The Bottom Line
Two issues ago, Art Anderson commented that the bottom line puts people at the bottom. His lead opens the door for further comment on this metaphor. I avoid the term “the bottom line” like a plague. In fact, I think it represents a plague, a plague which is on us now with more fury than at any other time in human life, as far as I know. The metaphor is on the lips of many and is a powerful presence in interpreting our lives.
I do not avoid the term because it has no meaning. I have studied many bottom lines because it has been necessary. An actual bottom line tells you where you are financially. Do you show a profit or a loss? Do you have more money coming in than going out? Are you overdrawn or not? The bottom line provides the needed answer to these questions. But even there, the bottom line can be drawn or written in many ways.
When I was in business, our company had two bottom lines, and we tried our best to influence both. Major discussions took place with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell, our accounting firm, as to how a particular transaction should be treated. It depended on whether we were preparing a statement — a bottom line — for the IRS or for National Mortgage Company in Cleveland from whom we were trying to borrow $12 million. When it came to the IRS, we wanted a bottom line that said we were not making money, whereas, for National Mortgage, we wanted a bottom line that showed we were making money hand over fist. One time, our effort to show that we were making a lot of money resulted in our having to cough up somewhere between $700,000 and $800,000 of real cash to pay taxes on a “profit” that we had not seen.
Even financially, bottom lines are not always as bedrock as they are represented. As a metaphor applied to other matters, bottom line is further from bedrock.
The plague to which I refer is the frequent, broad, and ill-advised use of the metaphor “the bottom line,” often in a way that is mean and lean and that represents a very narrow assessment of the situation, matter, or data.
“The bottom line is this, there just isn’t enough money to go around and these people on the dole are drain-ing us dry.” Such a statement isn not even close to the bottom line. It expresses a far too narrow take on either the resources available or the liabilities of the Situation, and, as a perspective, it lacks a sense of public wealth and public vision. I have noticed that I sometimes hear the same people using different metaphors when they speak of the national debt. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a bunch of numbers.”
People even use the term bottom line when speaking about their relationship to someone. Here, bottom line is obviously a metaphor and its usage limited (unless all of reality is being merged into economic life and, thus, bottom line is no longer a metaphor).
A better term? First, I try not to think that way. I try to think toward the whole picture, not merely the bottom line. Second, if that doesn’t work, I try, “The way it all shakes out in the end .. .” or “The last word then is this... .” In any event, if one uses the metaphor, then the burden is on the user truly to get to the bottom of things. A more precise term or goal is to gain understanding.