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Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses the economy as a system where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production, such as labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. (Full article...)

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American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. As of 2023, AIG employed 25,200 people. The company operates through three core businesses: general insurance, life & retirement, and a standalone technology-enabled subsidiary. General Insurance includes Commercial, Personal Insurance, U.S. and International field operations. Life & Retirement includes Group Retirement, Individual Retirement, Life, and Institutional Markets. AIG is the title sponsor of the AIG Women's Open golf tournament. In 2023, for the sixth consecutive year, DiversityInc named AIG among the Top 50 Companies for Diversity list.

AIG's corporate headquarters are in New York City and the company also has offices around the world. AIG serves 87% of the Fortune Global 500 and 83% of the Forbes 2000. AIG was ranked 60th on the 2018 Fortune 500 list. According to the 2016 Forbes Global 2000 list, AIG is the 87th largest public company in the world. On December 31, 2017, AIG had $65.2 billion (~$79.7 billion in 2023) in shareholder equity.

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Detail from Labor, Charles Sprague Pearce (1896).

Manual labour (manual labor in American English) or manual work is physical work done by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals. It is most literally work done with the hands (the word "manual" comes from the Latin word for hand), and, by figurative extension, it is work done with any of the muscles and bones of the body. For most of human prehistory and history, manual labour and its close cousin, animal labour, have been the primary ways that physical work has been accomplished. Mechanisation and automation, which reduce the need for human and animal labour in production, have existed for centuries, but it was only starting in the 19th century that they began to significantly expand and to change human culture. To be implemented, they require that sufficient technology exist and that its capital costs be justified by the amount of future wages that they will obviate.

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Johannesburg, the financial capital of South Africa

The economy of South Africa is a mixed economy, emerging market, and upper-middle-income economy, one of only eight such countries in Africa. The economy is the most industrialized, technologically advanced, and diversified economy in Africa. Following 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's nominal gross domestic product (GDP) almost tripled to a peak of US$416 billion in 2011. In the same period, foreign exchange reserves increased from US$3 billion to nearly US$50 billion, creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of ending apartheid.

Although the natural resource extraction industry remains one of the largest in the country with an annual contribution to the GDP of US$13.5 billion, the economy of South Africa has diversified since the end of apartheid, particularly towards services. In 2019, the financial industry contributed US$41.4 billion to South Africa's GDP. In 2021, South Africa-based financial institutions managed more than US$1.41 trillion in assets. The total market capitalization of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is US$1.28 trillion as of October 2021. (Full article...)

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"The money influence—the pressing to make a profit on an "investment"—and its consequent neglect of skimping of work and hence of service showed itself to me in many ways. It seemed to be at the bottom of most troubles. It was the cause of low wages—for without well-directed work high wages cannot be paid. And if the whole attention is not given to the work it cannot be well directed. Most men want to be free to work; under the system in use they could not be free to work. During my first experience I was not free—I could not give full play to my ideas. Everything had to be planned to make money; the last consideration was the work. And the most curious part of it all was the insistence that it was the money and not the work that counted. It did not seem to strike any one as illogical that money should be put ahead of work—even though everyone had to admit that the profit had to come from the work. The desire seemed to be to find a short cut to money and to pass over the obvious short cut—which is through the work."

—Henry Ford, My Life and Work Chapter II, 1922

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... that topics on Recess Therapy have included the economy, climate change, and peeing your pants?
... that Selling Mother's Milk is a book which discusses the 18th-century practice of some parents in France giving their children to wet nurses for a year or more?
... that the developer of Citizen Sleeper was inspired by the feeling of people coming together and their own experiences as a non-binary person struggling to make ends meet through the gig economy?
... that the creator of Comic Sans also designed a levitating man in a business suit?
... that the first batch of Action Computer Enterprise's Discovery 1600, one of the first multi-user microcomputers, was delivered to a tobacco-growing business in Thailand?
... that Celine-Marie Pascale's work focuses on how race and class impact the way "business practices and government policies create, normalize and entrench economic struggles" to benefit the wealthy?

On this day in business history

June 5:

1932 - Dave Gold, an American businessman, founder of the 99 Cents Only Stores, was born on this day.

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General images

The following are images from various business-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Emil Jellinek-Mercedes (1853–1918), here at the steering wheel of his Phoenix Double-Phaeton (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 21/8 share of the Stora Kopparberg mine, dated June 16, 1288 (from Corporation)
Image 3"Jack and the Giant Joint-Stock", a cartoon in Town Talk (1858) satirizing the 'monster' joint-stock economy that came into being after the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 (from Corporation)
Image 4Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City (from Business)
Image 5Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network event in New York City (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 6Offices in the Los Angeles Downtown Financial District (from Business)
Image 7In 2012, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer greets participants in an African Women's Entrepreneurship Program at the State Department in Washington, D.C. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 8McDonald's Corporation is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world. (from Corporation)
Image 9Plaque in London commemorating Jewish entrepreneur Sir Jack Cohen who in 1919 founded Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 10Chart of the South Sea Company's stock prices. The rapid inflation of the stock value in the 1710s led to the Bubble Act 1720, which restricted the establishment of companies without a royal charter. (from Corporation)
Image 11Lindley LJ was the leading expert on partnerships and company law in the Salomon v. Salomon & Co. case. The landmark case confirmed the distinct corporate identity of the company. (from Corporation)
Image 12Student organizers from the Green Club at Newcomb College Institute formed a social entrepreneurship organization in 2010. (from Entrepreneurship)
Image 13Time required to start a business in 2017 (from Business)

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