<story><title>Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporations-hoarding-trillions.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=Moth-Visible&amp;moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-0&amp;module=inside-nyt-region&amp;region=inside-nyt-region&amp;WT.nav=inside-nyt-region</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>There is a school of economics, sometimes called the &amp;quot;freshwater school&amp;quot; (from the Chicago School and Milton Friedman) which claims you can&amp;#x27;t run out of demand.  This is a classic position. But productivity is now so good that we &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; run out of demand.  Classically, countries ran out of land, labor, capital, or management before they ran out of demand. There were occasional recessions, but that wasn&amp;#x27;t a permanent condition. That&amp;#x27;s over in the US. Plenty of land outside NY and SF, lots of workers (some might need retraining, but it&amp;#x27;s not like the real labor shortage of WWII), oceans of capital, and lots of experienced managers.  But nothing to do with it, because the demand isn&amp;#x27;t there.&lt;p&gt;This is an alien concept to many people and economic policy makers. See the parent article. They report on a capital glut, but are puzzled that it exists.  The Fed keeps pumping capital into the economy in hopes it will fuel growth. But pumping capital into a capital glut doesn&amp;#x27;t do much.&lt;p&gt;Look at Japan since 1989. Japan hit this about two decades before the US did.  They never really figured out what to do about it. That&amp;#x27;s discouraging, because if Japan had a solution, we&amp;#x27;d have a success to look at.&lt;p&gt;So nobody really knows what to do about a capital glut and a demand shortage.</text></item><item><author>partiallypro</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;trickle down&amp;quot; economics, which is not actually a real thing at all. That&amp;#x27;s a nonsensical political term that the Democrats seized upon during Reagan&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;supply side&amp;quot; economic policy; which has beginnings much earlier than Reagan, and likely older than Jean-Baptiste Say&amp;#x27;s formulation.&lt;p&gt;There isn&amp;#x27;t an idea that alone &amp;quot;capital drives growth,&amp;quot; that&amp;#x27;s an idea that Keynes came up with by misreading Jean-Baptiste Say. Paraphrasing him to say that &amp;quot;supply creates its own demand,&amp;quot; which we all know is nonsensical, but that&amp;#x27;s not what Jean-Baptiste Say was saying. The idea is far more complicated than your simple explanation offers, though I sympathize with your view (though, at least the second paragraph is almost entirely wrong), it is narrow in its scope to the study of economics.</text></item><item><author>jandrese</author><text>This is the ultimate problem with &amp;quot;trickle down&amp;quot; economics.  Capital doesn&amp;#x27;t drive growth.  Lack of capital limits growth, but excess capital doesn&amp;#x27;t generate additional growth.  Demand drives growth and 35 years of stagnant wages (wages are basically where they were in 1981) have put a chokehold on growth.&lt;p&gt;This is why you have the seemingly incongruous effect of high taxes encouraging growth and low taxes stifling it.  Ultimately &amp;quot;high taxes&amp;quot; tend to effect the rich a lot more than the poor, and the money ends up being redistributed somewhat equally, spurring demand as the poor can suddenly afford a lot more good and services.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The US is out of demand. Workers are spent out.  Thus, there&amp;#x27;s no need to increase output, because nobody has the money to buy it. The US has huge excess manufacturing capacity, thousands of malls which could handle more traffic (&amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s always parking at Sears&amp;quot;, a rather pathetic ad), and services which could handle more business.  There&amp;#x27;s a glut of capital, plenty of available unemployed or underemployed workers, no shortage of commercial real estate outside of a few cities, but no way to use it.&lt;p&gt;The CEO of WalMart has mentioned this.  They have a direct view into the spent-out economy - same-store sales data.  Sales decline each week after payday, then recover after payday.  Sales move to necessities later in the month.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why companies aren&amp;#x27;t investing in capacity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>secstate</author><text>Not claiming I have a panacea here, but wouldn&amp;#x27;t either a more aggressive minimum wage or a basic minimum income raise the ability for more people to act on the &lt;i&gt;desire&lt;/i&gt; to buy? I assure you the demand for tons of stuff exists, but the means to buy it does not.&lt;p&gt;Back in 2013, HuffPost ran an article pointing out that had minimum wage kept up with inflation, it would be $10.50&amp;#x2F;hr  and actually more like $21 if it had kept up with productivity growth [0]. That, of course, assumes that the original minimum wage rate was set reasonably, but I can promise you that few people, save some well-educated counter-cutlurists, can live on $7.50&amp;#x2F;hr these days. And even if they could, they wouldn&amp;#x27;t really be spurring demand in the greater economy.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;minimum-wage-productivity_n_2680639.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;minimum-wage-produc...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporations-hoarding-trillions.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=Moth-Visible&amp;moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-0&amp;module=inside-nyt-region&amp;region=inside-nyt-region&amp;WT.nav=inside-nyt-region</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Animats</author><text>There is a school of economics, sometimes called the &amp;quot;freshwater school&amp;quot; (from the Chicago School and Milton Friedman) which claims you can&amp;#x27;t run out of demand.  This is a classic position. But productivity is now so good that we &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; run out of demand.  Classically, countries ran out of land, labor, capital, or management before they ran out of demand. There were occasional recessions, but that wasn&amp;#x27;t a permanent condition. That&amp;#x27;s over in the US. Plenty of land outside NY and SF, lots of workers (some might need retraining, but it&amp;#x27;s not like the real labor shortage of WWII), oceans of capital, and lots of experienced managers.  But nothing to do with it, because the demand isn&amp;#x27;t there.&lt;p&gt;This is an alien concept to many people and economic policy makers. See the parent article. They report on a capital glut, but are puzzled that it exists.  The Fed keeps pumping capital into the economy in hopes it will fuel growth. But pumping capital into a capital glut doesn&amp;#x27;t do much.&lt;p&gt;Look at Japan since 1989. Japan hit this about two decades before the US did.  They never really figured out what to do about it. That&amp;#x27;s discouraging, because if Japan had a solution, we&amp;#x27;d have a success to look at.&lt;p&gt;So nobody really knows what to do about a capital glut and a demand shortage.</text></item><item><author>partiallypro</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;trickle down&amp;quot; economics, which is not actually a real thing at all. That&amp;#x27;s a nonsensical political term that the Democrats seized upon during Reagan&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;supply side&amp;quot; economic policy; which has beginnings much earlier than Reagan, and likely older than Jean-Baptiste Say&amp;#x27;s formulation.&lt;p&gt;There isn&amp;#x27;t an idea that alone &amp;quot;capital drives growth,&amp;quot; that&amp;#x27;s an idea that Keynes came up with by misreading Jean-Baptiste Say. Paraphrasing him to say that &amp;quot;supply creates its own demand,&amp;quot; which we all know is nonsensical, but that&amp;#x27;s not what Jean-Baptiste Say was saying. The idea is far more complicated than your simple explanation offers, though I sympathize with your view (though, at least the second paragraph is almost entirely wrong), it is narrow in its scope to the study of economics.</text></item><item><author>jandrese</author><text>This is the ultimate problem with &amp;quot;trickle down&amp;quot; economics.  Capital doesn&amp;#x27;t drive growth.  Lack of capital limits growth, but excess capital doesn&amp;#x27;t generate additional growth.  Demand drives growth and 35 years of stagnant wages (wages are basically where they were in 1981) have put a chokehold on growth.&lt;p&gt;This is why you have the seemingly incongruous effect of high taxes encouraging growth and low taxes stifling it.  Ultimately &amp;quot;high taxes&amp;quot; tend to effect the rich a lot more than the poor, and the money ends up being redistributed somewhat equally, spurring demand as the poor can suddenly afford a lot more good and services.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The US is out of demand. Workers are spent out.  Thus, there&amp;#x27;s no need to increase output, because nobody has the money to buy it. The US has huge excess manufacturing capacity, thousands of malls which could handle more traffic (&amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s always parking at Sears&amp;quot;, a rather pathetic ad), and services which could handle more business.  There&amp;#x27;s a glut of capital, plenty of available unemployed or underemployed workers, no shortage of commercial real estate outside of a few cities, but no way to use it.&lt;p&gt;The CEO of WalMart has mentioned this.  They have a direct view into the spent-out economy - same-store sales data.  Sales decline each week after payday, then recover after payday.  Sales move to necessities later in the month.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why companies aren&amp;#x27;t investing in capacity.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmorrow977</author><text>Instead of injecting money top-down through the Federal Reserve and large banks, they could inject it bottom-up in selected industries.  Invest $1 trillion in biotech.  Some will succeed and produce amazing advances.  Most will fail, but they&amp;#x27;ll still drive employment, education, services, etc. targeting that industry, driving down the cost of inputs to the biotech sector for decades.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this can be done not completely blindly, by investing 10 to 1 with existing investors, or providing a guarantee to return 50% of lost capital, or having milestones companies need to hit, or have experts in the field provide &amp;quot;votes&amp;quot; toward getting higher levels of funding after examining their progress so far.</text></comment>