It's very obviously is. Stock buybacks aren't allowed almost anywhere else in the world for a reason. It just leads to terrible behavior. This coupled with insanely low effective corporate tax rates means companies horde capital and do buybacks instead of doing other activities that are more economically beneficial to the country. Like increasing worker pay...
If I'm being honest, I don't understand this angle. Why are stock buybacks immoral or wrong? Isn't it simply using extra cash in a company to buy back stock from shareholders? With the same demand and reduced total stock, of course the price is going to go up. But the total market capitalization remains the same. I don't understand why this is somehow wrong. Can someone help me out?
Because executive pay is largely given in shares, so it incentivizes the leadership to invest funds in buy backs to inflate the price of the very shares they own instead of investing that money into employee pay or other company centric initiatives.
A tale as old as mankind. Like 20 years ago I saw a movie. Some indie thing from France or Spain. The kind of shit that gets highly acclaimed at the Cannes film festival. In one scene there was a bricklayer reciting a poem (from the top of my head and loosely translated from German):
My grandfather was a bricklayer.
My father was a bricklayer.
I am a bricklayer, too.
But, tell me, where is my house?
It's blatant stock manipulation. The stock price goes up because they increase demand for the stock for no reason. The value of the company doesn't change at all other than they're holding stock as an asset instead of the cash. Yet the stock is worth more now. It's stock manipulation, plain and simple.
But…but it’s politics! Surely politics must always be 50/50 divisive, and not be based around universal assmunchers that any sane person should agree is an asshole?
They could've paid for all of the UAW's asks and then some with just that but it's less about the money and more about trying to look strong. The reality is they are nothing without their workers, no company is.
Just like how the losses the entertainment industry has suffered due to the writers and actors strike could have paid for their demands 10 times over. This is 100% about stripping the power from workers and keeping the power in the C suite.