i, We’re mainly talking institutional shareholders.

ii, The purpose is to generate capital gains by turning over shares rather than seeking dividends. The goal is not investment, but to generate the maximum amount of profit on a pool of capital by speculation in shares. Tax is a seperate matter.

Shares in which a rise in the market price is expected will be sought out, those which are steady will be avoided. CEOs, in order to generate rises in share prices, do not have an incentive to provide dividends but to give the market some reason to justify expectations of price increases - i.e. to do something visible rather than something useful.

Not quite. The profit motive for shareholders comes from increases to the share price rather than the long term sustainable dividends of the company. The share prices MUST go up each quarter - or the shares will get dumped and the money flow into something that does.

Acquisitions and downsizing thus become “logical” as a means of increasing expectations and thus market-prices - *regardless* of their effect on the longer term prospects of teh underlying corporate economic activity.

Looking at the 20th century, severe recessions seem to have a tendency to bring up politicians with excessive energy and big ideas. And few of those are FDRs. It’s demagogues who thrive on catastophes.

But behind that fixation on share prices is the possibility to Get Rich Quick. If a high marginal tax rate makes “1 million now” less profitable than “100K a year for 10 years”, “now” loses importance versus “years”, and so does the share price “now” versus the share price over the next years.

On government-build slums and ghettos: No matter who builds those things, if you force people with no work, no hope and no stake in society together in some place half an hour or more from anything interesting, you can bet dollars to sand that shit will happen, the question is when.
OTOH, if there are tax advantages in making one luxury condomium out of four affordable flats, slums will happen, again, no matter who builds them.

Historically, there have been time when there wasn’t a middle class, though there was a mean and median of yearly income.

When stocks cost 30 percent, but higher paychecks were taxed at 90 percent, then investing in companies; and so improving the overall economy, becomes a bigger incentive.

The ISS (International Sucking Sensation) has been largely a huge drain on already cut to the bone true science projects. The thought that they (the brain dead loyal Bushies) actually want to abandon the Voyager program now is ridiculous and junk the Hubble space telescope? Damn, that space telescope has done more real science than the floating Holiday Inn has!

But, hey. Let’s put men on Mars. Let’s have a Hilton Hotel on the Moon. Let’s smoke money like we’re smoking crack back in the Texas Air National Guard.

There is a satellite that is in a clean room back in Florida that the ‘Loyal Bushies’ won’t allow to be launched! Oh, but they’ll launch Japanese adventure golfers in a heart beat.

I vote that Bush be put on Mars. Tomorrow! And send Darth Cheney and Alberto! Gonzales and Ashcroft and the whole list of sycophants up there too.

But seriously folks, the Arecibo installation in Puerto Rico is about to be abandoned and Bush wants to send that money to Iraq/n.

True (usable) science has taken a hit, almost like in the dark ages.

Velcro was popularized by the space program. The fax machine was invented in 1964 but wasn’t in wide use for another 20 years.

How about smoke detectors? But, hey, all they’ve done is save mere human lives, so there’s no reason to give the space program credit for such silly things.