Re:Where our economy is, for the young
by fxtentacle on Friday October 02, 2020 @04:11PM
(#24666570)
I would take the constant growth in VC investments to mean that it's profitable.
Also: https://wolfstreet.com/2015/11/04/corporate-profits-are-the-... Under "This is a new America" you can watch corporate profits grow and grow.
But both your source and my source are 5 years old already. A lot has changed since then.
Comparing corporate profits to GDP doesn’t make much sense. The BEA corporate profits number includes profits earned overseas, which aren’t included GDP. Corporate profits divided by GDP could go up without anything changing in the economic relationship between workers and corporations with respect to work done in the US.
Returns to owning land and housing (rents) have gone up. That has come at the expense of both returns to labor, and returns to all other kinds of capital (stock ownership, etc.). This is obvious. Stock market returns aren't what they used to be. Banks are making 4% on mortgages, versus 8% back in the day. The country is awash in 0% financing for cars, refrigerators, etc.
There is increasing inequality in how labor income is distributed. CEO salaries have gone up, programmer salaries have gone up, but secretary salaries have stagnated. But that's a separate issue than returns to capital ownership going up.