From what I understand, the basic problem is this. The way things are supposed to work is corporations take their profits and divide them up in two ways. Part g

From what I understand, the basic problem is this. The way things are supposed to work is corporations take their profits and divide them up in two ways. Part goes to paying the owners, like dividends to stockholders. Part goes in investing in the future, like research and building factories. The problem is that for a long time a large proportion of companies have been paying out an increasing portion of their profits to pay off massive and ever increasing debts. They still keep paying profits to the owners, and so they have ever less left for investing in improving the company. That in turn means poor growth and being less competitive in world markets. And even worse when the economy goes through a bad period, many thousands of companies can no longer pay their huge debts and go bankrupt, with great damage to the economy.