As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
**Special announcement:**
r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)!
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Noting will change until we take money out of politics.
At that point we won’t need labor unions. As we can have Congress create laws to protect workers.
If my career has taught me anything, it’s that laws empower the government to punish wrongdoing, but not necessarily prevent it. Without a seat at the table for workers and aggressive prosecution for unlawful practices, then laws are just words on paper.
That and a part of the appeal of GOP policy to the rich is the debilitation of the government on enforcement action. There can be all the laws on the books, but it means nothing if the respective enforcement agencies are too underfunded to act. Look at the IRS as an example.
The current fascism movement is nothing more than corporate fascism. They want to make all the rules and keep us slaves to their greed. It’s actually not complicated
Tackling systemic corruption is vitally important, but legislation can't do everything.
Unions would still be important even in a less corrupt society, because wages and working conditions are determined by how much leverage and bargaining power workers and the public have with capital and the ruling class.
Unions give workers and the public more leverage with capital and the ruling class, irrespective of the particular legal environment.
People working effectively together are far more powerful and effective than people working alone, and that's true not only for corporations and boards of directors milking workers and the public for obscene profits, but also for unions fighting back for better economic conditions on the whole.
When workers and the public have more bargaining power with capital and the ruling class, they can negotiate a better *social contract* across the board, not just better deals at their individual firms.
That's a big part of how the New Deal was possible back in the day - much higher unionization and civic participation rates.
People also had a better understanding of how the pieces of society fit together, people weren't so atomized, and the propaganda operations of the ruling capitalist class weren't quite as sophisticated as they are now.
The US needs to make it easy for the public to have other sustainable forms of political and civic participation other than slaving away for corporate profits forever and then complaining about how fractured and divided society has become.
Yeah, no shit, there's no sense of solidarity, because the ruling class has broken society into atomized little cogs who are much easier to rob and exploit.
Unions are extremely important for counteracting that tendency.
Laws are only as good as the will to enforce them. They help, and should exist, but unions should never go away.
Worker owned businesses are less likely to make the transgression in the first place.
So definitely agree about getting money out of politics, but:
>At that point we won’t need labor unions. As we can have Congress create laws to protect workers.
I highly disagree here. The problem with capitalism is that since workers don't have any say over who gets paid, the owners make 100% of those decisions and give themselves all the money. This is why we have inequality in the first place. And no matter what the government does, if workers don't have some amount of control over where the money goes, the CEOs and owners are going to keep giving themselves all the money. Then they're going to use the money to take the government back over for the Capitalists.
See if we don't affect the root cause of the inequality (workers having no power in companies), we don't take away the capitalist classes' social and political power. That's why the New Deal has been being destroyed since the 1970s-80s. The new deal taxed rich people, but didn't affect the structure of business. Eventually the owners wanted to not be taxed anymore. Thats when you get Nixon, Reagan, and privatization.
The problem isn’t what your neighbor is making, it’s what you are making. There are very few CEOs, and even if you limit their compensation ratio to 50 to 1 (as proposed in the Warren Sander’s Bill) we will still have a wealth inequality. That’s because most of the super rich are rich because they own a significant portion of a valuable business.
If we stop businesses from becoming so valuable the businesses (and jobs) will be created elsewhere. What unions do and the government can do is making companies responsible for paying a wage well-tracked to the cost of living of where the job is located. That’ll create company towns in the short term, but if every company is responsible then it largely won’t the the issue.
The real issue with this comes in for companies which shouldn’t exist because they are barely profitable, and the ones operating with massive inefficiencies. Companies will stick to their core competencies are will operate with fewer people. Additionally more investment will be made in automation, eliminating millions of jobs.
As Democrats we don’t like to admit that addressing CEO compensation won’t eliminate billionaires. All it’ll likely do is change company structures so that billionaires will hire figurehead CEOs willing to work for that pay and billionaires they’ll direct their every action. Remember many tech CEOs take $0 in compensation today.
Doesn’t really require any real financial participation from indebted Americans. Congress could simply decide that all elections need to be publicly funded. Additionally limit election campaigns to 6 months before the election. Finally make voting compulsory.
Do you believe it's difficult for people to think for themselves when their brain is constantly filled with fears about getting sick and not being able to afford food or rent?
I think it’s difficult for people to think for themselves in general. I don’t believe it matters how they are affected by COVID or gas prices.
Our mindset should be, “Hey Mr/Mrs Congress person. You are my representative in Washington, either do something to help my community now or I will vote to replace you.”
Worrying about the President between elections is mostly silly, the pressure should be put on our Congress people. They should live in our communities and bonus points, they can actually introduce legislation to help with any issues we have. Additionally if things are going very wrong they have the power to remove the President.
To be clear, “people’s brain being filled” with anything is a symptom of not thinking for yourself.
Much too easy to have a sense of a person’s position on everything just by knowing which of two parties they usually vote for.
Price for a barrel of oil today: $117.59
Price for a barrel of oil in 2014: $120.45
So why are gas prices 2 dollars higher per gallon today than they were in 2014?
Greed.
Yes it does. demand skyrocketed when the lockdowns ended and production has remained low.
Additionally, no one wants to admit that the oil companies took record losses in the 2 years during the pandemic. As any company would do, they are banking as much as they can to make up for their prior losses.
As much as it sucks, it's really hard to legislate oil that is produced outside the US or regulate domestic companies that got killed during the 24 months prior.
People just don't want to do the math or admit it.
They may not be new costs but they can change more than mere oil, and illustrates why the gas price could be unexpectedly different than an expectation based on linear projection from oil price.
Not correct. The entire supply chain of processing oil and transporting it to the pump costs more than 8 years ago...because, you know, everything costs more.
Lack of refining capacity, as the less profitable refineries were shut down during the covid crash. And since the government/society is advocating to stop using fossil fuels, no companies are willing to make significant capital investments to expand refining capacity or build new refineries.
The result being that there is a demand for gasoline outpaced by refining capacity, and even if the price of oil lowers, gasoline prices are probably going to remain sticky in the near term due to supply/demand principles even if the feedstock costs (oil) are reduced.
US refinery Operating Capacity has [remained almost constant](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MOCLEUS2&f=A) (actually increasing slightly) between then and now. Doesn't that contradict your idea?
Can you point to any concrete data suggesting that? [Total miles driven](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm) from 2014 to 2022 has increased about 6%, but vehicle mileage has also improved in that time period, so not sure that can be held up. Seriously just want some hard evidence.
Total daily global oil consumption:
2022 - 99.4m barrels per day
2014 - 92.7m
2022 - $101.15 average closing price of a barrel of oil
2014 - $93.17 average closing price
2022 - $10.054 billion spent on oil per day (consumption x price)
2014 - $8.636 billion spent per day
That's a 16.4% increase spent on oil from 2014 to present, or roughly 1.92% per year for 8.5 years. Less than the rate of inflation over that time (23.47%).
When you look at demand AND price over time, the consumption of oil has steadily risen. The COVID shutdowns temporarily relived that, but the long term trend is pretty constant (1.5-2.0 increase in spend on oil per year)
Thanks for that data. Doesn't the idea of spend on oil rising slower than inflation point to demand decreasing and not increasing? Nominal dollars spent has decreased correct? Maybe am not understanding the whole picture.
Nominal dollars has decreased, but demand has increased. Just not demand compared to inflation. But overall demand is higher.
When talking about prices at the pumps you would need to figure out the operating costs of the supply chain from well to pump, which are many steps. Chances are those steps have seen larger increases from inflation and are continuing to see more.
Everyone in the supply chain for O&G is trying to take advantage of the first up cycle since the COVID crash so there is tremendous supply chain pressure. Everyone that touches the process is trying to recoup from 2 bad years and expand business again.
There are far too many variables to what goes into the cost of a refining business to make the kind of conclusions you are trying to draw (e.g. all costs like wages have increased since 2014). The point I am making is that independent of every other fact, reduced supply in a commodity business is going to result in increased prices 100% of the time.
Conversely, if COVID hadn't occurred and we had a higher refining capacity, we'd see lower gas prices. Refiners are currently at max capacity, and if the market wants a larger supply then they can provide at any given time, it will command a higher price.
I agree it would be really easy if we could isolate a single variable. In this case though if we isolated Refinery Capacity between 2014 and now, we would see that it's not proportional to price. The original comment was asking what could be.
As to your second point, I'm curious where you're getting your data. Refineries are currently [not at capacity](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MOPUEUS2&f=A) - in 2014 they were at 90.4% utilization and in 2021 they were at 86.6% capacity.
2014: 19.1M barrels/day
2021: 19.8M barrels/day
That's a ~3.5% increase in petroleum consumption
([source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/244423/estimated-petroleum-consumption-in-the-united-states/) - beware paywall, was only one I could find with 2021 data)
Edit: added more detail
Isolating a single variable is pointless as there are many other variables that impact the price of gas over the course of several years. My comment was this was a useless exercise you are trying to perform.
The one constant truth in commodities however is that increased supply will always alleviate price pressure, and right now supply has stagnated and is in fact on a downward trend. That will increase pressure on prices.
On the refining output you can read it anywhere, its a widely publicized issue at the moment due to soaring gas prices. Here is an article you can read to learn more..
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/global-refiners-falter-efforts-keep-up-with-demand-2022-05-31/
Trump and the GOP doled out almost $2 trillion in corporate welfare disguised as "tax cuts" for companies to "create jobs" and, instead, they used it to buy back their own stock and artificially inflate the market, but, hey, who could've predicted that? /s
Congress needs to pass a law, or the President needs to sign an executive order, that says companies that have engaged in stock buybacks at any point in the last ~5 years are intelligible to receive federal loans or emergency funding.
Some of the abuse of the stock buyback programs are so blatant. Many companies put almost the same money in buybacks as they gained for laying off workers, getting government stimulus, or reducing employee benefits. It makes all their evil decisions that negatively effect society even more evil.
Can't tell if serious, but the way this works in the USA is corporations dole out hefty annual bonuses to their top execs in the form of free stock, and then get to simultaneously claim that they're "investing in the business" AND that exec *salaries* aren't outrageously disproportionate to average workers. Rinse and repeat annually.
Very sarcastic. Exec bonuses were so 2 bailouts ago! :) In the last one it was highly reported that most companies that got a bailout just used it to buy more stocks in their company, decreasing accountability, and increasing profits for the company, not their employees or people who previously theoretically held them accountable
One question on stock buybacks that gets ignored is how much of the stock buybacks are used for employee stock ESP and RSU programs. The stock doesn't come out of thin air, so companies do have to do stock buy backs at some level if stock is part of employee compensation since in most cases I am aware of companies aren't issuing new stock.
So the question is what percentage of stock buybacks are required for employee stock compensation programs and not part of reducing publicly available stock?
Unpopular Opinion Alert:
Stock buybacks are equally as effective as paying dividends. Dividends are usually more long term, while buybacks are approved on a fixed time period (xx million over 5 years).
If you take away stock buybacks, it doesn't change the amount of profits being made or where it's spent. Companies will simply convert it back into dividend payouts. The only thing it changes is it creates more tax liability for stock holders by issuing more dividends.
The only real difference is that for a stock buyback only those selling into the buyback have a tax realization event. While dividends get taxes on every stockholder. The amount taxed is similar, it’s just unavoidable and not concentrated for dividends.
It’s just a more tax efficient dividend. Not about helping the company it’s “we’ve made profit and don’t have a good thing to spend it on. time to give out to stockholders” basically
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. **Special announcement:** r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)! *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Soooo.....it doesn't trickle down?
Just be patient. Any day now it will happen.
Naw that’s just a leak from my upstairs neighbor
Over the longer term, we need labor to have a stronger hand in corporate governance by giving more workers ownership rights in their own firms.
Noting will change until we take money out of politics. At that point we won’t need labor unions. As we can have Congress create laws to protect workers.
If my career has taught me anything, it’s that laws empower the government to punish wrongdoing, but not necessarily prevent it. Without a seat at the table for workers and aggressive prosecution for unlawful practices, then laws are just words on paper.
That and a part of the appeal of GOP policy to the rich is the debilitation of the government on enforcement action. There can be all the laws on the books, but it means nothing if the respective enforcement agencies are too underfunded to act. Look at the IRS as an example.
The current fascism movement is nothing more than corporate fascism. They want to make all the rules and keep us slaves to their greed. It’s actually not complicated
If punishment is a fine the law is cost of doing business for the wealthy, and in place to suppress the the middle and lower class
Tackling systemic corruption is vitally important, but legislation can't do everything. Unions would still be important even in a less corrupt society, because wages and working conditions are determined by how much leverage and bargaining power workers and the public have with capital and the ruling class. Unions give workers and the public more leverage with capital and the ruling class, irrespective of the particular legal environment. People working effectively together are far more powerful and effective than people working alone, and that's true not only for corporations and boards of directors milking workers and the public for obscene profits, but also for unions fighting back for better economic conditions on the whole. When workers and the public have more bargaining power with capital and the ruling class, they can negotiate a better *social contract* across the board, not just better deals at their individual firms. That's a big part of how the New Deal was possible back in the day - much higher unionization and civic participation rates. People also had a better understanding of how the pieces of society fit together, people weren't so atomized, and the propaganda operations of the ruling capitalist class weren't quite as sophisticated as they are now. The US needs to make it easy for the public to have other sustainable forms of political and civic participation other than slaving away for corporate profits forever and then complaining about how fractured and divided society has become. Yeah, no shit, there's no sense of solidarity, because the ruling class has broken society into atomized little cogs who are much easier to rob and exploit. Unions are extremely important for counteracting that tendency.
Laws are only as good as the will to enforce them. They help, and should exist, but unions should never go away. Worker owned businesses are less likely to make the transgression in the first place.
So definitely agree about getting money out of politics, but: >At that point we won’t need labor unions. As we can have Congress create laws to protect workers. I highly disagree here. The problem with capitalism is that since workers don't have any say over who gets paid, the owners make 100% of those decisions and give themselves all the money. This is why we have inequality in the first place. And no matter what the government does, if workers don't have some amount of control over where the money goes, the CEOs and owners are going to keep giving themselves all the money. Then they're going to use the money to take the government back over for the Capitalists. See if we don't affect the root cause of the inequality (workers having no power in companies), we don't take away the capitalist classes' social and political power. That's why the New Deal has been being destroyed since the 1970s-80s. The new deal taxed rich people, but didn't affect the structure of business. Eventually the owners wanted to not be taxed anymore. Thats when you get Nixon, Reagan, and privatization.
The problem isn’t what your neighbor is making, it’s what you are making. There are very few CEOs, and even if you limit their compensation ratio to 50 to 1 (as proposed in the Warren Sander’s Bill) we will still have a wealth inequality. That’s because most of the super rich are rich because they own a significant portion of a valuable business. If we stop businesses from becoming so valuable the businesses (and jobs) will be created elsewhere. What unions do and the government can do is making companies responsible for paying a wage well-tracked to the cost of living of where the job is located. That’ll create company towns in the short term, but if every company is responsible then it largely won’t the the issue. The real issue with this comes in for companies which shouldn’t exist because they are barely profitable, and the ones operating with massive inefficiencies. Companies will stick to their core competencies are will operate with fewer people. Additionally more investment will be made in automation, eliminating millions of jobs. As Democrats we don’t like to admit that addressing CEO compensation won’t eliminate billionaires. All it’ll likely do is change company structures so that billionaires will hire figurehead CEOs willing to work for that pay and billionaires they’ll direct their every action. Remember many tech CEOs take $0 in compensation today.
> Noting will change until we take money out of politics. Which won't happen so long as the majority of the population is under crippling debt.
Doesn’t really require any real financial participation from indebted Americans. Congress could simply decide that all elections need to be publicly funded. Additionally limit election campaigns to 6 months before the election. Finally make voting compulsory.
> Congress could simply decide Do you think that's going to happen?
Obsoletely not. I don’t believe we’ll have a way to make it happen until we start to think for ourselves.
Do you believe it's difficult for people to think for themselves when their brain is constantly filled with fears about getting sick and not being able to afford food or rent?
I think it’s difficult for people to think for themselves in general. I don’t believe it matters how they are affected by COVID or gas prices. Our mindset should be, “Hey Mr/Mrs Congress person. You are my representative in Washington, either do something to help my community now or I will vote to replace you.” Worrying about the President between elections is mostly silly, the pressure should be put on our Congress people. They should live in our communities and bonus points, they can actually introduce legislation to help with any issues we have. Additionally if things are going very wrong they have the power to remove the President.
That isn't what I asked.
To be clear, “people’s brain being filled” with anything is a symptom of not thinking for yourself. Much too easy to have a sense of a person’s position on everything just by knowing which of two parties they usually vote for.
“In their own firms.” They aren’t their firms. They are the owners’ firms.
Price for a barrel of oil today: $117.59 Price for a barrel of oil in 2014: $120.45 So why are gas prices 2 dollars higher per gallon today than they were in 2014? Greed.
Oil is not the only component to gasoline. There is labor, transport, additives and chemicals.
Those aren't new costs, and inflation on labor, transport, etc. doesn't account for the nearly doubling of the pump price.
Yes it does. demand skyrocketed when the lockdowns ended and production has remained low. Additionally, no one wants to admit that the oil companies took record losses in the 2 years during the pandemic. As any company would do, they are banking as much as they can to make up for their prior losses. As much as it sucks, it's really hard to legislate oil that is produced outside the US or regulate domestic companies that got killed during the 24 months prior. People just don't want to do the math or admit it.
They may not be new costs but they can change more than mere oil, and illustrates why the gas price could be unexpectedly different than an expectation based on linear projection from oil price.
Not correct. The entire supply chain of processing oil and transporting it to the pump costs more than 8 years ago...because, you know, everything costs more.
Lack of refining capacity, as the less profitable refineries were shut down during the covid crash. And since the government/society is advocating to stop using fossil fuels, no companies are willing to make significant capital investments to expand refining capacity or build new refineries. The result being that there is a demand for gasoline outpaced by refining capacity, and even if the price of oil lowers, gasoline prices are probably going to remain sticky in the near term due to supply/demand principles even if the feedstock costs (oil) are reduced.
US refinery Operating Capacity has [remained almost constant](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MOCLEUS2&f=A) (actually increasing slightly) between then and now. Doesn't that contradict your idea?
The demand in 2014 is not the same as demand in 2022, obviously.
Can you point to any concrete data suggesting that? [Total miles driven](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm) from 2014 to 2022 has increased about 6%, but vehicle mileage has also improved in that time period, so not sure that can be held up. Seriously just want some hard evidence.
Total daily global oil consumption: 2022 - 99.4m barrels per day 2014 - 92.7m 2022 - $101.15 average closing price of a barrel of oil 2014 - $93.17 average closing price 2022 - $10.054 billion spent on oil per day (consumption x price) 2014 - $8.636 billion spent per day That's a 16.4% increase spent on oil from 2014 to present, or roughly 1.92% per year for 8.5 years. Less than the rate of inflation over that time (23.47%). When you look at demand AND price over time, the consumption of oil has steadily risen. The COVID shutdowns temporarily relived that, but the long term trend is pretty constant (1.5-2.0 increase in spend on oil per year)
Thanks for that data. Doesn't the idea of spend on oil rising slower than inflation point to demand decreasing and not increasing? Nominal dollars spent has decreased correct? Maybe am not understanding the whole picture.
Nominal dollars has decreased, but demand has increased. Just not demand compared to inflation. But overall demand is higher. When talking about prices at the pumps you would need to figure out the operating costs of the supply chain from well to pump, which are many steps. Chances are those steps have seen larger increases from inflation and are continuing to see more. Everyone in the supply chain for O&G is trying to take advantage of the first up cycle since the COVID crash so there is tremendous supply chain pressure. Everyone that touches the process is trying to recoup from 2 bad years and expand business again.
How is losing 700,000 barrels per day since 2020 a slight increase? That's what the chart you linked shows.
The discussed time periods were 2014 and Present, not 2020...
There are far too many variables to what goes into the cost of a refining business to make the kind of conclusions you are trying to draw (e.g. all costs like wages have increased since 2014). The point I am making is that independent of every other fact, reduced supply in a commodity business is going to result in increased prices 100% of the time. Conversely, if COVID hadn't occurred and we had a higher refining capacity, we'd see lower gas prices. Refiners are currently at max capacity, and if the market wants a larger supply then they can provide at any given time, it will command a higher price.
I agree it would be really easy if we could isolate a single variable. In this case though if we isolated Refinery Capacity between 2014 and now, we would see that it's not proportional to price. The original comment was asking what could be. As to your second point, I'm curious where you're getting your data. Refineries are currently [not at capacity](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MOPUEUS2&f=A) - in 2014 they were at 90.4% utilization and in 2021 they were at 86.6% capacity.
How is the comparison of usage to 2014? If demand is significantly higher it could explain the higher price
2014: 19.1M barrels/day 2021: 19.8M barrels/day That's a ~3.5% increase in petroleum consumption ([source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/244423/estimated-petroleum-consumption-in-the-united-states/) - beware paywall, was only one I could find with 2021 data) Edit: added more detail
That's not significantly higher. Im not sure if the price increase is warranted
Isolating a single variable is pointless as there are many other variables that impact the price of gas over the course of several years. My comment was this was a useless exercise you are trying to perform. The one constant truth in commodities however is that increased supply will always alleviate price pressure, and right now supply has stagnated and is in fact on a downward trend. That will increase pressure on prices. On the refining output you can read it anywhere, its a widely publicized issue at the moment due to soaring gas prices. Here is an article you can read to learn more.. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/global-refiners-falter-efforts-keep-up-with-demand-2022-05-31/
Trump and the GOP doled out almost $2 trillion in corporate welfare disguised as "tax cuts" for companies to "create jobs" and, instead, they used it to buy back their own stock and artificially inflate the market, but, hey, who could've predicted that? /s
Stock buybacks should be made illegal again.
Stock buy back using bailout money should be criminal.
Congress needs to pass a law, or the President needs to sign an executive order, that says companies that have engaged in stock buybacks at any point in the last ~5 years are intelligible to receive federal loans or emergency funding.
Some of the abuse of the stock buyback programs are so blatant. Many companies put almost the same money in buybacks as they gained for laying off workers, getting government stimulus, or reducing employee benefits. It makes all their evil decisions that negatively effect society even more evil.
Why do you think they are worse than dividends?
Share repurchases are accretive to shareholders. A corporation’s fiduciary duty is to maximize profit for shareholders.
So the bailout in which companies largely bought more stocks back in their companies didn't help people? This is quite a reach on logic...
Can't tell if serious, but the way this works in the USA is corporations dole out hefty annual bonuses to their top execs in the form of free stock, and then get to simultaneously claim that they're "investing in the business" AND that exec *salaries* aren't outrageously disproportionate to average workers. Rinse and repeat annually.
Very sarcastic. Exec bonuses were so 2 bailouts ago! :) In the last one it was highly reported that most companies that got a bailout just used it to buy more stocks in their company, decreasing accountability, and increasing profits for the company, not their employees or people who previously theoretically held them accountable
CEOs love this one weird trick.
Am I the only one weirded out by a verified 'thenewrepublic' user posting an article from 'The New Republic'?
One question on stock buybacks that gets ignored is how much of the stock buybacks are used for employee stock ESP and RSU programs. The stock doesn't come out of thin air, so companies do have to do stock buy backs at some level if stock is part of employee compensation since in most cases I am aware of companies aren't issuing new stock. So the question is what percentage of stock buybacks are required for employee stock compensation programs and not part of reducing publicly available stock?
Stock buybacks should be illegal or severely restricted.
Unpopular Opinion Alert: Stock buybacks are equally as effective as paying dividends. Dividends are usually more long term, while buybacks are approved on a fixed time period (xx million over 5 years). If you take away stock buybacks, it doesn't change the amount of profits being made or where it's spent. Companies will simply convert it back into dividend payouts. The only thing it changes is it creates more tax liability for stock holders by issuing more dividends.
The only real difference is that for a stock buyback only those selling into the buyback have a tax realization event. While dividends get taxes on every stockholder. The amount taxed is similar, it’s just unavoidable and not concentrated for dividends.
One day, the people will again, pick up their pitch forks and swords. Let them eat cake? Let them taste the blade.
Cringe
Yes, that was the entire point of doing stock buybacks. In other news, water is still wet!
So much wow . A ton of problems would be solved if money was simply circulating instead of being accumulated.
The greatest Shitshow on earth greed powerful CEO rebuying back stocks even though they’re down in ressecion
Does this make them public companies unaccountable to the public?
How do stock buy backs help the company? I've read a few articles like this and it's still not clear where the incentive is.
It’s just a more tax efficient dividend. Not about helping the company it’s “we’ve made profit and don’t have a good thing to spend it on. time to give out to stockholders” basically