Something I've been thinking about lately: I wonder what drug organizations' profit margins are. For a retail company with several billion dollars of annual income, I believe somewhere around the 5 percent of revenues mark is pretty solid. Because they don't pay taxes, I imagine that drug runners well exceed that percentage, but they do have to fork over cash for drug production, high salaries, bribes, boats, tunnel maintenance, et cetera. All of that adds up. So how much of that $18 to 39 billion stays in the hands of the gang leaders?
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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2 comments:
Interesting post. I suspect profit margins are very high. No wonder many people want to be in this business!
I have seen and heard similar estimates for the value of drug cartel incomes.
These figures are interesting in relation to the recent Madoff fraud which I have seen estimated at 50 billion dollars. Extraordinary that one man (and maybe others!) can perpetuate a fraud that is more than the incomes of Mexican and Columbian drug gangs
And how much money is spent on the so called 'war on drugs', (which I'm glad to see from a previous post here is changing its name), compared to a 'war' on financial and or corporate fraud?
About the estimates, I guess I was referring to the 39 billion being on the high side. I think most of the estimates I see are high teens to mid twenties. But it would be higher taking both Colombia and Mexico into account.
As far as how much is spent on the drug war, this says 35 billion:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/396/analytic.shtml
Number 4 on this list is similar:
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/38
Lots of interesting stuff on that list, actually.
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