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Re:Modeling a Wealth Tax by triceratops on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @03:51PM (#24203512)
> You're essentially talking about adding a countering incentive away from investing in R&D, and toward paying shareholder dividends, which...why?

So shareholders can choose where to allocate those dollars? What's bad about that?

Re:Modeling a Wealth Tax by bhupy on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @07:14PM (#24205453)
There's nothing wrong with shareholder dividends, but to add an extra incentive to pay dividends is distortionary and doesn't make much economic sense. On the contrary, society appears to want to minimize shareholder dividends because that's money that's not going to worker salaries and R&D.

It also ignores the fact that if Amazon had been forced to pay dividends 10 years ago, the stock would be worth significantly less today on account of their inability to re-invest into R&D and enter new business lines and grow from 100,000 -> 1 million employees. Even if we aim to strictly maximize shareholder-value (to the extent that's even desirable), it's penny wise but pound foolish.