The coming long-run slowdown in corporate profit growth and stock returns
Takes a bit of reading before the primary issue gets mentioned:> "Some of the improvement in profit margins may have come from sourcing cheaper inputs from abroad, enabled by increased globalization. Moreover, for output produced within the U.S., growth in labor productivity—i.e., real output per hour worked—exceeded real wage growth since the mid-2000s. This means that, for a given cost of labor, firms were able to produce more output, which would also likely have contributed to the improvement in profit margins."I's rewrite the introductory sentence for this article as follows:"Over the past two [four] decades, the corporate profits of stock market listed firms have been substantially boosted by ~~declining interest rate expenses~~ [outsourcing manufacturing abroad to sweatshop zones] and ~~lower corporate tax rates~~ [importation of cheap and often undocumented labor from poor countries]."That's the essence of what its dectractors (including myself) call the neoliberal economic model.