"blue chip" nations?
NPR reporters analyzed the announcement today that Apple will be making their first ever distribution of dividends to stockholders this way: Apple has amassed a huge pile of profit, and stockholders have been bugging management to send some of it to loyal supporters. Apple is throwing them a stringy little bone to shut them up, because Apple is in no way ready to stop plowing almost all of its profits back into continuing innovation.
Companies that hand out dividends, said one of these commentators, have historically been companies that were no longer on the cutting edge but had drifted back to into the pack to work on making profits on their established products; this is, presumably, the evolution of a "blue chip" company, which holds steady, throws off dependable income to stockholders, and does not see its shares rocket sky high over and over due to successful innovations.
Assuming this is true to some significant degree, I am uneasily wondering whether a case can be made that this pattern underlies some differences in national policies, as follows:
European Socialist nations use government programs to funnel money taken in as taxes out to the populace at large in the form of services (single-payer medical programs, free day care, pre-natal care, free or subsidized higher education, etc.). A country like Finland could be seen as a "blue-chip" society that pays hefty dividends in government-provided services, spreading wealth and containing wealth inequality. But European economies on this model are regarded by many economists (rightly or wrongly) as economically "stagnant" (I've heard this from U.S. stockbrokers on numerous occasions).
The U.S. is under great internal pressure to *cut back* on government spending rather than raise taxes to fund more and better services to citizens. In a very tough period of enormous income inequalities and vanishing monetary support for education, medical services, etc., the U.S. seems to be under pressure from about half its voters to *stop* paying dividends to its citizens and, instead, encourage the increased concentration of wealth in the hands of a few ultra-rich individuals and corporations.
Apple is a US company. So far as I know, there is no comparable company -- a dynamo of product innovation and technological advance in communications and entertainment -- in Finland, or in Denmark, or in Sweden. (?)
Is the U.S. (actually) more economically and productively "cutting-edge" than countries that are run along Socialist Democratic lines? Does the "social dividend" of income-leveling government programs ever run healthily alongside a high rate of cutting-edge productive innovation in a nation's economy? Are we, by actual performance and/or national self-perception, not blue chip but "growth stock", i.e. cutting-edge and paying no dividends?
I tend to leap to conclusions, and to see patterns that aren't as influential as I think they are.
What do you think?
This entry was originally posted at http://suzy-m-charnas.dreamwidth.org/132776.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Companies that hand out dividends, said one of these commentators, have historically been companies that were no longer on the cutting edge but had drifted back to into the pack to work on making profits on their established products; this is, presumably, the evolution of a "blue chip" company, which holds steady, throws off dependable income to stockholders, and does not see its shares rocket sky high over and over due to successful innovations.
Assuming this is true to some significant degree, I am uneasily wondering whether a case can be made that this pattern underlies some differences in national policies, as follows:
European Socialist nations use government programs to funnel money taken in as taxes out to the populace at large in the form of services (single-payer medical programs, free day care, pre-natal care, free or subsidized higher education, etc.). A country like Finland could be seen as a "blue-chip" society that pays hefty dividends in government-provided services, spreading wealth and containing wealth inequality. But European economies on this model are regarded by many economists (rightly or wrongly) as economically "stagnant" (I've heard this from U.S. stockbrokers on numerous occasions).
The U.S. is under great internal pressure to *cut back* on government spending rather than raise taxes to fund more and better services to citizens. In a very tough period of enormous income inequalities and vanishing monetary support for education, medical services, etc., the U.S. seems to be under pressure from about half its voters to *stop* paying dividends to its citizens and, instead, encourage the increased concentration of wealth in the hands of a few ultra-rich individuals and corporations.
Apple is a US company. So far as I know, there is no comparable company -- a dynamo of product innovation and technological advance in communications and entertainment -- in Finland, or in Denmark, or in Sweden. (?)
Is the U.S. (actually) more economically and productively "cutting-edge" than countries that are run along Socialist Democratic lines? Does the "social dividend" of income-leveling government programs ever run healthily alongside a high rate of cutting-edge productive innovation in a nation's economy? Are we, by actual performance and/or national self-perception, not blue chip but "growth stock", i.e. cutting-edge and paying no dividends?
I tend to leap to conclusions, and to see patterns that aren't as influential as I think they are.
What do you think?
This entry was originally posted at http://suzy-m-charnas.dreamwidth.org/132776.html. Please comment there using OpenID.