So exempt farms.  Next.

Do you have any idea how Congress works?

You exempt farms and suddenly every lobbying group known to mankind will be looking for the similar exemption. Which is why our tax code is one of the most ridiculously complex sets of regulation ever put on the face of the Earth.

Let's just leave capital gains alone and create investment incentives.

With the effects of COVID, everything became about inventory control. Companies didnt want money tied up in warehouses.

Stores, in turn, cut their selections and reduced vendors they had previously dealt with.

Yep, it was a bean counter Wall St fueled trend in the lead-up to COVID but then COVID and the effects pushed it into overdrive.

Signet, for example, the US/World's largest jewelry retailer used to keep 2-3 of a SKU in each store, plus another 1-2 per store in inventory at HQ.  Gave them smooth efficiency, low wait times, and nearly no "we can have that for you within 1-2 weeks" cause it would usually be there next day if needed.

Then they slashed that to 1-2 per SKU and then maybe 1 per every 10-20 stores back at HQ.  Absolutely nuked their suppliers without warning, shoved inventory BACK down the throats of some suppliers, and then started demanding PDQ delivery of replenishment stock. 

And they are far from the only ones.  It will be interesting to see the long term effects because unless Star Trek style materialization of products and immediate teleportation of those products to stores occurs, the buffer and logistic pipeline that the bigger retailers have torched in the last few years in the name of inventory cost control is gonna start to fail them.  And correction will need to occur.

But to the thread topic, this has obviously gutted outlet stores as well cause there is far less excess inventory.  Funny enough, I know another major jeweler that had a thriving outlet business.  They had a couple of "outlet specific" lines/SKUs, basically repurposed products from the main jewelery chain.  Well with the sort of changes mentioned above, there was far less product to repurpose so they couldn't fill those SKUs.  So they basically had to order them specially.  Whereas there used to be a few hundred that would get batch repurposed every quarter, they had to start ordering them onsie twosie every few weeks.  And it was/is a huge pain for them cause its super low priority and volume for the suppliers but its expected to be hopped to with quickness like it used to be.

Maybe Apple isn’t the greatest example for the phenomenon but long term growth and innovation is absolutely being  affected by stock market return pressure in the modern economy.

you can take the “it’s my money and I know how to spend it best” approach but in an increasingly volatile stock price environment the pressure on shorter term, higher and higher returns for shareholders is absolutely stifling innovation.

This leads to this...

True for large old tech companies too, they're just too big and manager heavy to innovate properly anymore.

IMO.

They don't have the time and leash to develop and run out innovation, so they need to acquire turnkey new tech/innovation so have immediate results.  If it doesn't work, they can justify it away later on, but they don't get dinged in the meantime for taking the time to develop and no immediate results.

I can remember the tide shift when an earnings beat was no longer enough if guidance and outlook wasn't strong enough.  And now its to the point that the latter well outweighs the actual earnings.

👏👏👏

Or in pharma to which I am intimately familiar, your R&D is M&A. (An exaggeration but very common)

True for large old tech companies too, they're just too big and manager heavy to innovate properly anymore.