OBSERVATIONS ON COST.
Abstract The cleavage between a government and business idea of a cost is far deeper and greater than the mere exclusion or admission of particular items of cost. The idea that there can be an expenditure which is not a cost is, to a manufacturing executive, disturbing, if not revolutionary. Its implications are basic and far reaching. They imply supervision and control over the producer by the customer or consumer carried to the furthest limit. They make the producer the mere agent of the customer or consumer because the producer is responsible not alone for the quality and price of his product but by using the nature rather than the amount of the costs which are chargeable to it as the criterion of allow-ability, the customer is really made the judge of the operation of the plant as well as of the product. Total cost, rather than the propriety of individual items of costs, is the commercial criterion and a grossly excessive, but legitimate cost was held to be more discreditable than a lower cost which included some items of a possibly doubtful nature or which were not susceptible to exact verification.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-7038762
- Volume
- 18 (1)
- Pages
- 9-16
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- openalex crossref