Imprecise thinking abound. The author starts with talking about the problem of big banks (fair enough) and then descends into longing for a command economy [1]

Imprecise thinking abound. The author starts with talking about the problem of big banks (fair enough) and then descends into longing for a command economy [1]. The author laments borrowing money to pay dividends, but the two are net-zero activities (investors are just shuffling their investment from stocks to bonds). The author finally argues that real investment has fallen since the mid-century. This is not true in a real dollar sense [2]. As a share of GDP though, investment has fallen from the 1950s because we are no longer rushing to build up capital destroyed in WWII. As noted by Paul Graham [3] and more technically by economist Robert Solow [4], it was the decades surrounding WWII that was the exception and not the rule. Finally, the finance sector has already been retreating as of circa 2005 [5]. The predicate of the article may then no longer be true. If it is, would the author agree we're seeing less issues and more social justice now than in 2005? There are many precise, carefully thought-out treatments of inequality or the problems of financialization out there. I count Philippon's and Piketty's research among them. But this article seems to move in fuzzy concept space between "finance has gone up" and "we don't have a caring command economy". I wish the author spelled out his thinking more clearly. It sounds like it would be an interesting argument if made well. [1] "The state becomes submerged and hidden from our everyday lives, working through elaborate and blunted market mechanisms rather than helping citizens directly." [2] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GPDIC96 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GPDIC96 [3] http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html [4] https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-... [5] Figure 5 of http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/Finance_Efficiency.pdf http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/Finance_Efficien... Incidentially, Philippon's graph is used by the Wikipedia article on "financialization" but cut off at the 2005 peak to make it look like an unrestrained explosion upwards.