re: My issues with Supply Side Economics

Supply Side Economics... IMO.. whatever shortcomings/faults you may come up with (real or imagined) does not address the one fundamental issue with our economy

Overall, business and investment is driven by a "make money now" mentality...

This mind set creates its own set of problems due to the fundamental short-sighted nature of it...

If you never look beyond the hood of your car then inevitably you are going to run into a wall...

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Companies aren't in business to hoard cash. Companies are in business to invest more and grow. But they can only invest more when there are attractive opportunities available to them and they aren't padding reserves due to greater uncertainty (i.e. the massive increase in regulation during the Obama years). As companies invest and grow, they hire more. As companies hire more, labor becomes scarce. As labor becomes scarce, wages go up. All of the above are indeed the preferred state of affairs for most companies. The reason companies used cash in irregular amounts for dividends and buybacks during the Obama years is because of historically low interest rates (prompting them to use debt to finance dividends and buybacks and thus increase stock prices without having to invest in capex) and an anti-business tone at the top (massive expansion in Federal bureaucracy, which competes for resources with the private sector). SSE isn't a flawless theory, but it's still a damn good one, all else equal.

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Supply Side Economics is not simply not correct, it's not even wrong. The whole theory was originated in a world that no longer exists.

Look, just considering companies, there are no massive opportunities just wanting for them to expand production of widgets, just spend cash and profit.

A lot of companies are awashin in profits, but there isn't anything useful for them to invest in, so they do stock buybacks and pay dividends (personally I'd argue they should just pay dividends).

Another issue to add to this is that whatever few large scale investment opportunities that exist perversely destroy smaller businesses, and wind up creating a net loss of jobs and hence consumer purchasing power.

Know what Amazon is? It's fricking Walmart run over the internet, without even the need for a storefront and employees.

Sure they have coders (thoughtfully imported from India, and pushing down the wages of programmers) implementing things, and warehouse and distribution system employees.

But the margin on their business is so bad, and it always will be since they are arbitraging in a low margin business (just like grocery stores). Has Amazon even made a profit yet? It's been what, 20+ years; the stock is high but this isn't exactly Ford Motors 1928 versus 1908.

Anyway, I could write similar thinga about EBay (fricking Craigslist with a lot of features), or Uber. - God Uber. Their whole business model is basically taking a dump on local regulations and unions. But "Progressives" are cool with it because "Tech."

Then I could talk about the coming freight train of automation and actually useful laboring robots. Heck large grain operations are pretty darn close to the point where you don't even need the local Hayseeds in Iowa for anything. Just run and monitor everything from New York - or Beijing.

In short we got some big things coming, and none of them exactly require massive investment - or if they do they aren't going to increase employment and consumer spending.

Really the only big thing available that would require massive investment, and increase employment and consumer spending is infrastructure. We have a lot of bridges, roads, dams, various sundry other waterworks that are in god awful shape. Some critical water handling systems were built in the 1800's and are in bad, bad shape.

But that gig is a government operation, even if the work is done by private corporations.