revenues and cost of earnings

In an interview potential employers generally mentions a gross remuneration packet for its potential employees.

These statements usually are gross amounts.
That is a sum total including taxes, insurance, social security, etc.
The employee would never see a good 30%-45% of that income, but he will be fed that amount. In case of doctors I hear its worse here in the US, a good 60% of the gross earnings would be just liability insurance coverage, then taxes but they will also be fed a gross amount - a large portion of which does not constitute to an expendable income.

If you ask the owner of a business enterprise how much he earns he would not be quoting the revenue of his company. He would rather give you a net figure. A figure that is net of costs and expenses, he would rather look at the the figure that he/she has in his pocked to expend than what his company revenues are.

When the owner tries to sell his business products, the sale price is usually a net figure, a cost of goods with profits but not including taxes, insurance and transportation.

Why would an owner a of business look at his own earnings in net terms, his business products in net terms in contrast to his employees in gross terms?

Gross earnings of an employee are a cost to the owner or an employer.
The entire income statement of an employee is an expense statement for the employer, it matters little to an employer that an employee does not see 30%-40% of that money as the owner of a business has to continue to shell out that additional 30%-40% as a part of the expense for his employees.

Net prices of a business product are a cost to the owner, the rest of the cost that is taxes, insurance and transportation are a cost that the owner passes on to the customer. The owner does not bear that cost, we as customers do.

What in effect an owner communicates is, the cost of his earnings on a per employee basis (remuneration of an employee) or an a per product basis(cost of a product).

For an owner the presence of assets such as office, goods, vehicles, etc in a business are cost of earnings. While for the lay man they are assets. They are costs that he bears at the reduction of earnings.

Its about managing how much to give away of earnings such that the give away creates value greater than earnings in hand. The more the owner expends the lower earnings he has. Which in effect means the cost of earnings are higher than what one is actually earning. Also know as profligate expense!
Fancy set ups are a cost, and communicate a higher costs which is being passed onto the customer where ever possible.
But if the owner manages the expenses right, these expenses can create value for the business thereby increasing his earnings.
Which is the second part of earnings - cash flow - how to manage cash flows.

So the first aspect is looking at cost of earnings and the second part is managing cash flows. The first is perspective the second is empirical experience.

default rules

How come in the world of choices we usually end up with the default choice or the one we don't want to make?

frankly I don't know; but I hear a lot about make your destiny and make your choice, the truth could be that seldom if ever do we have it our way for the most part we usually are resigned to the default choice: it usually is last available choice or we are coerced into that last choice.

Funny why we call it choice if it is the last choice, funnier still that we call it choice if we are coerced into it.

perhaps we still called it 'a choice', as the response to that last default choice can be: a 'yes' or a 'no'.
Which is technically still a 'choice'!

And I guess we already know, that 'yes or no' can make a world of a difference in our lives...

confident to a fault

A research surveyed 7,000 CFOs over a six-year span, asking them to predict a range of 1-year and 10-year returns of the S&P 500 index and divulge how certain they felt about their predictions. Although most of the CFOs felt very sure of themselves when selecting, they were correct just 38% percent of the time.

Wanting to be right or thinking to be right or for that matter hoping to be right does not translate to 'being right'.

Despite the dangers of overconfidence, many people contend that it's better to have too much confidence than too little. Well simply because confidence displays a positive attitude, though the positive attitude has no play or driver on reality. Reality is distinct from ones attitude, it is like hoping the wind will blow the way one thinks, this is seldom if never the case.

John Maynard Keynes made a profound observation on confidence when he wrote, "Individual initiative will only be adequate when reasonable calculation is supplemented and supported by animal spirits."

What Keynes meant by animal spirits is that the individuals who do create economic prosperity have to embrace a "naive optimism" and must put aside the thought of ultimate loss, just as healthy men put aside the thought of death.
Well I reckon he is stating you need to be a calculative risk taker, but then all confident or over confident folks think of themselves as calculated risk takers.
The under-confident ones don't take risks even if they can calculate, so that leaves then out!

I guess we are back to square one we still can't distinguish between a confident and over confident dolt. Another point is with a 38% chance at being correct, our thinking of being right is lower than the probability of being right.
Probability alone should have rendered a 50% success rate, but in this case confidence alone lowers success rate by 12%, which is pretty significant.

I guess we are better off just taking chances then...

choices

Napoleon famously remarked, "There are only two alternatives in this world: to command or to obey."

I guess he left the 3rd choice out, probably on purpose.
"To not Obey".

A single option will gives us 2 choices.
As in "to do or not to do".
Of Shakespeare infamous rhetoric "to be or not to be".

2 options will render us 3 choices, as in the case enumerated above about Napoleon.

greater options probably does give us greater choices but also greater confusion.

The key is that there is not such thing as a default option.

What can I say, life isn't confusing enough, that we have to recognize the subtlety of choice.