Maybe it's not that the profits are too high, but inequities of distribution are causing tangible, social externalities (Carrier moving to Mexico, undocumented workers rights abused in meatpacking facilities)? Perhaps more companies need worker representative groups with equity and voting board stakes as in Europe (even though investing in an employer is doubly risky)? When interests align, things toward working out compromises... treat people as just another disposable automaton, expect adversarialness, sabotage and/or rebellion.
> Maybe it's not that the profits are too high... Perhaps more companies need worker representative groups with equity
Or perhaps that money could just go back to the American consumer in the form of lower prices? That would be a far more equitable way to distribute it.
Trickle-down economics fantasy doesn't work because self-interest results in trickle-up.
One issue really is that there is an apparent lack of valuable, human-doable work to go around because of automation and a highly-connected, globalized world.
Zillions of us are basically working partial shit jobs because either employers don't want to pay benefits or there's no need (low demand/oversupply) for more skilled workers, but the university machine keeps cranking out overqualified people and plunging them into desperation of debt. Many times more entrepreneurs and support thereof are needed to create some decent jobs, because human ingenuity and capability is being left to rot in a fry cooker. (Edit: Investing/mentoring/etc. are hard-to-scale activities except perhaps socially, but they need to happen to utilize more people overall which can be paid more individually and could be where most wealth is created... not as many giant businesses but comfortable cash machines.)
>there is an apparent lack of valuable, human-doable work to go around
No, there's a lack of immediately profitable human-doable work to go around, and markets don't have the rationality or intelligence to invent mechanisms that guarantee it gets done as it should.
US infrastructure is falling apart. Health insurance is run by vampires. [1] Care for seniors has huge growth potential. Defence spending is one big F-35. Education at almost all levels is far behind where it should be. There are many areas where housing is unaffordable, and a housing program could fix that. Climate change mitigation is definitely going to need to become a thing.
Etc.
There's no lack of work that could be done. The problem is that the standard markets-ra-ra-ra ideology is too stupid and myopically self-interested to understand that sometimes lower profits and higher taxes in the short term can lead to much bigger profits in the longer term.
Addressing most of your laundry list will not result in discernible added value. We can add arbitrary effort to the GDP to make the GDP grow, but we may have already seen all the benefits of that effort by the time it's measured.
The best examples you listed are infrastructure and housing. Both are valuable, assuming we build the things people actually want or need. But, again, we could build a thousand bridges to nowhere and a million new housing units in Detroit, boost our GDP, and waste money in the long run.
Senior care, education (qua education), and climate change mitigation are not obviously profitable, even in the long term. Maybe they're good, but good doesn't address the lack of wage growth for the under-four-years-of-college set.
I'm not sure that infrastructure projects need to be bridges to nowhere or housing in dead cities to be useful. There are plenty of infrastructure projects to be done in vibrant, growing cities/regions. Overdue road repair/maintenance, water and sewage modernization, park updates, library modernization and so on could do a lot with long-term benefits. Fiber as infrastructure has some promising potential (that is the city or county or whatnot installs and owns last mile fiber, with connection to one of several competitors for internet service).
Looking at the UK defense industry it does appear that the logical end point for defense procurement would appear to be having one fantastically expensive plane, ship & tank. That would then be too valuable to actually risk using....
> National policies, in the form of tariff, tax, and relative currency value, are enormous factors in the cost of imported goods.
National policies are meaningless nowadays, as international trade treaties force countries to get rid of tariffs, and to have a race to the bottom in taxes.
How do you plan on competing with the US when you have to import all their goods without tariffs, and have higher taxes yourself?
You can’t.
The free trade treaties directly threaten any model in which corporate taxes pay for the wealth of society, and instead only allow models in which society is paid for with the regressive VAT.
This is still a terribly underappreciated point. How helpful is it to have $199 TVs rather than $399 ones if most of your money is going to servicing student loans, credit cards, insurance, and apartment rent / housing. The gains in the form of lower prices are vastly outstripped by FIRE-related expenses.
> How helpful is it to have $199 TVs rather than $399 ones if most of your money is going to servicing student loans, credit cards, insurance, and apartment rent / housing
Credit cards are a distraction; if things are cheaper you'd spend less on them anyway. Aside from that...
Universities are a huge scam. Real estate - at least usable real estate - may be the same (existing interests never want you to build more of it) especially in places like the Bay Area. I agree.
But that's really a different matter, and I don't see how everyone collaborating to pay more for goods like TV would actually meaningfully impact the affordability of universities and real estate. Is there some notion that The Rich spend enough of their income on random consumer-goods like TVs so that this will act like a wealth transfer? Because if not, all you're doing is moving money around, and moving it awkwardly (filtering it through entrenched BigCorp processes along the way).
The other one, Insurance: I assume you mean Health Insurance. 96% of health insurance spending leaves the insurance company to the healthcare industry proper. And one of the too-profitable sectors our article identifies is, in fact, healthcare. Good thing we fixed expensive healthcare forever a few years back with all that really smart and super-effective legislation!!! cough
> Those who profit the most are the rich – for them their expenses just went down by 50%. But the poor don’t profit.
Nonsense. The Rich spend a smaller portion of their income on manufactured goods, household necessities and household entertainment than the poor. Instead they send their money to things like real estate, fine dining, and travel.
