chinawcswing

chinawcswing t1_ja96wta wrote

It's not a fact though, it is wrong.

There is nothing different about a stock buyback and a dividend payout. Both exist to return excess cash to shareholders.

Companies are not doing stock buybacks to "enrich CEOs". They do them for the same reason they do dividends, which is to enrich shareholders. Rather they are returning excess cash to shareholders, and shareholders turn around and invest that cash into other companies who can invest it more profitably.

Yes, CEOs often are big shareholders. But they in almost all cases are not the majority shareholder.

The reason companies prefer stock buybacks compared to dividends is that it is more tax efficient.

That is why Biden and the /r/antiwork crowd complain about stock buybacks, but not dividend payments. The government gets a larger chunk from dividend payments, compared to stock buy backs.

Even if your theory that stock buybacks exist to enrich the CEO were correct, what do you think companies would do in the absence of such a mechanism? First off they would do a dividend. If you banned that too, they would just ... increase the salary of the CEO.

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chinawcswing OP t1_iu0n5or wrote

While I found Dune difficult to read, it was mostly due to how much information was packed into each paragraph and how Herbert would drop major concepts without any context. I re-read all the dune books twice and on the second re-read it was simple to understand.

A Clockwork Orange is a bit different to me because I can't understand most of the words so far.

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