Blog RSS  The Pin Factory Blog   There's a very strange American
idea about dividends  Written by Anonymous | Thursday 19
December 2013  I'm always confused by a slightly strange
American idea about dividends. That if they are paid they are
somehow wasted. This from Matt Yglesias is only one expression
of the idea, there are many others:  Dividends, by contrast,
have a weak and indirect impact on the economy and don’t really
serve anyone’s long-term interests. We’re left hoping that rich
shareholders will spontaneously develop enough appetite for
extra yachts to push the economy forward. It’s a broken economic
model that only deepens the disconnect between the stock market
recovery and the ongoing labor market slump.  This is entirely
wrong, of course. Dividends are the returning to shareholders of
some portion of the company's profits. OK, that much is fine:
but what happens then?  Well, two things need to be kept in
mind. The first is that pretty much all innovation and again,
pretty much all of jobs growth