[crdoconnor]

>Corporations also have record high corporate debt levels right now.

Strangely enough Apple is one of those companies taking advantage of near zero interest rates despite having 1/4 a trillion in cash.

If you make debt cheap enough it makes sense to do all kinds of crazy stuff.

>The attitude of wanting to violate other parties' property rights invariably comes down to a sort of arrogance in believing that the way the market works and the way people manage our own property is incorrect and that you have a better idea on how they should be using their property.

Some people believe that property rights should be configured to serve society's best interests. Other people believe that society should be configured to serve the interests of people with property (or, the market as you put it). One example of this type of person was Southern US slaveowners.

[Fantastic_T]

Right, but who knows how property is best configured to serve society. Given the market's profit loss system aligns the interests of private investors with the interests of society, private investors do. Not only do they have the right incentives, they have the local knowledge about a particular segment of the economy, that big picture politicians have no hope of acquiring when creating their clumsy plans.

A spending plan that's imposed with a stroke of a pen, and that recklessly interferes with hundreds of millions of people, and forces them into economic relationships with people based on crude categorisations, like income levels, and simplistic formulas, like those that determine eligibility for government assistance programs, is no substitute for the intelligently formed personal relationships and market transactions that spontaneously emerge when property and contracting rights are respected and protected. The latter is based on the unique knowledge of hundreds of millions of people, that is aware of local conditions and opportunities for optimisation.

As for slaveowners, what they have in common with socialists is a belief that they have a right to forcibly confine those who refuse to surrender their rights to them.