
When privatising the water companies was being debated you’d always get the hard of thinking proclaiming that “water’s free” as if that ended the discussion.
I used to ask them if they would be prepared to get out of bed at 2 am to fix a burst water mains without payment. Or if the were prepared to work in a factory making water pipes without payment. They used to look at me as if I had two heads.
B in LH. because…..there’s too many people and we need to cull the numbers a bit to save the planet.
Just think, Nestle bottling water and distributing it helps alleviate thirst for millions of people.
1.8 billion will be living in places with dire water shortages? Bet they’d be glad of a supply of bottled water from elsewhere then.
You can live a few days only without water, the final day you would not like at all.
You would happily drink your own urine after 2 days. And here is a company that pays for water rights, builds a plant, sterilises the water / makes it safe to drink, bottles it, markets it and distributes it. Perhaps the anti water people should be applauding the entrepreneurial spirit that meets a need?
No, they would rather other people (not themselves of course) suffer.
Ah, journalism…
Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Probably Pays Billions To Actually Sell Given The Availability Of Exact And Near Substitutes
I live just down the road from a Nestle bottling plant, and can comfirm that 1) we have no shortage of water (it falls out of the sky with alarming monotony, the only variation being that in winter it sometimes comes in various frozen forms) and 2)despite this, Nestle have to work with all sorts of regs and monitoring to ensure that they don’t muck the water table up.
This is Teenage Trot economics from the Best Educated Generation in History.
Bloke in North Dorset,
That’s roughly the level of the debate in Ireland over whether to charge for domestic water. Until 2015, water service was paid for through general taxation. Or “free”, as most people saw it.
Nestle’s own chairman said if water scarcity is becoming a problem, which he thinks it is, then you should just put a price on it and be done with it, the market will sort out the rest.
Naturally the snowflakes cannot handle the fact that corporate dr evil has an opinion (despite the fact that being a food producer, it’s in nestles interest to avoid global water shortages, obviously) because you couldn’t possibly make the price of water anything more than free because that’s privatising it for profit or something
My problem is when bottled water costs more than bottled beer.
No one is making billions on bottled water, it’s barely profitable at all.
Of course they are – the water sells for billions doesn’t it; and the water is free. It therefore stands to reason that they are making billions selling it.
More importantly is what corporate income tax rate are they paying on their sales. I bet it isn’t anything like the 35% that they are meant to be paying.
Fish should be free, they just take it out of the sea.
Much like oxygen is just taken out off the air.
Petrol and diesel should be free, they just take it out of the ground.
@ James in NZ
Switzerland has a Federal Corporate tax rate of 8.5%. In addition there are cantonal and communal taxes whjich vary from place to place. Wiki says that the overall tax rate ranges from 11.5% to 24.4%.
So why should Nestle be paying 35% tax?
(“Because The Grauniad says so” gets no marks)
Pendentry; all companies should be paying 35% of turnover in taxes. Anything less is capitalism at its most extreme!