[svardilfari]

As an 11,000 word explanation on what stock buybacks are, decent article.

What this article fails to do is repudiate the 'hook' espoused in the first paragraph. Workers are pissed because stock buybacks are highly visible reinvestments by companies of their profits unto themselves and shareholders. The single article source used to argue against flat-line wages through the ensuing decades (from 1997 no less) is all but worthless as it contains no real data, but only expositions without factual source claims. Regardless, flat-line wages ARE real and ARE felt by almost every single person. You would need to waste 11,000 words arguing against that to have better effect.

Finally, spending all that hot-air to explain buybacks and calling workers economically ignorant is lazy writing. No one cares if it's dividends or buybacks, they want to be paid more for the work output they provide. Buybacks are just highly visible and reinforce the point even more so.

[takinola]

Stock buybacks and wage increases are not necessarily related issues. A stock buyback is just a way to return money to shareholders. A wage increase is about paying your workforce appropriately. The only connection between the two is that they both involve a transfer of value from the company to a group of stakeholders but it is not as if the choice is exclusive or correlated.

Companies generally pay their workers more only if they have to (tight labor market, threat of stoppages, etc). Companies generally do stock buybacks if that is the best use of the cash at hand (ie there are no better investment opportunities for the capital available). The considerations are completely different.

[gary_0]

> Stock buybacks and wage increases are not necessarily related issues.

Workers (or their union representatives) asking for wage increases are usually told "sorry, there's no money". If the company then does a share buyback, employees who haven't seen significant raises in years are going to take umbrage. In that context, that's why buybacks are such an issue: they're seen as a "fuck you" to underpaid workers.

[takinola]

"Sorry, there's no money" is not a complete statement. The more honest statement is "Sorry, there's no money for you".

Clearly, companies spend money on things (offices, factories, private jets, etc) other than salary increases all the time. The company has decided that its money is better spent on this thing rather than the other. Sure, workers might quibble about whether the money is better spent going to them but buybacks are not any different than any other thing the company is spending money on so it is not any more of a "fuck you" than other types of expenditure.