The Profit reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Profit

Profit is what is gained, usually in monetary terms, after costs are accounted for.

Income earned by buying low and selling high. Includes the case in which an entrepreneur buys factors of production and uses them to make something that can be sold for more than the costs of of obtaining future inputs.

It can be considered as payment for having made available the net investment (like interest), payment for the risk, and, if not already accounted for as costs, for the work the worker has done. This could be back-breaking work, or it could be of the more cerebral kind.

In neo-classical economics, there are a number of different kinds of profit:

• Normal profit
• Abnormal or supernormal profit

A profit however may not indicate a success, or a loss failure. After all many pyrrhic victories could be worse than a simple loss which can be learnt from.

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