Re:Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth?
by weberc2 on Thursday October 25, 2018 @05:19PM
(#18304669)
> The project managers, engineers, architects, and construction crews (plus the steel workers' local) aren't going to have a bake sale and come up with the money.
But if they did, they'd still be investors (i.e., employee-owners) and everything I said would still apply :).
More seriously, employee-owned businesses aren't uncommon, but still, the investors/employees are profiting from the company's increased producitivity _as investors_--their wages don't increase, the value of their shares increases. Just like owners in sole-proprieter businesses like our hypothetical steel mill.
And the owner has to have at least a reasonable chance of getting paid back for their investment. They're not building a steel mill as a charity. So if you don't let the owners make money off of their steel mills, then you don't get any steel mills. Whose life does that make better?
[Edit: And letting the owner make as much as the janitor isn't going to cut it. The owner is putting in hundreds of millions of dollars; letting them get back $15/hour is a completely inadequate return for the level of risk they are taking.]