With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company.

The total dividend income declared in 1995 by the bottom 9.7 million Canadian tax-filers (47% of all those submitting tax returns) was $310 million. The estimated dividend income received by the Thomson family in 1995 from its 72% ownership share of the Thomson Corporation and its 22% ownership share of the Hudson's Bay Company was $310 million.

Everyone has an interest in the economy: in how it functions, how well it functions, and in whose interests it functions.

Competition-ruthless, unforgiving, to-the-death competition-is a crucial feature of capitalism.

Growth can also involve producing services instead of goods. In particular, a major expansion of public and caring services (like child care, education, elder care, and other life-affirming programs) would generate huge increases in GDP and incomes, with virtually no impact on the environment.

Economic systems come, and economic systems go. No economic system lasts forever. Capitalism is not likely to last forever, either.

We know that investment causes growth. But it is also true that growth causes investment.