borrowers who had contacted

Should be:

borrowers who had contracted

It is not easy to make a new product plus a factory to produce it and the existing products made in China by US companies are protected by patents and the trademarks that we all know and love.

The political and economic interests supporting the current arrangements will have to be given a good alternative to change.

But I think the comments were congruent with what you propose here ie there has to be a way to get more return for the true owners of companies, the shareholders. I like your idea that parallels the REITs with the 90% payouts, etc..

If the ‘natural rate of interest is zero’ then I sometimes worry (as someone who would like to retire someday), how retirees are going to make a decent return for themselves if govt bonds start to permanently yield near zero (I think this is a good possibility from here)….what gives me hope is the non-financial corporate sector, many of these business do make good profits (like they are currently) and maybe low govt bond yields will activate investors/shareholders to force the corporations to pay higher dividends out of earnings to get them some better retirement income via these dividends.

But like you point out there is the double tax issue as dividends are payed out after taxes. This is often imo used by mgmnts to retain earnings as they are quick to point out the tax disadvantage and genrally they get the industry to sell the idea that “they know better what to do with the retained earnings than the sharholders” would if we paid them a dividend (thats BS imo), this just gives them cover to retain earnings and pay out more to insiders, rob, dilute, etc..imo…

Resp,

PS I’m ready to vote for the Zanon/Beowulf ticket in 2012, or maybe check that the Beowulf/Zanon ticket to get control of “The Fuzz”… (picked that term up watching ‘Adam 12′ re-runs in the 70s ;)

William Black: Theoclassical Law and Economics Makes the Law an Ass

If Congress did impose one on corporations (don’t hold your breath), I suppose they could impose it on REITs and BDCs as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_investment_trust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_development_company

US companies face a “logistical nightmare” from a new rule forcing them to disclose the ratio between their chief executive’s pay package and that of the typical employee, lawyers have warned.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/977211ac-b461-11df-8208-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

Of course that’s looking at the pay inequality angle. Presumably the “typical employee” would be making about the same however much the CEO pays himself; at that point he’s really spending the shareholders’ money.

Congress could tell corporations that from now on, they will be taxed like a REIT (or a SBC), there are no federal corporate taxes if at least 90% of earnings are paid out as dividends.

But there’s one catch: No employee can be paid more than the President of the United States (current salary $400,000). Exceptional employees can be rewarded with what Brad Delong termed, a “Silicon Valley Compensation Scheme”:

Some of the engineers of Silicon Valley make fortunes: they are compensated with relatively low salaries and large restricted equity stakes… they do very well indeed–in the long run, in the five to ten years it takes to assess whether the business is in fact going to be a viable and profitable going concern.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127102-silicon-valley-compensation-schemes-needed-for-aig-and-tarp

If that’s too great a burden for a company (though I can’t see why shareholders would mind), the board of directors can always keep paying whatever salaries they’d like, and keep paying corporate income taxes. The board can look foward to explaining to shareholders why they chose to voluntarily pay corporate taxes with money that should be going out as dividends.