[snowwrestler]

I don't understand this. When big companies "sit on their profits," that capital is invested somewhere. It's not like companies have big Scrooge McDuck tanks full of gold coins.

The capital might be invested in fairly generic, low-return assets but it's still invested and doing work somehwere. It doesn't mean it's a failure of capitalism. Capital allocation doesn't need to agree with your (or anyone in particular's) preferences at every point in time, for capitalism to work.

[idlewords]

As best I can tell, it's invested in US treasuries and corporate bonds [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/02/apple-cash-m...]. It's doing much less work than if Apple paid it out as a dividend, or spent it on Bentleys for all its employees, or invested it in creating some new product category. And we don't see a penny of it paid as taxes.

[aetherson]

If it's effectively taken out of circulation, it deflates all other currency.