Spyke
lemmy.world

Stock buybacks need to be made illegal again. I don’t understand how it’s anything other than market manipulation.

158
Grayoxreply
lemmy.ml

Ronald Regan really fucked this nation over. . .

116
lemm.ee

He’s was the first paid actor, just a puppet so the people in control can remain unknown. Skull and bones secret society was/is a real thing.

42
iBazreply
lemmy.world

It’s not a secret, we know who the billionaires are that are funding this madness, but the only people that could put a stop to it, are the ones benefiting from them.

39

So we'll have to eat them for real.

The announcement of the first TRILLIONAIRE should cause a worldwide civil war.

23

It makes sense if they're pulling out of the stock market entirely, in that case it's just settling the books. Any other reason is to manipulate the price. The whole stock market is a house of cards controlled directly by a few self-titled elites though, so chicanery is literally built in and always was.

30
JasSmithreply
kbin.social

I agree. I could live with it if it were merely a way to defer taxes, but the U.S. has something called the stepped-up basis. This allows people to inherit stocks without paying tax on the capital gains. The wealthy can live their whole lives without paying any tax. Both stock buy-backs and the stepped-up basis severely undermine the stock market and tax system.

26
alvvaysonreply
lemmy.world

Thank you. And amazing to see you have positive upvotes.

Whenever someone makes a comment like this on reddit, an army of accounts would appear to downvote and argue against it.

I'm convinced the narrative on reddit is highly controlled on these kind of topics.

Either that, or the retards of WSB were the culprits and they haven't found their way to lemmy yet.

Now that I think of it, perhaps those same accounts were used to manipulate retail traders on WSB... hmmm..

1
porkinsreply
sh.itjust.works

I am an MBA and agree that buybacks are fine. The problem is toxic anti-capitalism from my perspective. People are not really educated well on these topics. I find your comment funny that an army of accountants come to explain things and help everyone understand the nuances and why this is needed, but all the experts are somehow shills.

-2
programming.dev

The problem is toxic anti-capitalism

It's not like capitalism is doing itself (or the 99%) any favors. When it's blatantly clear that the ultra rich and short-term profit seeking are responsible for a lot of world problems (extreme pollution, climate change, corruption, being essentially immune to most laws), being "toxic anti-capitalist" is a natural step.

1
porkinsreply
sh.itjust.works

Capitalism also funded the innovations that enabled us to have this conversion.

1
programming.dev

That was probably more valid before WW2. Afterwards, it's mostly government (military) spending and financing that really funded the innovations we're using today, at least regarding computers and electronics

1

The modern PC was developed in a garage. Linux was a pet project. Uber and many other companies was funded by the previous success of another app. The owner sold StumbleUpon to eBay for $75M then used that money to make a killer rideshare app. SpaceX, Tesla, Streaming media. I beg to differ on whether most innovation is government funded. There are thousands of entrepreneurs that prove you wrong on that point.

1

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...

18
Snipe_ATreply
lemmy.atay.dev

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?

10

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.

26

The other reply is correct regarding the macro effects of the practise. The more immediate issue is that it allows shareholders to avoid paying dividend taxes. So they can effectively defer paying taxes until they realise any capital gains. This is a huge benefit, as the present value of money is worth much more than the future value of money. However there is an even larger benefit in the U.S. Dependents can inherit stocks at the current price and avoid paying any capital gains tax. This is called the “stepped-up basis.” It’s an insane tax loophole. Together stock buy-backs and the stepped-up basis allow the ultra wealthy to pay little to no tax, ever. They take out perpetual loans to pay for living expenses, guaranteed against their holdings.

8
lemm.ee

Keep these CEO memes coming. These assholes need to have a spotlight shown on them. A company is not a person, a company is ran by people.

155
sh.itjust.works

They're laughing all the way to the bank. The have not one care for what you or I think of them

34
Riskreply
feddit.uk

They do if we threaten their pockets or their lives.

Historically, which one is targeted is their choice.

35
programming.dev

I'd rather steal from them. There's a Brazilian saying, "A thief that steals from a thief has 100 years of forgiveness"

2

We have the same saying in Spanish, but it's 1000 in our case, so if you steal do it in Rodrigo Montoya way :)

1
Maalusreply
lemmy.world

Fucking hell people here on lemmy are batshit insane.

-11
Riskreply
feddit.uk

Pick a time in history where there was violent upheaval of working people. Tell me who they targeted first.

0
Maalusreply
lemmy.world

You are calling for people's deaths. That is a punishable offense and makes you batshit insane.

1
Riskreply
feddit.uk

No. I'm highlighting that, historically, angry poor people have killed callous rich people.

It's naive to not recognise it will happen again.

0

You have about as much plausible deniability here as someone saying "watch out mr president, a lot of presidents have been assasinated in the past".

1

Seriously, a lot of CEOs and most managers could be much more easily replaced by AI than the workers. Run some analysis on some metrics lay off people based on that. Go over the market analytics, direct staff to work on derivative versions of the products that have good numbers, cancel products that don't. I'm not even sure if you really need AI for this, a very basic script could handle a lot of it.

Of course a program would be lacking in the common sense to say "Nobody is going to drop a week's pay so they can go into a virtual world where they're a poorly drawn legless cartoon character". But present day CEOs make these mistakes anyway. It wouldn't be good, but it wouldn't be worse than the status quo.

3
feddit.de

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?

That allways stuck with me.

80
Hoomodreply
lemmy.world

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

30

The devil put the coal in the ground

Devil put the coal in the ground

He buried it deep so it'd never be found

Devil put the coal in the ground

5

I did some brain jogging and I think in German it went like this:

Mein Vater war ein Maurer. Sein Vater war ein Maurer. Auch ich mauere Tag ein Tag aus. Doch sag mir, wo steht mein Haus?

Which would translate to

My father was a bricklayer. His father was a bricklayer. I, too, wall up day in and day out. But tell me, where is my house?

But I can't figure out what the movie was.

29
lemmy.world

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.

41

It's almost as if stocks are a really shitty way to get rich from nothing.

1
lemmy.world

I approve of this series of memes. Please continue.

46
Katana314reply
lemmy.world

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?

-10
lemmy.ml

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.

37
Grayoxreply
lemmy.ml

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.

39

I wonder if the companies were expecting a recession to strengthen their hand. Turns out, we don't need them.

8
instamatreply
lemmy.world

Put laws on the books and hold people accountable. That’s what laws are supposed to do.

3

"But if you shared that money among all workers, they'd only get an extra 50 cents per hour!!!!" - some tool defending corporate profit

16
MooseBoysreply
lemmy.world

$3.4B / 167000 workers / 2000 hours = $10.18/hr raise, which is quite substantial.

12
Pyrreply
lemmy.ca

True, but that would only be for one year. What about after that? Take the raise away? They don't do $3.4b stock buy backs every year I imagine.

-1
Foglereply
lemmy.ca

That's just the exorbitant profit that they put into stock buy backs. And if they spent half of that on buybacks and gave every employee a 10k bonus I'm sure opinions of them would be a lot more favourable.

They could easily cut back some of their "profit" to pay people better

7
Pyrreply
lemmy.ca

Yes, I don't disagree that it should have gone to employees, just wanted to be clear that $10 an hour wasn't quite accurate. I'm sure a one time yearly bonus would be just as much appreciated and needed.

3

They also paused stock dividends for COVID 3 years ago and only resumed it now at 9¢ instead of 38¢

And their 2022 gross profit was nearly 21 billion dollars. That's an extra 60 dollars an hour for every employee

They have the money.

3

They don’t do $3.4b stock buy backs every year I imagine.

No... but they could give everyone a $2/hr raise, which isn't trivial, and sustain themselves at that level for FIVE YEARS on the current excess.

Another option is to give everyone a bonus; doing the math on 3.4bn/167k workers, is around 20k each; even if they "only" gave half of that back to the workers, a $10k bonus is pretty nice and one-time. There's no excuse....

4

They just want to maintain their status quo, humanity be damned.

4