William Galston writes in The Wall Street Journal, Soaring Profits but Too Few Jobs; [1] (may require paid subscription- which I highly recommend)
Excerpts:
According to a report last week from the Commerce Department, corporate profits after taxes in the fourth quarter of 2013 rose to an annual level of $1.9 trillion—11.1% of GDP, a postwar high. Meanwhile, total compensation—wages and benefits such as health insurance and pensions—fell to their lowest share of GDP in at least 50 years. From December 2007 through the third quarter of 2013, the compensation share of national GDP declined to 61% from 64%. A simple calculation shows that if compensation had remained at the 2007 share, workers would have earned $520 billion more in 2013.
There’s no end in sight. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart [2] reported recently that analysts expect profits for the S&P 500 to grow by 7.4% in 2014, far faster than nominal GDP. So profits will once again command a larger share of national output. Some of this, he says, reflects short-term factors. Persistently low interest rates have allowed companies to refinance debt, cutting interest costs even as they have increased net debt for 14 consecutive quarters. Moreover, companies have been able to offset gains in gross profits with losses incurred during the recession, reducing their effective tax rates.
Economists don’t agree about why the recovery has been so grindingly slow. Let me offer my own non-economist’s suggestion: However necessary a low-interest-rate regime may have been at the beginning of the recovery, it has moved through a phase of diminishing returns, which have now turned negative.
The current regime has allowed the banking system to recover and spurred gains of 250% in the equities markets from their spring 2009 low. No doubt the “wealth effect” boosted consumption among those fortunate enough to hold substantial amounts of stock. Homeowners who have been able to refinance have benefited as well.
That’s the upside. But the downside has been sizable. Low interest rates have reduced the purchasing power of retirees struggling to supplement fixed incomes with decent returns on low-risk investments. And the low rates have altered business decisions, at least at the margin. Today’s interest-rate regime lowers the cost of capital—and therefore of capital investment relative to labor. To be sure, the substitution of technology for labor is a continuing process. But the pace of that substitution is crucial for the job market, and current policies are having the unintended effect of accelerating it, further retarding job creation.
HKO
The wealthy have options that others do not. Low interest rates, and lending policies that have favored large publicly held companies over small local companies have helped improve the bottom lines of the larger public companies. The incredibly high friction costs to hire which includes the ACA but also includes the previous threat of the card check bill and the constant threat to raise taxes on income which is how smaller businesses finance their growth retards hiring.
This administration which demonizes the rich, bemoans growing inequality, and holds redistribution as a high value has in their stunning ignorance achieved the opposite results they claim to want.
The risk reward for an investor sharply favors buying publicly held equities over investing in a small business. Hiring suffers from this reality.