The Federal Government should mandate that stocks must pay dividends

:t of all, by issuing these bonds and encouraging investors to take them instead of cash, the companies in question ARE simply reinvesting the profits, to be paid out at a later date... Not simply. Additional transaction costs. If a limited number of investors understand the value involved, potentially prohibitive transaction costs. "[I need clarification on what exactly your second sentence states" The absence of federal interference is sufficient in the long run to ensure most companies eventually pay out dividends. :"Economy", like "country" is a specific entity and CAN be harmed. GDP is an example; No, GDP is not an example-- it does not provide a reason for the collectivist notion that an "economy" as such has interests, values, motives, the potential to be harmed. It is simply an aggregation of cash transactions, which represent gains or harms for many individuals, but not generalizably to all.Incidentally, it is a poor measure of even how individuals are doing on average. If I pay you a million dollars to scrub my back, and you pay me a million to scrub yours, the GDP shoot up by 2 million, despite the only actual value being a pair of backrubs. In a free market, of course, this will not occur. But a government that has an incentive to pad its GDP numbers on the other hand, as has the power to encourage such transaction pairs-- you never know what it might convince people to do, and governments like that (governments that regulate economies) are both your advocacy and the fellows who convinced people to engage in widespread adoption of the GDP measure in the first place. :If you want to argue that the "economy" was not harmed by the 1929 stock market crash, I welcome you to try, but I doubt you could pull that off. It is you who upholds the positive position on "Economies are evaluative entities, capable of being harmed." To argue a negative against nothing is pointless. :And to force someone to do something "for their own good" is neither what I'm trying to do, nor something necessarily bad anyways. This mandate is supposed to prevent or limit the boom/bust cycle That can be achieved by removing credit subsidies. If this mandate has any effect, it's just to drop the boom part closer to permanent bust territory. :And all safety laws are based on forcing someone to do something for their own good. And your point? Your reductio takes you nowhere, I am opposed to such laws. :If you want a more accurate analogy for my idea, how about drunk driving? Drunk drivers not only pose a threat to themselves, but also a threat to those around them This is a LESS accurate analogy, because companies directly reinvesting profits poses a threat to no one who has not chosen to engage with the company. :same as a bubble economy and those who cause it pose an economic threat to those in it. A "bubble economy" does absolutel zilch to those around it. The only people who can be harmed by any company engaging in purely economic action-- are those who choose to engage in trade with it. Those "Around it" is another word for those who choose not to trade with that company nor any companies that do. :Many people who didn't get involved in the housing speculation have seen their net worths go down Name one, and his career, and I will show you the involvement he chose :). :In practice, large firms looking to invest their money don't research the companies or securities they invest in themselves Then they deserve whatever happens to their money. :And when a company falls and its assets turn toxic, it can drag down a lot of other companies that had otherwise been very prudent, Describe this company and it's "prudence." :One final point: A good you purchase only for the purpose of speculation is a good that will eventually collapse. There is no good that has no purpose but speculation. A stock being without dividends is by definition either temporary or fraudulently. The former has useful purposes, the latter can be sustained about as easily by the workaround bond measures you've already described, perhaps even easier (Bonds may not be efficient, but they do invite less scrutiny than immediate reinvestment directly from one's profits).