Don't forget company leaderships and stock owners taking more and more profit out of companies than ever.

Take 100% of their salaries and profits and it would make a negligible, likely unnoticeable difference in this issue.

I find that hard to believe when their margins are double what they were a decade ago.

I'm not sure if there's a more sophisticated way of doing this. But just looking at revenue vs net income for 2024 suggests McDonald's operates at about a ~33% margin.

I'm not suggesting everyone would be a millionaire with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. But, to suggest America's skyrocketing inequality has nothing to do with the poor being unable to afford a burger is a bold claim to make.

Because if the wealthy are not extracting their fortunes from American companies, what then?

Sounds like a great start!

Amazon made $311B in 2024, they employ 1.5 million people.

That's $200k an employee, on top of what their regular salary is.

McDonalds made $15B and employ 150k people, that's $100k per employee.

So no, not negligible in the slightest.

Where did you get the $311B number? Because I get a net profit of $59.25B which is only 40k per employee. This assumes that the company doesn't need to keep any profit for future usage which may or may not be case depending on how big their war chest is. Not to say that 40k couldn't be life changing for many of the Amazon employee but the 311B number seems to be pulled out of thin air.

You're correct, it's wrong. I googled it, guessing AI just hallucinated that.

Are you under the impression the only expense a company has is payroll?

Profit is after costs+investments removed, not just payroll.

According to AI, they paid 5.3 billion in dividends and a have about 2 million in employees.

That's been said forever, but only ever said.

Markets are the best mechanism ever invented to resolve that challenge to maximum aggregate benefit.

True, but to prevent those restaurants from hiring children, feeding us poison, and dodging all taxes the market must be regulated. And we're back to the same discussion we've been having for 150 years - how do we best regulate markets.

There’s an entire academic field studying ways in which it’s not that simple. Housing, employment, and transportation are somewhat famously areas where markets need help due to information and power disparities.

Can't wait for the glorious day when Big Macs are $100 because the Market has willed it. Verily, I say unto thee, for mine eyes have beheld the Market's glory, thou art blessed to pay $100 for a Big Mac, and thou ought to bend thy knee and worship at the feet of the Market, for it is all-knowing, and all-powerful, and perfect. Selah.

That would make everything maybe 1 cent cheaper, so it's not really significant.

Yea whenever the idea of a company's profit is under a microscope, people often reflex to exec "greed" but it's typically because it's easier to blame a fictional disney villain, than it is to dig into the root of the problem.

If you can explain why anyone needs $8.469 billion of profit (2023), I'll gladly hear you out about greed. But something tells me I'm not going to get a great answer. :)

It would however have second-order effects; having less wealthy people would drive down rents/etc. If the wealthy just keep getting wealthier you'll end up in a situation where the wealthy just trade between each other out because of higher margins and the working class has nowhere to buy things.