The amount the company I work for did in stock buybacks last year, were that wealth instead taxed or returned to the people, would have been able to:
Build 10,000,000 sqft of high schools, or, around 88 $45,000,000 high schools.
Or
Could have provided ~6.3 million women with young children or infants with supplemental health and nutrition through the WIC program for 8.5 months
Or
80 $50 million mental health facilities
Or
According to Dept of HUD, would have been 20% of the total needed to eradicate homelessness entirely from the country
Or
Fed 363,636 families of 4, for a total of 1.45 million people, for an entire year.
Or
Put solar panels on 250,000 homes.
My company did an entire BILLION less in buybacks. Adding up the top 5 companies I could find data for, we get the following: ~$56billion buybacks, which could have instead been used to:
Build 140,000,000 sqft of high schools, or, around 1200 $45,000,000 high schools.
Or
Could have provided ~6.3 million women with young children or infants with supplemental health and nutrition through the WIC program for 9.91 YEARS.
Or
1120 $50 million mental health facilities
Or
According to Dept of HUD, would have been 280% of the total needed to eradicate homelessness entirely from the country,
Or
Fed 5,090,904 families of 4, for a total of 71.2 million people, or 20% of the entire population of the country for an entire year.
Or
Put solar panels on 3.5 million homes.
I partially disagree with this because it stops companies from being able to go private if they want. Hell, the original point of investing is that you believed in the company's goal(s) and wanted to support them. In return you get to hold onto part of the company as collateral until they (hopefully) pay you back, with interest. At least that's what I was taught growing up, but considering how everyone else views investing, I'm starting to have my doubts as to the accuracy of what I was taught. Anyway, as such, banning stock buybacks seems to run contrary to this and only further cements the idea that the stock market is a capitalist free money machine.
HOWEVER
A company shouldn't be able to buy back stocks and then immediately turn around and sell them again. If a company wants to buy back stocks, those stocks should be locked for, say, 10yrs. That way it doesn't affect a company seeking to go private, but it does stop companies from trying to profit off them.
Thats the problem. You can't give any corporate entity an inch nowadays because then they lobby for a mile. No stock buybacks, ya'll couldn't handle it without fucking everyone else in the ass so its gone. I'm tired of there being no adults in the room, just a bunch of grubby hands reaching for the shiny.