Corporate record profits.

[snot]

1. It's not just shareholders,

although that's part of it; but it's the senior mangement who often wield the most control (since they often pack the Board with their cronies) and scrape out disproportionate benefits, sometimes in the form of stock shares/options and also in other forms of compensation.

We were much better off before Wall St. bought most of our politicians and got most of our Post-Great Depression regulation repealed and also nixed effective regulation of credit derivatives.