---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tom Crowl <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 7:59 AM Subject: The "Investment" quandary... How Can Adam Smith's Ideas deal with an investment and political climate (along with constituencies dominating both parties) virtually demanding that returns exceed the natural rate of return in a maturing economy? (I believe it can be answered... but it won't be very popular.... especially among those most needed to get it fixed) *From the NY Times, Jan 28, 2014:* *Capitalism vs. Democracy <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/capitalism-vs-democracy.html>* "If the rate of return on capital remains permanently above the rate of growth of the economy - this is Piketty's key inequality relationship," Milanovic writes in his review<http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/52384/1/MPRA_paper_52384.pdf>, it "generates a changing functional distribution of income in favor of capital and, if capital incomes are more concentrated than incomes from labor (a rather uncontroversial fact), personal income distribution will also get more unequal -- which indeed is what we have witnessed in the past 30 years." *This reflects a fundamental problem with the artificial inflation of various investment vehicles... which are NOT matched... or even remotely connected to any real change in overall economic conditions.* *"Trickle Down Economics" supported by money creation directly injected into investment markets to artificially inflate returns ultimately hinders both any potential for real growth... as well as the social contract upon which it ultimately depends.* *Could there be any 'social structure' able to act at least as somewhat of a counter-balance for the drive towards an 'inequality relationship'?* *I've got one worth thinking about.* Regards, *Tom Crowl* http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/