So the Hagan campaign is claiming that the Senator’s family didn’t profit from the hundreds of thousands of dollars that it received from the Obama stimulus package. They argue, and I’m not making this up, that because the taxpayer subsidies didn’t more than cover the full cost of the investment they didn’t profit from them. Huh?
Any first semester accounting or economics major can recite the formula for profit in their sleep. It is total revenues minus total cost. There is of course no question that the Hagan’s stimulus money reduced the overall cost of the investments that were being subsidized. Otherwise, what heck would be the point? Indeed, this is what, by definition, subsidies do. So regardless of whether or not they covered the full cost of the investment they did cover some of the costs of the Hagan investments and therefore made these investments more profitable. QED, the Hagan family profited from their stimulus grants.
For most people this simple explanation of what a profit is would be unnecessary. But then again there might be a progressive or two that reads the Locker Room
