In the movie "Back to School" from 1986 by Alan Metter, there is a scene where an economics professor Dr. Barbay, wants to start for educational purposes a fictional company that produces "widgets: It's a fictional product."

The companies themselves believe they are a special case because their purpose is, or at least should be, to support the health and wellbeing of society, and this is completely different from producing widgets.

After all, it's much easier to calculate productivity for companies that produce widgets than it is for companies that produce less tangible goods like insurance policies.

The article also covers a reaction by Barnett Berry, president of the Center for Teaching Quality, who stated "the study seems to suggest that districts pay "teachers working with children and adolescents" in the same way "Chinese factory workers" were paid for "producing widgets".

Near the beginning of my course on labor law, I engage my students in the following dialogue: Picture an employee who works for a company that produces widgets.

Imagine a company that produces widgets (companies in these examples always produce widgets), normally selling 100 each month.

ShareThis produces widgets for accessing social networking services from a single pop-up menu.

And unless the profit on operations - be they producing cars, widgets, or local newspapers - exceeds the return they can get by investing their capital in FOREX markets, derivatives or whatever exotic financial instruments the banksters can dream up, their shareholders aren't going to be satisfied.

Likewise, it cannot be spent for new equipment to produce widgets more efficiently.