Bill, You are missing the point -- the binary payout of earnings will be many times the existing payout, for the reasons extensively given. The definition would therefore be "binary full payout of earnings paying the full return (net of reserves for depreciation, research and development." I would add that for the big companies, retention for investment would not be allowed -- to expand, such companies would have to take interest-free money linked to wide ownership. I think that is clear but, alas, it involves concepts which are simply not in your mental box of tools. So we might as well stop arguing about it.
Their are two problems I see with that: what constitutes "earnings" and what how does the definition of "full payout" differ from what companies normally do? The General Theory starts with an attempt to give the concept of earnings some rigor, since it is basic to everything that follows. I thought we could just skip this argument, and assume full payout of whatever the company defines as "earnings," but I see that really isn't practical. If full payout of earnings has such an important place in BE, then, like Keynes, you will have to start with a rigorous definition of the term. But from the above, you also may have a problem with the "net" as well. Assuming that depreciation can be easily calculated (it can't, but let's assume it can for the sake of simplicity) how much is necessary for research (and how is that defined) and how much for the really ambiguous term, "development." In fact, couldn't one argue that all "retained earnings" already go to research and development (depreciation is already deducted from earnings), and that "full payout" defined in this way would be exactly the meagre payouts that investors already receive?
Also, did I perceive here some limit on ownership that is at odds with the property absolutism of BE? I mean specifically the separate set of rules for "big" corporations. Mind you, I think that as both a practical and moral matter you are correct. But in order for such rules to be anything but arbitrary, don't you have to argue that the mere accumulation of wealth violates the notion of private property? That "private" property must have a limit or it is no longer private.
As usual, you are seeing everything with a conventional mind and
Oh, pul-leeeeeeze could we skip the ad hominems?
John C. M�daille
"A dead thing can go with the stream...
but only a living thing can go against it."
-G. K. Chesterton
http://www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
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