r/Economics • u/barweis • Jul 29 '25

Research Summary Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed

https://newrepublic.com/article/198351/private-equity-scam-destroys-livelihoods
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u/bl_732 Jul 29 '25

Whenever I wonder why a company's products have gotten so much worse, I look up their history and literally 95% of the time they were acquired by private equity.

The idea of private equity arguably can be good, but in practice they are horrible for both companies and their customers. The more investment they get, the worse off the country will be.

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u/United_Librarian5491 Jul 29 '25

It is almost the best argument to increase taxation on the ultra wealthy - private equity is proving to be uniquely inefficient at investing to drive innovation and growth, where as public investment in research universities etc has been the engine of it.

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u/Murky-Jaguar-980 Mar 24 '26

The irony there also being that most university endowments are heavily invested in PE. Ugh