It could be said that public companies are less profitable and therefore have less money to invest. But that doesn’t seem to be true. Figure 28 illustrates that there is little difference between the profit margins of major US public companies (the S&P’s 500) and those of all US firms derived from the National Income and Product Account (NIPA) compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the US Department of Commerce. The graph clearly shows a steady rise in profitability over forty-five years, culminating in record highs in recent years: truly ‘profits without prosperity’. In
...more
