The best math lesson we can teach college students this year is to subtract a tuition increase and benefit from the dividends of higher education.
Everything shapes you to be the person you are today. Sometimes hard lessons pay off dividends.
One common way of judging whether housing's price is in line with its fundamental value is to consider the ratio of housing prices to rents. This is analogous to the ratio of prices to dividends for stocks.
Gold is a commodity; over the long run, as we look back, it has not been a good investment. You can't look at the intrinsic value of gold as you can a business. Gold doesn't give you cash flow, and, at the end of the day, cash flow is what is important. Gold doesn't give you dividends.
Waitresses, soldiers, rickshaw drivers, old ladies selling vegetables - my father would schmooze anybody. He was Clintonesque before the word existed. And, of course, it paid dividends. Ill-tempered guards at the most notorious border crossings waved him through with cheery smiles. Haughty maitre d's fawned over him.
Liberalism is financed by the dividends from Conservatism.
And I had an old-fashioned idea that dividends were a good thing.
I don't like stock buybacks. I think if a company has the money to buy their stock back, then they should take that and increase the dividends. Send it back to the stockholder. Let them invest their money again from the dividends.
I don't believe that someone who sets up an institution should be able to take out the money from the institution or pay dividends to shareholders. I am not saying that institutions should be set up for charity.
Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives - and may even extend our stay on Earth.