> While a company is hot and innovative, growth comes from value creation. Then innovation slows, but the executives need to give shareholders growth, so it's extracted in any way possible such as making employees work more hours no increase in income, or buying out smaller innovative emerging competitors and either shelving their innovations or destroying them through staff attrition when integrating after acquisition (like being assimilated by the borg).
What actually causes this is the tax code. Shareholders want to make money and in general are pretty agnostic as to whether it comes from dividends or increases in share price, outside of the taxes.
But the US income tax creates a major preference for share price increases. If a corporation pays a dividend, it first pays corporate income tax on the money it earned, then the shareholder pays personal income tax on the dividend. But if the corporation instead uses the same money for "growth" it doesn't get taxed at all -- many forms of expansion are tax deductions.
Switch from income tax to, say, VAT and that no longer happens. (The immediate objection would be that VAT is less progressive, but that can be solved by combining it with a UBI.)
What actually causes this is the tax code. Shareholders want to make money and in general are pretty agnostic as to whether it comes from dividends or increases in share price, outside of the taxes.
But the US income tax creates a major preference for share price increases. If a corporation pays a dividend, it first pays corporate income tax on the money it earned, then the shareholder pays personal income tax on the dividend. But if the corporation instead uses the same money for "growth" it doesn't get taxed at all -- many forms of expansion are tax deductions.
Switch from income tax to, say, VAT and that no longer happens. (The immediate objection would be that VAT is less progressive, but that can be solved by combining it with a UBI.)