If corporate profits were lower, you wouldn't have the giant companies of today pushing USA' economy so high, and pushing the wages to the highest in the world, bar some tiny states.
When looking at those tables, keep in mind that taxes in most of those countries (except maybe Switzerland) are significantly higher than the US taxes. In fact, the US median wage earner pays almost no income tax, only payroll.
Corporate profits are after wages. They could have the same profit before wages - but if the share was distributed more evenly, overall profit would be lower, and the worker would be better off.
It's not like this would've affected companies at all. R&D is at an all time low compared to profits. It's not like they couldn't afford to invest in R&D to keep an advantage if workers were getting paid more.
Seeing as inequality is higher than during the Bell Epoch in France - and any other time in recorded history, this doesn't seem preposterous.
> It's not like this would've affected companies at all
How can you be so sure? Tens of billions of profit every year/quarter make these companies very appealing for investors, allowing them to spend unlimited cash to expand their business.
A well run company that has limited profits and expansion will then in turn have less R&D. Think IBM, Oracle - they haven't kept up the pace and got seriously behind MS, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google etc.
I don't have a crystal ball or a degree in economics, but to me it's pretty clear that a successful company will make life better for everyone, including R&D and menial jobs. Say what you want, but Amazon warehouse jobs are better than other no skill needed job in their respective areas.
This isn't how investing in an established company like Google today works (where most people invest most of their money). When you buy Google stock, it almost never affects their R&D budget.
You could argue that startups wouldn't be able to raise as much money, sure. And they DEFINITELY wouldn't be able to if interest rates were higher.
But the America of today (>95% of corporate profits) came from companies that weren't able to raise ridiculous amounts of money because of low interest rates from the last decade.
Startups from the last 10 years might have a lot of market cap - but their profits are very, very small compared to just FAANG+M - let alone the rest of the S&P 500.
