I hate you.

not a surprise.

let's get back to topic, shall we?

Fwiw , what it means to and throw a big wrench in John theory is ,
Corporations and the top 1% will invest primary in the stock market ( buyback shares for example ) because it has become more profitable than to invest in the real economy .
Those people are not dumb enough to invest in a lesser investments returns with higher risk (recession risk ,etc) !
They are not socialist lol …
Even more so when they know they will get bail out of the stock market crash , it’s been like that for 20 years ….(FED put) .

Why ?
Yeah they got Too much cash at hands and regular people have not enough to increase their spending -> ending increasing profits for corporations from the real economy

The concept of too much money in the hands of a few :
do not means waste capital ,
Do not destroy the economy ( or at the very least , making it subpar of what it could be ) ,
Thinking paper money is as good as the real economy ,
Is absolutely ludicrous …

You got huge wealth gap
Gigantic bubbles ready to explodes
Interest rates at the bottom creating all sorts of economic problems .
Abysmal debts in the governments and private sectors ( 20% zombies companies )
Etc …

But hey the economy runs bad because tax today are still too high ?
Lol …..

It’s very simple , it’s a major shift of profits of the real economy from the workers towards corporations and the top 1% ( the owners of those corps ) in the stock market with around the next top 15% smart enough and rich enough ti get the 85% pie of the stock markets for the past 40 years and incredibly more faster in the last 15-20 years .

But hey , UBI is bad because I will bankrupt the country ……shrug .

I agree that buybacks et al are the problem. But my theory is not so much that it's become more profitable to invest in financial assets as much our tax codes and monetary policies incentives them to do so. As OrP alluded to this issue didn't show up nearly to this extent in the early Reagan year; mostly because business incentives were tied to things like accelerated deprecation for investment in capital goods and whatnot. So as businesses replaced typewriters with word processors, along with a whole host of latent productivity tools, they also created better paying jobs in the tech and manufacturing sectors to produce those capital goods, which ended up getting spent back into the economy. But what businesses didn't do back then was to merely pay their employees more for doing the same work and producing the same quantity of goods and services, which seems to be QP's recommended fix. While I guess we could see some productivity gains by doing that, we'll likely experience higher prices as businesses try to recapture their ~lost profits.

Yep Walmart and other large corporations never, ever invest in their businesses anymore. Who wudda thunk it?

the bolded is not my fix at all so not sure why you say that.

What I am saying is that corporations are increasingly pouring money to bribe Gov't officials to make sure minimum wage and other wage issues are greatly slanted towards the employer.

That is not healthy for workers nor society and does long term harm to both. It is yet another short term stock booster that actually hurts the companies long term as well as the economy is not as productive as it should be and consumers are not spending as much.

I am not for an artificial wage just a fairer one that is more free than it currently is.

What a lot of people may not know is that it was not that long ago that hording cash, widescale stock buy backs and dividends were all considered warning signs in most Public companies generally.

30-40 years ago most of the stock market participants were Institutions with very long term investment horizons and they wanted to know if they invested a dollar in a Public company that company would take that dollar and convert it into Goods and Services that returned more than a dollar.

If instead you were going to horde the dollar that meant you believed the best return on the dollar was to keep it as cash so why would i not just cut you out of the middle and keep my own cash.

If instead you were just going to dividend me back my dollar again why would I give you any new dollars?

If instead you were buying back your stock that meant you believed that higher return than investing it to grow your business.

Growth in stock value was the number one thing investors sought and the way to get growth was to give Public Companies dollars which they turned into Good and Services (spent it) to get a return. None of those 3 things generate growth.

Now some mature companies (like a Bell Canada) might hit monopoly type scale and growth may no longer be possible, and yet they generate great recurring profits and thus since they cannot really grow, they dividend some cash out but they typically do not then have the great growth multiple unless they attack other channels. They get a lesser multiple with the dividend helping but not fully compensating for the lack of growth.

that is why I believe Corporations should be far more aggressively taxed for distributions. I actually do not believe companies should pay any corporate income tax (it is regressive) but they should be taxed heavily on any distributions or horded cash.

As long as they put their cash into business growth or improvements, zero tax. As those things benefit society overall and the growing employee base is paying income tax from it as well.

we seem to finally arrive at some semblance of an agreement .

Your last point should not be a problem.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...gdp-growth.asp

"GDP Growth and Inflation

1 Produced more at the same prices
2 Produced the same amount at higher prices
3 Produced more at higher prices
4 Produced much more at lower prices
5 Produced less at much higher prices "

" Scenario 4

Scenario 4 is unheard of in modern democratic economies for any sustained period and would be an example of a deflationary growth environment. "


"Three of these five scenarios include inflation. Scenario 1 eventually leads to inflation, and scenario 4 is unsustainable. From this, it's clear inflation and GDP growth go hand-in-hand. "

Higher price is a natural flow of growth in the economy over time.

And this now seems to be the only Conservative position that really matters in the Post Trump era.

So what does Texas do when population Growth due to POC (Latino's) gets them 2 Extra Seats in the House...














...they take the two New Seats and ensure they are created in majority white districts and they draw the single Black district out of existence.


is this how the Republican party singles what a future with them looks like to POC and especially Latino's who are a very winnable vote for them? By telling them they will never share any power with them and will do everything they can to keep them out of the structures where decisions are made for all citizens?

Is it fair to say the Republicans strive for full taxation with zero representation if you are anything but White?

More on today's Republicanism.



What once would have been an SNL skit or an Onion piece now actually defines the party.

I mean, how can you parody this stuff?

We're here to protect your freedom to shoot beer bottles out in the middle of nowhere. So come on down to our anti-establishment rally. And don't forget to come back next week for our support the cops rally

Okay, fair enough. I do think wages are below a genuinely free market equilibrium so I agree to that extent. But in the scheme things, that's not much of a factor. The major factor is how income is distributed:



Even redistributing all the income from >$250K to <$75K won't make much of a dent to those making <$75K. Pretty obvious which part of the income distribution curve ($75K-$200K) would need to get pushed down to push <$75 up to European standards, if that's the goal.

Shortest semblance of agreement in history: I don't agree with that at all.

Given a fixed amount of currency in circulation, as productivity increases over time prices would have to come down as we produced more stuff with a given labor input. That's basically why prices in the nineteenth century fell by half.

Im really confused what your point is. black people are bringing the country down? bc they are like, bad at stuff?

I guess bc you are dancing around the issue then you are evading a ban. but I would really like to subscribe to your newsletter.

maybe if the Nuremburg guys woulda used this then they wouldnt have choked to death. or they coulda ratlined to the CIA but thats outside the topic.

but I am with you on looking to the future. surely you agree then on reparations and redistribution of resources.

Reparations? Sure. Just make sure it comes out of the taxes of all current slave owners in America, okay cupcake?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

At least she's not a witch.

of course if that would happen.

good luck running an economy without borrowing while population increases.
i know no one who can buy a new car or houses cash.

The funny thing is, if you think its good.
you must love communism that do try exactly this.
they aim at low prices, low wages, high production.
Only difference one is owned by the state while the other the private sector.

I had to listen to it three times (regrettable, but entertaining) to try to figure out what a lube laser politician was. Honestly I assumed it was just some ridiculous trumpism (turns out she said “blue blazer politician” while pointing at a black and white TV, which of course makes tons more sense).

That's what's savings are for—to finance such purchases. Of course that would make real estate bubbles virtually impossible.... can't have that.

The ratio of what workers get in terms of consumption to what they give in terms of labor is all that matters. And while I'm not suggesting we're at maximum efficiency in that regard, once that is achieved the only way to get people more for the same amount of labor, i.e., to achieve economic progress is through increases in productivity. And the only way to increase productivity is to devote some of our present resources or labor output away from producing items for consumption and towards improved capital goods to increase future production. Whether that's achieved through a free or command economy, really doesn't matter. What matters is what works best to that end. And while I think what we're doing works best, once AI starts coming more online - replacing a lot of the cognitive work - I doubt it will matter too much either way.

John I get not wanting Real Estate bubbles but do you actually think a healthy economy can have a housing market built on 'Savings Only' with no access to debt?

(Or auto industry)

I didn't mean people had to save up to buy a house. They can borrow money others saved.

That is a catch 22 .
If a person lend money to someone to buy a house , how will he be able to buy one for himself ?

That is the whole point of Fractional-reserve banking.

Think about It , you told us you think a fix money supply would be better but how since there’s wouldn’t have enough money to everyone .
Population increases but the money supply wouldn’t .
People by saving , takes money out of the economic system that would provide future wages , spending and growth of the economy .

I mean how an economy be good without velocity of money because people wouldn’t spend ?
Why would I buy a house knowing the prices would fall overtime with a fix money supply ?
No one would buy something that lose value overtime unless it’s pure necessity .
But if people only buy stuff that is pure necessity , they would still lose money because everything they buy would lose value over time
AND
how would the economy do without much demands for anything since no one would buy anything ?

No demands , no employment, no economy .

It just doesn’t work .

To me economic problems as nothing to do with fiat , gold standard or any of those things .
They all suffer at one point or the other .
They are just indicators that express economic problems .

The real problem is pretty bell explain by prof. Richards Werner.
The problem is when borrowing ( meaning increasing money supply by the banks) are made solely for consumptions and not for productives purposes .

Burrowing (increasing money supply ) to build a house is fine , burrowing to just by a house already build but at a much higher price is a not ( disregarding interest rates or improvement on the house ) .
And banks won’t shy away from that -> 2008 crisis .
It was too profitable . And they knew they would get bailed out …

Like in 2020 stimulus , massive inflation is inevitable because the money given to the people was given freely , without gaining anything in return ( like an infrastructure project would for example ).

No production as been made for those trillions , we still have the same amount of goods and services .
The only way it wouldn’t be inflationary is if people decided to pay debts Instead of spending consumption…. Good luck with that .

But thinking having a fix money supply would fix everything is not realistic .

Amazon (AMZN) Financials as AMZN pays no dividends. They have $84 billion + on their balance sheet in cash/cash equivalents. Is this cash amount too much thus it should taxed heavily?

It should be noted that AMZN occasionally buys back stock.

AMZN borrows $18 billion it doesn’t need

Quote:

“They can grow into this leverage,” Matt Brill, head of North America investment grade at Invesco Ltd., said on Bloomberg TV Monday. “If you’re able to borrow for reasonably cheap, and then you’re able to get the operating leverage to go with it, it results in a lot of earnings.”

So AMZN borrows money it doesn’t need to borrow because the borrowing costs are low and can use the leverage to increase earnings which leads to of course higher stock valuations. So borrowing money, no dividends, increased earnings/increased valuations are things QP likes. What apparently he doesn’t like is using debt while having cash on hand to in part to buy back stock as well as funding growth. Fair statement QP? Given that companies need to have some cash on hand. How much is too much? Also realize that having cash assets tends to lower borrowing costs.