It seems to me that shareholders are SUPPOSED to get "the leftovers"
I would say that "leftovers" is profit. But not all profit is distributed to shareholders. Profit can be distributed to shareholders. But is also often retained in the company for future needs (retained profit); paid out for new and existing debt service (equipment, and etc.). Higher retained profit will allow companies to hire more, increase wages at the end of the year, roll out new marketing programs, expand vertically, and etc.
Yes, virtually all corporate investment comes from retained earnings or borrowing, that is, corporate bond issues or bank loans. None comes from the shareholders or from the stock market and its so-called investors. No CFO who wanted to retain his job would recommend a new stock issue or the selling of corporate reserve stock to raise money for an investment in their own company. Using the stock market to raise money would probably be viewed as a weakness in the corporation and its management.
The various posts here tell the story, you just have know how to look at them.
For example, someone said that only wages cause inflation. This is true, but not because there is anything toxic about wages. It is just that the money provided to the wealthy in a tax cut doesn't in anyway end up in the economy. What they call "investing" is actually saving. The money can't create inflation because it is no longer in the economy. Wages cause inflation if they get too high because they do impact the economy, they crank up the demand for products in the economy.
But the supply side increases in money, i.e. diverting money from wages to profits, does create inflation in the stock market. Since 1980 the stock market total valuation has gone up more than 2300% nominal, compared to a cost of living increase in that time of 300% or so. This is a tremendous amount of inflation, but it isn't called inflation, it is called "Capital Gains" and is for some reason universally considered to be a "good" while wage inflation is considered to be a "bad."
So by declaring that only wages can produce inflation, they are also admitting that the stock market has nothing to do with the kind of virtuous investing that grows the economy.
We can have a form of supply side inflation, but it comes from too many loans being taken out to build up businesses, forming an economic bubble that pops when there is enough demand to keep all of the expanded businesses open. The same thing that happens in a stock market bubble or any other types of asset bubbles.
What created the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 was that some overly clever people on Wall Street figured out a way to get the supply side money into the economy, by using it to finance risky mortgages that the banks couldn't legally originate, write, because they were too risky. The mortgages did increase inflation in the housing market, which is also inflation that is considered to good, also called called capital gains.
It is conceivable that it could have caused general inflation but of course, the bubble burst and the whole scheme came crashing down, nearly taking the world's banking system with it. You might of heard about it on the news.
