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Morganovich, I find it amazing that even after I answer your questions, many times and in many ways, you still ask the same questions.

The reality is there are well run and poorly run firms, and many firms cannot afford to pay high wages. Similarly (for whatever reasons), many major league baseball teams can't afford to pay for talent.

Economies change over time (they're not static). Over the past 30 years as a percent of GDP, profits have soared, while compensation has declined. Much of that capital is idle and stored in low risk investments, e.g. money market funds, Treasury bonds, gold, etc., rather than flowing into high-risk investments, e.g. business start-ups.

In a depression, like the past few years, there are massive idle resources, including capital and labor. The U.S. has a structural problem, built-up over the past 30 years, which you don't even recognize and remain a "stick-in-the-mud."

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George P. Schultz:

“The War on Drugs that has been waged in the United States for over forty years now has failed, just as our national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol failed. Drugs are still readily available and their use in the United States is no lower than, and sometimes surpasses, drug use in countries with very different approaches to the problem. Every activity related to illegal drugs has been formally criminalized in the United States and a large bureaucracy has been created. Incarceration rates are high and a massive, costly, and sustained effort has been made to keep drugs out of the United States.”

The non-ivory tower and non-political version:

The War on Drugs that has been waged in the United States for over forty years has been successful, somewhat similar to the national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol, which reduced alcohol consumption substantially. Millions of irresponsible drug users have been prevented, saving trillions of dollars in social costs. Yet, we spend too little on the War on Drugs, e.g. on rehabilitation. Criminals are in jail, and serious crime rates are at one-third the levels compared to the 1970s, to pre-1964 levels. Spending $20 billion a year to prevent $300 billion a year in social costs makes economic sense. Of course, we’ll never eradicate these mind-altering drugs that have caused so much devasatation in society and to families, particularly when there’s so much misinformation propagated by an activist pro-drug legalization segment, who try to convince Americans drugs are not harmful.

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