Teaching business in 1970: A farmer sells a truckload of turnips for €100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. Your assignment: Calculate his profit?
Teaching business in 1980: A farmer sells a truckload of turnips for €100.
His cost of production is 80 per cent of the price. Your assignment: Calculate his profit?
Teaching business in 1990: A Farmer sells a truckload of turnips for €100.
His cost of production is €80. Your Assignment: Calculate his profit?
Teaching business in 2000: A farmer sells a truckload of turnips for €100.
His cost of production is €80 and his profit is €20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
Teaching business in 2005: A farmer cuts down a beautiful forest to reclaim land to grow turnips to sell so that he can feed his children. Certain minority interest groups claim he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. Your assignment: Discuss how the birds and squirrels might feel as the farmer cut down their homes just for a profit of €20. Is profit in itself justified?
Teaching business studies in 2009: A farmer is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be offensive to certain minority groups not consulted in the felling licence. He is also fined €100 as his chainsaw is in breach of health and safety legislation. He has used the chainsaw for over 20 years without incident and he protests and is taken to court and fined another €100 for wasting court time. On released he returns to find environmentalists have set up a camp in the trees on his land. He tries to protect his land but is arrested, prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned, and fined €100. He protests and is taken to court and fined another €100 for wasting court time.
While he is in jail the eco-mentalists and their dogs have gone home to the UK for the winter. They also leave behind several tonnes of rubbish strewn across the once beautiful landscape. The farmer is warned that failure to clear the rubbish immediately at his own cost is an offence. He protests and is immediately arrested for environmental pollution, breach of the peace, and made pay for safe disposal costs by a regulated government contractor. He protests and is taken to court and fined another €100 for wasting court time. Your assignment: Discuss how many times is the farmer going to have to be arrested and fined before he realises that he is never going to make a legitimate profit in Ireland through honest hard work?
Teaching Business Studies In 2010: A farmer cannot sell a lorry load of turnips because he cannot get a loan to buy either turnip seeds or a lorry. His bank has spent all his money on developers and lost the lot with only a small amount of money left to pay bonuses to their senior people. The farmer struggles to pay the road tax on his old lorry, however as it was built in the 1970s it no longer meets the emissions regulations and he is forced to scrap it. Now he must walk or transport his turnips in a wheelbarrow. Some dodgy Eastern European hauliers buy the lorry from the scrap merchant and put it back on the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send their cash back home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their relatives. If questioned they speak no English and it is easier to deport them at the Government’s expense. Following their holiday back home they return to Ireland with different names and start again. The farmers and the haulage contractors are accused of being bigoted racists and the subsequent negative publicity is the final straw and they all go out of business. The Government borrows more money to pay unemployment benefit and more bonuses to the bankers. Your Assignment: Give up this course and take up one that will enable you to get a job working for the State. Then you really are in business!
