David Rosenthal: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That's a much better way to look at it, you're right. I also think inflation adjusting these things is probably the wrong way to look at it. I was thinking about this more in the context of Rockefeller’s personal wealth, which we'll dissect in-depth in the next installment here. Sure, you can inflation adjust wealth and you can inflation adjust profits, but what you should be doing is looking at them as a percentage of the GDP at that time. Let's look at 1900. Standard Oil, in 1900, produced $60 million in earnings. Rather than inflation adjusts that, let's look at it relative to the total GDP, which was $24 billion. So $60 million, divided by $24 billion. So 0.25% of the entire country's GDP is Standard Oil’s profits. I suppose GDP really would be based on revenue. Assuming they had 33% operating margins, I'm kind of pulling a number out of thin air, but that feels reasonable. I don't know how they're defining profits here. I don't think this is GAAP accounting. GAAP accounting doesn't even exist at this point. That might be the dividend, the annual dividend. Oh, the earnings being the...…

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