It's All Obama's Fault - DOW Jones reaches 16,000 for first time ever
- Thread starter yoyoyo1
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We must be defining innovation differently 
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Reaganomics alive and well. Corporations doing better under Obama than Bush.
Don't worry everyone, it will trickle down! America's job creators are creating new jobs left and right!
Don't worry everyone, it will trickle down! America's job creators are creating new jobs left and right!
Broke Wave
The GOAT
Corporate profits are based usually on volume and margin... the most profitable business in the world is Oil and Gas... a new refinery hasn't been built in the continental U.S. since the 1970's, this alone disproves the asinine notion that corporate profits somehow are directly related to innovation.
A quarter of all corporate profits are in the financial services sector. I swear the idea of silicon valley and google/apple has people deluded into thinking that those are the only companies.
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You guys see all these jobs being created?!? It's raining jobs everywhere!!!!!!!
Look at all that trickle!
Corporate profits hit record as wages get squeezed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2821741.html
BOOTSTRAPS!!
Look at all that trickle!
Corporate profits hit record as wages get squeezed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/eric-holder-banks-too-big_n_2821741.html
BOOTSTRAPS!!
It isnt a zero sum game. 
I guess the corporatism and fascism rampant now have distorted things(making you correct), but profits lead to capital for R&D(innovation) and as well as logistical innovations.
Sounds like the innovation has to be a certain size to be registered on the scale you are using.
Broke Wave
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I guess the corporatism and fascism rampant now have distorted things(making you correct), but profits lead to capital for R&D(innovation) and as well as logistical innovations.
Sounds like the innovation has to be a certain size to be registered on the scale you are using.
So can't capital come from the government for R&D? Isn't that were all the great innovations of the 20th century came from? The state?
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
Stock market is not a good indication of economic performance of a country. Get your bread though.
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I was not claiming that corporate profits always lead to innovation but that they often can and do.
I would disagree with you that the poor rarely get access to new social innovation. I think the poor usually do get access but they simply get it later (sometime much later) than the rich. The price of old technology must decrease to a point where the poor can afford it. For example, I traveled to Costa Rica a year or two ago. Most people there are poor (certainly they live off much less per year than a 'poor' American does). But many people had access to 1980s US automobiles technology. Cars that us relatively rich Americans throw away after 10 or 15 years end up there (and Dominican Rep and elsewhere). So assuming this trend continues they will have today's automobile technology in 25 years. And yes, the technology is better. Cars have GPS devices, seatbelt safety features, air bags etc. This additional technology does increase the standard of living of the poor. Less people will die from automobile injuries.
So the idea that large corporations don't use resources to innovate is silly. Of course they do. Not saying you said otherwise. Just reiterating my initial points. Apple's iPhone 6 will be better than the 5. Maybe not significantly better but they will use their profits to invest in better engineers, raw materials etc.
The biggest evidence of innovation trickling down to the middle class is in medicine. Middle class life expectancy for the last 100 years has been rising along with the rich. The same vaccines, radiation machines and surgical tools which keep improving are saving middle class and lower class lives. Does it equal the benefit of the rich? Of course not, but they are benefitting.
Certainly you can argue that that money would be better off in the hands of more hungry small businesses. You can argue that venture capital firms are biased as hell and don't allocate money efficiently to minority technology groups. But the profits lead to some degree of innovation and eventually some of this leads to increased welfare for the middle class.
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Piff Perkins
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but guys, Obama is a socialist who has destroyed the free market and no one is confident enough to invest in blah blah blah
The stock market isn't an indicator of the economy's strength, ie jobs are still in the shytter as old people hold on to jobs instead of retiring (because they're still recovering from 08). But if Obama was the far left loon cacs say he is, and that some of us wish he was, the stock market wouldn't be doing this.
The stock market isn't an indicator of the economy's strength, ie jobs are still in the shytter as old people hold on to jobs instead of retiring (because they're still recovering from 08). But if Obama was the far left loon cacs say he is, and that some of us wish he was, the stock market wouldn't be doing this.
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Many of them did but not all. Airplanes, automobiles and television were private innovations. Polio vaccines, AIDS vaccines, increased agricultural production came from private industry. It's not all or nothing. Both play a role. We shouldn't just dismiss the role of corporations because we hate rich people and corporations. Not saying you are saying this but I feel like that spirit is coming through in some posts in the thread. Maybe most corporations do more harm than good but some of them do provide legitimate societal benefit.
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That is still the case. The government pumps a lot of money into research across the country in almost every field.
