Subject: Re: How Capitalists Destroyed Capitalism
You and Wendy are both right. Durable capex reduces margins and corporate profit at the expense of generational and societal wealth.

To some degree this was enforced by law and regulation. 1980 marked a culture shift in corporations and a deregulation in finance that result in every damn complaint in the author's NYT oped.

Wendy, to your point they stopped doing that because in a capitalist system the strong eat the weak. Investing long term meant you were on the receiving end of the LBO. Ethical business managers were at a distinct disadvantage. It is the same reason why every is bribing and otherwise taking a knee to this administration. They have made it clear it is a survival imperative and the business leadership class dutifully fell in line, again. The problem is ethics and regulation.

Jim, to your point about mismeasurement, the Mary Poppins analogy fell down there quite badly because as Dawes, Sr (also played by Dick Van Dyke) proudly stated, the capital was employed around the world. Granted, the British colonial model would take the counterpoint very far into the weeds. At any rate, the wealth the US amassed post-war needed to be shared for global stability, but when unconstrained wealth captured the regulatory process they realized the could exploit both the overseas labor and the domestic consumer equally, strip mining the wealth accrued on the prior decades. Optimal in a very short term, just like eating one's seed corn or prion misconfiguration. The author comes off somewhat insular in that regard, even if I sympathize with the broader point.

Deregulation in the 1980s is what happened. A conservative think tank complaining in the NYT about the state of things while ignoring the elephant in the room is, frankly, entirely on-brand and expected.