NO.


You are making a very obvious rooky mistake there.

Liquidity being positive and good does not mean more liquidity is always better than less liquidity and that is exactly the assumption in your argument.

I get if you simply read your wiki link uncritically one might think that as it sites liquidity as 'efficiency' and 'cash' as the ultimate liquidity, which are both true but that does not mean more cash > less cash because if it did then no company with cash would ever do an acquisition with cash thereby taking a liquid asset (cash) and turning it into a less liquid asset and long term investment, which is the new company.

Your assumption flies in the face of Warren Buffets entire ethos which was to buy companies that generated good cash flows and that were not converting that cash into other assets, so he could then utilize that cash to buy other companies.

A certain amount, per industry of liquidity is seen as good. Enough for Cash flow issue and some strategic activities. Too much just indicates to the market that the company has no better use for the cash in the market they are addressing.


For instance if your position re Cash and Liquidity is accurate and i had a Million dollars to start a new company, I would incorporate the company and just park the Million dollars in it. NEVER spend a penny on building out any infrastructure (less liquid), never hire any employees (less liquid), never do any M&A (less liquid). Just keep it in cash, because as you think that is the ultimate liquid investment and thus the best.

And yet the entire business sector is based on the opposite premise. The best use of cash is not to keep it parked as cash and instead to put it in to assets that generate return greater than the sunk cash. Again back to the originating premise you are desperately trying to avoid addressing.

The ENTIRE premise for any For Profit business existing is that they can take in cash on one end and thru some good or service generate more cash out the back end (ROI).

If you agree with that principle (and oddly you will not [and I know why, so its not so odd actually]) then you can see how your argument falls apart as you keep arguing for measures that incentivize the skewing and keeping of cash over the reinvestment into the 'Original Purpose' of the corporation.




I understand perfectly what you are saying.

You call it 'a proposal to make it more difficult or expensive for an investor to convert their shares into cash'.


I call it a reversal of LOBBYING that lead to them making it more EASY to convert their shares into cash in a way that has lead to the disincentive of re-investing in growth and R&D.

You seem unwilling to acknowledge something I do recognize and acknowledge and as such we keep coming back to you acting like this is CURRENTLY some perfect Free Market that is in equilibrium and only I am looking to slant it. And any slant I would introduce is thus reducing the current efficiency.

I posit that it has already been slanted via Corporate and Monied Interest lobbying in a way that harms efficiency. The graphs I post above show the downward right slants in all areas that INCENTIVIZE the pay out, rather than the reinvestment of capital.

Those charts are undeniable and yet you seem to not even consider them and instead seem to always thing that whatever point we are at currently is the Efficiency Point and anything done to move it back to the prior levels is an inefficiency.

That is pretty much the entirety of your logic.

I want you to look at the slopes of the charts i posted and understand by your logic that if you go back a few years, that at any point you assume the new normal plot point is the efficiency point and you say to any one who argues the prior points (when the taxes were higher) was actually the correct point, you suggest they are the ones trying to skew the market and take away efficiency

You just follow the lines down and to the right and ALWAYS assume the new LOWER point is the most optimal.

And that is exactly how you are arguing so don't say you are not. IN each instance you keep starting from an assumption it is efficient now and what I am wanting is to change it to a more inefficient model.

You don't see how your position would have you say in 1970 it was efficient then if I argued to move the dividend rate back to the 1960 rate. Then as it fell in 1980 again 'efficient' when I argue 'no, move it back to the 1960 or at least 1970 rate'.

Down the slope you go resetting as you do that to the lowered rate is always the default efficient one and if I make any argument that it was more efficient prior you go into specious arguments quoting 'liquidity' as if that is the highest principle and it is not. Not even close.

If it was no company would have any business but sitting on parked cash.

the US never actually believed in such a strategy. they were just scared of Communism. New Deal wasnt to help the people. It was a compromise so that the masses of poor didnt get so fed up that they went socialist.

And the other massive increases, the GI Bill and all of the post-WW2 help, along with the massively increased wages during the War were again, not for the the benefit of the people. Rather they didnt want a bunch of trained soldiers coming back and deciding that hey, we just damn near died for a stupid war that had no benefit to us maybe our Russian Allies had the right idea.

the goal has always been to keep the most people at the lowest level of subsistence so that those at the top can keep the most resources and power.

your mistake is thinking that the people in charge want to change those numbers from your images. no, that is their goal.

There is no BS there.

For whatever reason you are doing everything to not acknowledge the underlying premise of creating corporations and why societies desire them.

You are trying to obscure the discussion with all sorts of tangential nonsense about 'liberty' and 'freedom' while avoiding the simple answer.

You act like the answer has to be true in 100% of instances or it has no value even if true 99.9999% of time.


It simply is true, whether you will acknowledge it or not (99.9999% of the time or MORE), that the reason any Investor of Founder puts money in to a NEW corporation is the belief that thru the sale of a Good or Service they can grow that company such that it will generate a bigger return (ROI).

It is a belief that Dollars in the cash form (full liquidity) in their bank accounts have less utility and generate less ROI then they would tied and cycled thru this Asset, this Company, and providing a more LONG term return.

You look for any 1 in a million exception to this to say you then don't have to deal with this Founding premise. Why? Because if you agree it gives us a common starting point that says putting Cash in is viewed as superior to taking cash out otherwise you would see Investors put in Cash at start up and then demand an immediate dividend. THEY DO NOT.

it then puts the burden on you to argue how and why, if that is true at start up it then changes and skews, as you suggest to supporting an ever increasing scale of dividends etc.

You don't want to have to defend your position or make your case. You instead want to pretend (and it is an unsupported pretense) that the markets are currently optimized and efficient and thus any call to increase Dividend taxes is the default inefficiency. You keep stating it as if a Truism when it is no such thing.

Again i struggle to understanding what you are asking? Sorry not trying to being difficult but I find you hard to follow.

The post you replied to I said "...My view is conceptual..." and it seems to me you are asking for a real world examples of a hypothetical position.

For instance we are currently talking about HYPOTHETICAL changes that would benefit the market. I want you to look at this graph and lets focus on the Dividend Tax rate declining as just one example.



Look at todays Dividend Tax rate and look at the 1960/70' tax rate.

Corporations as a segment, did great in the 1960/70's and ROI was fantastic despite the higher Dividends rate. And R&D and other 'Reinvestment' expenditures were MUCH higher.

My position is things were much better aligned back then for long term value creation.

My position is that as you keep lowering that dividends tax rate towards zero you skew the incentive structure towards cash dispersal (pay outs) and away from long term reinvestment.

You seem to be asking me to give an example TODAY that proves that as if I can show a company paying those higher rates and contrast it with one that is not to prove my thesis.

I cannot as once the market is distorted it is distorted for all in real time.

I don't agree with your characterizations.

I do agree it was not a function of the 'US wanting to raise all ships' just as that is not the case in China right now.

What it is, is a realization that the best way to raise THEIR ship (the wealthy) is to create an environment where all ships rise.

China understands the ONLY way to much greater National Wealth and a GDP that will soon crush the US and be the world leader is to also build up the middle class and move as many people out of poverty as possible as quick as possible. They are mirroring what the US did post WW1 and 2 that lead to the US becoming the sole super power.

It is a case of aligned interests not good will, so I will give you that.


The opposite tact those in power in China could have taken would be the Russia Model, Putin pivoted Russia too where a handful of Oligarchs try and comb out the majority of the wealth in every industry to their personal benefit stagnating GDP, while leaving ever less for the MC.



The Russian Oligarchs have made out like bandits but it is a short term strategy as there are diminishing ways to make the NEXT returns in Russia (thus why they want to go back to conquering Ukraine and other nations) . They got short term stinking rich but cut future prospects.

China's elite still get short term rich, just not to the same percent Russian Oligarchs do, but China is creating the environment to get long term much richer. Not just the Chinese oligarchs, but the MC and Nation as a whole.

Yes, I don't think this argument succeeds. A couple points.

1) First, your chart does not show a fall in the effective capital gains tax rate over time. It was steady during the 50s until 1986, then it was at a higher level until the late nineties where it went back to roughly the rate it was before '86. Second, there is a reason that chart begins in 1954 - before that there was no tax on dividends. This is also why your chart shows the top marginal rate on dividends was at 90% in 1961 - dividends were taxed as income then. But of course, few people were actually paying that rate.

So I don't buy the historical argument you are making.

2) You claim that Wall St lobby the government to lower the capital gains tax. Fine, I agree. But this doesn't show an incentive for them to withdraw money from the market. In fact, imo, the opposite is true. As the capital gains tax decreases, the total amount of money invested (i.e. the total amount of capital available to businesses) will go up.

Essentially, the capital gains tax decreases the average return on investment. As return on investment goes down, the law of supply and demand says the rate of investment also goes down (and thus consumption goes up).

Money is fungible. What matters is not whether a company holds on to its own specific profits, but the price and availability of capital in the market as a whole. If you increase taxes on capital gains, then the price of capital will go up, which means at the margins companies will actually invest less.

3) I still don't see an argument about the specific incentive you are claiming here. I assume that Wall St is interested in making money. You seem to be claiming that companies are not investing enough in long-term growth such that if they did so, these companies would be more profitable than they are now. But if that were so, why wouldn't institutional investors on Wall St want them to do so? They want to make money, and long-term profitability is reflected in a company's share price.

I don't know why we would just ignore the ACTUAL Dividends rate chart other than it is not helpful to your arguments.

The Effective rate is much more challenging thing to use as it is the one that gets gamed and thus even does not reflect what the person should be paying.

So no, I don't want to let you off addressing it by just trying to change the chart used.

Will you acknowledge that this chart



and the steady decline on the taxation of Dividends (if accepted) could have a coercive impact, that goes beyond any free market considerations, in skewing preference from 'reinvestment' to instead paying out a 'dividend'?

If you are going to say no, would still say no if the rate went to 0%?

Meaning companies could dividend out any accumulated cash with the Dividend recipient getting it tax free and would you still argue it has zero coercive impact on the Shareholder base and Board that could be outside other 'Free Market conditions' that might, if not for that incentive (0% tax) see them instead reinvest the capital for growth?

This is frankly rediculous. They have never operated this way. And in fact there are countless exames where they pay more themselves to keep people down and at subsistence. Health care is a major one.

You are conflating things Victor.

I have said there are many instances of the type of abuse you point to. The entire Russian Oligarch model is that and the US is now moving in that direction.

I AGREE IT IS DONE. So you point at examples does not make any case.

What I am saying however is that such abuse (the Oligarch model and the Health care one) actually only enrich the Oligarch (powerful) at the expense of others, which we both agree with.

Correspondingly getting away from the Oligarch model (giving healthcare) will lift ALL SHIPS. That is exactly the type of INVESTMENT in the MC I am saying lifts all ships when done.

So I maintain this as accurate historically "...the best way to raise THEIR ship (the wealthy) is to create an environment where all ships rise...."

China V Russia approach is the best example of that.

China recognizes that massive GDP growth is what will make them the top World power soon. They will be able to take a fraction of that GDP and dedicate it to strategic initiatives (Military, AI, etc) in ways that the US and other nations will not even be able to get close to.

That ONLY happens if they move masses of people out of poverty and into the MC. And the more they do that, the more they move out, the more China wins.

So it is not being done altruistically and 'for the good of the people' but rather because elevating them (the impoverished), elevates everything else.

I know that goes against some leftist thought that every dollar made by a rich person has to be taken from the pockets of the poor and vice versa and thus interests can never be aligned but that is just leftist propaganda nonsense.

It can be run that way (Russian Oligarch model) but it is not an optimal way to create the MOST wealth.

In fact, I am not assuming that liquidity is the only thing investors care about. That is not an implication of anything I've said. Obviously investors care about many features of an investment, including risk, rate of return, and so on. My point is that lower liquidity is also a desideratum of investment. That is, people are willing to accept a lower rate of return for a more liquid investment. Alternatively, if you are looking for capital that is not liquid, you generally have to provide a higher rate of return.

For instance, look at the average APY on CDs. Notice that the longer the term (i.e. the more illiquid), the better the APY.

Thus, my argument here is that all else being equal, making capital markets more illiquid will make them less desirable, which means that the total amount of capital invested in them will decrease, which means that the cost of capital will increase, leading to lower overall business investment.

As I point out, we disagree about whether all else is equal here. You assume that businesses are currently underinvesting in R&D and expansion and I don't.

As is typical of our past conversations, you are convinced you understand what I'm saying when you clearly do not. This is not my argument. There are lots of changes you can make to the tax code that would increase the amount of capital available, or remove distortions. I'm arguing that yours in particular does not, but rather decreases the availability of capital and makes capital allocation more sticky, thus decreasing the overall return on capital.

I also still don't get your lobbying argument. Yes, of course big investors want to make it easy to convert shares into cash (this is in fact another way of saying that companies prefer more liquid to less liquid investments). I just don't see why this is relevant to how much companies are directing towards growth. It still seems to me like what is relevant there is the price and availability of capital in the market as a whole. It doesn't really matter to future growth if a company gives dividends if it can still borrow or raise enough capital at a cheap enough price to finance expansion or R&D.

I assume that total investment goes down as capital gains tax goes up. Since capital gains tax is not currently at zero, I don't assume we are currently in what you are calling a "free market." However, this is not relevant to my argument. This is not a binary, where markets are either free or not free. Instead, we can look at the direction a policy proposal moves from the status quo. Your proposal would make shares more illiquid than they currently are.

You assert without any evidence that 99.99999% of companies are accurately described by your model. I point out that I personally am familiar with many companies that do not, or at least not clearly so. I just think you are ignoring the many small businesses that are not reliant on significant initial capital investment. You think these are exceptions to a general rule, I suspect they are the majority of US businesses. For instance, there are 26 million small businesses in the US with no employees. I'd guess that very few of these companies have significant starting capital requirements.

But honestly, I still don't even know what the point is here. Why does this matter? We aren't talking about VC investing here, but mostly about mature companies.

I did not ignore this chart from seekingalpha.com. That is not a chart of the actual dividend rate. Instead, it is a chart of the top marginal tax rate on dividends. That chart starts in 1961, when dividends were taxed as regular income. The top marginal income tax rate in 1961 was 90%, but very few people paid it. Thus, if you want to know how much tax people actually paid on dividends, you should look at the effective tax rate instead.

And you are ignoring that if this chart started in 1950 it would show a starting top rate on dividends of 0%.

As for free markets and coercion, I have made no claims here about that. Please stop putting words in my mouth.

This is a long exchange soo I'm undoubtablly missing details, but a plan to shift taxation from profits to a specific way to spend those profits is extremely distortive. Growth is great, but not every company can or should be reinvesting into potentially very marginal growth opportunities as a tax avoidance strategy.

Consider two companies A and B. Company A is an established company that doesn't have any particularly obvious growth opportunities but reliably makes a large profit. Company B is a newer company in a different field with some great growth opportunities. Shouldn't we want our markets to work that the profits from Company A are returned to investors so they can invest in Company B? If the tax structure distorts so that Company A is incentivized to engage in its limited growth opportunities instead of returning the capital to investors, that isn't a "pro growth" taxation plan, that is a plan that incentivizes one type of growth at the cost of another.

Agree with everything you say but that is not what is being discussed.

The issue is that when gov't supports this type of policy shift over time...



Can it distort the incentive structure to one where it is more preferential to dividend cash out instead of re-investing.

So I am not arguing for any one adjustment in particular and just saying we have a series of historical distortions that have tended towards pulling money out of companies (dividend, stock buy back, cash hording, etc) instead of re-investment and moving back to more balances positions would allow true market forces to better determine the proper and more efficient deployment of capital.


(OP I will address your posts in a while. I am sure you are sitting on eggshells just waiting.)

probably you think that because you do not estimate it with a compounding effect over time....which becomes massive if you do.

ex: it only 5% trade deficit for the US, but put your 5% at around 1 trillion value difference and multiply by many years and numbers go up pretty quickly.

it is actually pretty easy to figure out, just look how the profits share of the economy been distributed since the 1950 and you will see the vast majority of wealth disparity beginning in around 1980 and from there it went downhill.

Here is an example of how the bottom 50% do vs the top 1%. (sadly cant go further than 1990 here.)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?i...07,WFRBLT01026,

the bottom 50% only as his labor to attain an income.
Clearly the financials economy takes all the profits from the real economy.
that is near a 8x return in 30 years for the top 1 % while the bottom didnt even had 1x increases...
fwiw, it should be pretty much harder to double up millions in value compare to a 35k (?) salary ...

when u look at how the distribution of total assets been distributed to the top 1% vs the 50% in the last 30 years have beeing going down near to 0 for the bottom 50%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?i...08,WFRBSB50189,

No wonder multiple bail out by the government and the FED is being done to sustain those bubbles...who pays for political election and lobbying ?
We can see clearly since the fed started to mingle by bailing out the markets in 1998 ( meaning debts to all americans) , all the profits and return been transfer at the top and nothing for the bottom 50% while the 50% will pick up the tab with inflation and sacrifices from governments benefits (Medicare/Medicaid, social security,etc)



But hey if you think that do not affects everyone , its fine..
But its clear to me the distribution of income in the US is vastly different than it was pre reagan era and it hurts the majority of americans.
But having half the country being ****** about trump....not surprising they are still sleeping at the helm on the economy side.

I'm confused. Ukemaster is making the same argument I'm making (albeit more clearly and succinctly). How is this not what is being discussed?

I thought you were arguing for this? Did I misread?
My claim is the thing I am quoting here is extremely distortive and likely to result in inefficient allocation as companies with few growth opportunities are incentivized to invest in them for tax avoidance as opposed to returning that capital to investors who can invest them in companies with more growth opportunities.

And as much as I might agree with say increasing the capital gains rate, I don't think this "balances" in an appropriate way. There are two separate question. One is to try and determine how much government revenue should come from the corporate sector. But it is an entirely different thing to hold the taxation amount constant and instead manipulate the tax code to incentivize one type of investing (growth within a single company) and another (returning the capital to investors to grow outside the company).

sure it may be more enriching and more efficient and create the most wealth. doesnt matter if thats true. the people in charge will never go that way. that is my point.

You jumped to a conclusion that does not follow your premise.

The lower rate of return is because the Investment earns less and is not just some selling feature.

My mother (in her 80's) does not have the time to invest long term. It is not that she prefers the lower coupon with the shorter time frame. All things being equal she would prefer the long time horizon with the bigger payout.

Most short term decisions are driven that way (need or requirement) and not just out of preference as you seem to suggest.

Indeed I feel that goes both ways and said as much and that i believe that is inevitable if we do not engage this conversation from some mutual starting point of understanding, something you refuse to address. Something I believe you deliberately refuse to address so we can talk past one another.

if we can agree to a mutual starting point and build forward with that it makes it much easier for us to stay on the same tracks. If instead we start from a thousand foot view and do not realize we would have just agreed to disagree on any agreement of a starting premise we could avoid wasting time. But alas...



Great, and I disagree.

I'm arguing the prior changes already distorted the playing field and increased the amount of Capital generally held for non growth purposes and thus decreased the overall ROI.

Just like a gov't thru a simply policy change or tax treatment can spur Investment in Renewable Energy that might not have been profitable prior so too can a gov't go in to an efficient market, improve the Return in areas of Dividend and Stock Buy Backs greatly such that it sucks dollars away TODAY from being reinvested that otherwise would have been reinvested the day before that policy change.

...

Greater liquidity is not by default preferable to less which is the constant theme you keep running back to as if you keep saying "your choice would make it less liquid' is the killer blow to my argument.

if that was true the ultimate investments would always be cash shell holding Companies and they would never do a transaction. Just stay in cash.

Why do a transaction with a SPAC? Just raise the initial cash. Get others to invest cash on top. And voila by never doing a transaction and instead have perfect liquidity.

But they all defy your logic. They ALL go out looking for transaction which by its very nature will take the cash and make it less liquid.

Hmmmmm what do they all know that I know and you do not?

What would they say when you kept saying to their Boards "...but... but... you are making it less liquid' as if you had some gotcha?

I know what they would say. It would be 'leave' as your reductionist view of business is not a good one.

I separated this out as I want to let someone else answer since you keep suggesting my opinion is wrong as opposed to just saying we disagree on this.

A pet peeve of mine but I have avoided really escalating rhetoric in kind as a result.



So you may disagree with this Harvard Business Review piece and my position as well and that is fine. But don't act like it is not a well founded belief or just based on some mistaken assumptions or applications. It is not.

Corporations more than ever, thanks to their lobbying and the areas gov't have given them higher returns on by adjusting rates of taxation can turn away from the much longer cycle of investing in growth and instead focus on Financial Engineering methods to drive Short Term returns that see the Executives get big bonuses while diminishing the long term value of the company.

With a simply change in policy and returning the Dividend tax rates to prior years level and instead giving more R&D tax breaks it could easily skew the other way. I know you will reply 'but doing the latter skews them towards R&D and that might not be the best use of Funds" while you ignore that all the changes over the years to make Financial engineering more profitable have done the same.

Lets be abundantly clear here as I asked you this...

You said you do not agree with that premise.

Give me one real world example of any company you can describe that does not exist today, would be Founded with new money and would not fit in to my description?

Even an incorporated Shell company with no active business has taken sunk money (the money paid to incorporate it) with the hope of eventually turning that shell into something more that provides a return if it fits under the umbrella of a For Profit Corp.

You are simply wrong on this point and in my now 30 years of experience working specifically with Startup's and Early stage companies I have never seen the Pink Elephant you say not only exists but is the majority of companies.

But I will await your example.

The chart starting in 1950 with a 0% dividend helps my argument and not yours.

My position is that these factors are all fluid and influenced by gov't policy and you CANNOT assume that todays point is the IDEAL as you do.

When I suggest increasing the tax on dividends or Stock Buy Backs you reply with 'well that would reduce liquidity thus 'bad'' as if that is a truism. It is not.

You are making that statement without considering the prior years changes. It is entirely possible that the last decades of reduction in those taxes have harmed the market and skewed it too much towards liquidity and pay outs and my proposal is correcting that.

So just saying, each and every time i raise it 'that would reduce liquidity' and then pointing to things that show 'liquidity as a concept is good', is not a good argument.

Liquidity as a concept can be good but it can be overly skewed or utilized. Thus most companies trying to reduce their companies to cash (100% liquidity) is not the path MOST take as it is not optimal for most.

its a balancing act. You think it is in balance, it seems at every change lowering it, where as I think it has been distorted in favour of short term Financial Engineering gains.

To that last point, if you look at the periods of reduction in Dividends tax rate each as a point in time, do you OP think each and every change was optimal and right where it should be and each time it gets lowered that is again right where it should be?

Would you ever say or have occasion to assess it and say 'maybe the old higher rate was the better rate'? As your argumentation suggests you do not step back and take more broad views.

By that I mean if we had this discussion in 1970 and the Dividend rate was X% and then again in 1980 and it 1/2X%, it seems at both points in time if I argued for any change to the prior higher rate, you would act like the mere fact of changing it was what was wrong and distorting ("you are making it less liquid") as if you have no ability to consider maybe the change down ("making it more liquid") was wrong to begin with??

Out of curiosity what are your views on the Trump tax cuts and reversing them? Good or bad generally as the uber rich will certainly have some liquidity loss if you move them back to where they were prior?

No that is not what we are arguing. I just threw that out as my utopia position.

I know it would be immensely distortive and require fundamental remaking's of the very bones of society.

But if i could create my own system from the ground up that would the foundation and I would argue it would be much better than what we have now.

No you don't:

also this:

You asked whether I thought "that all newly founded for profit companies are basically Widget Machines that by their design are created that all newly founded for profit companies are basically Widget Machines that by their design are created to take in Investor Capital (Founder or Investors) at an initial loss (sunk capital) to run it thru the Widget (Good or Service) to generate a return greater than the sunk Capital ..." to then grow the company so this process can be repeated over and over?"

I answered no, and then gave several examples of companies that are not designed to take in investor capital, but instead rely on the labor of the founder. This is a very common business model in the US. I also gave an example of a first investment in a company that is already profitable and that has no expectations of not being profitable in the future.

These run directly counter to your description as they are private companies that are not created to take in capital, but you keep complaining that I'm just picking out 1 out of a million exceptions, when in fact these are common business and investment models.

They are. Not in a perfect sense but China could easily go the Russia way.

Put wealthy Oligarchs between every sector and comb most of the generated wealth into personal bank accounts thus stifling growth.

They are CHOOSING not to do that. They are allowing most of the wealth to instead be captured by the entire country in the form of REAL GDP gains, real growing MC and that is because they recognize playing the long game will be much better and create much more wealth overall. Maybe not for them personally, as maybe they die before they can reap it, but generational wealth.

China is on a path to build the worlds leading 1st world power and no other country stands a chance to be even close (India maybe if they change a lot) because if they can move most of their impoverished into the MC the GDP that will generate will crush the Financial capabilities of the G7 combined many times over.

If you believe Money is power, then CHina is on a path to crush all the rest.