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Plenty of profit to go around. The issue is shareholders expect infinite growth, which is impossible.
Capitalism (when it works best) basically requires occasional market crashes that can “reset” the wealth distribution. But for obvious reasons, nobody wants that.
So every year, shareholders get richer and expect bigger growth next year, but eventually the profits will plateau. And one can only guess what happens then.
3 points
When the profits plateau, you look for the next thing the market wants. Sometimes those bets are right, and sometimes they’re wrong. In the meantime, people were paid salaries out of investors’ pockets while they worked on providing the next potential answer. That’s what happened here.