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4 Big Tech giants have plowed over $1 trillion into stock buybacks in 10 years — more than Tesla or Meta's entire market value (markets.businessinsider.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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4 Big Tech giants have plowed over $1 trillion into stock buybacks in 10 years — more than Tesla or Meta's entire market value::Apple poured over $600 billion into buybacks in the decade to March 31, exceeding Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta's combined spending.

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[–] 82 points 3 years ago (31 children)

They were basically illegal until 1982. It was considered, and I believe still is, market manipulation.

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  • [–] 62 points 3 years ago (17 children)

    I guess it was Reagan? again?

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  • [–] 36 points 3 years ago (15 children)

    You can make a serious argument that Reagan caused more suffering than Hilter if you count the long term effects of his political influence

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Is there list of flawed Reagan's policies? I only remember deregulating greenhouse emmisions

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    The thing he's worshiped for (decreasing taxes) is a blatently lie. Taxes on the average citizen were higher when he left office than when he entered. Taxes for the rich and businesses were lower though, unsurprisingly.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Alright man, I hate Reagan more than about anyone I've ever discussed him with, but this is some inflammatory bullshit. There's a select few people you can realistically compare to Hitler, and they all ordered mass detainment/encampment/executions of people.

    Reagan caused a ton of societal and economic damage. All of which could of easily been rolled back if the American people just voted that way. He didn't turn the country into a fascist dictatorship and declare things. He didn't act alone. Reagan was a horrible racist piece of shit, but he was just the face of the republican parties will. Not a genocidal maniac.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

    Last I checked Reagan was voted in. Americans were perfectly fine with the war on drugs and taking benefits away from welfare queens.

    Reagan signed bills that enforced the war on drugs, cut welfare programs, increased mass incarceration, emptied pscyh-wards, ignored the AIDS epidemic, oh and 100% responsible for the whole supplying weapons to a state sponsor of terrorism in Iran and and the raping, toturing, kidnapping, child killing Contras. Oh and knowingly letting cocaine into the country while arresting black and brown ppl completely deleting their lives with mandatory minimums giving crack addicts 50 years for 3 grams of crack.

    The only difference between Reagan and Hitler is Regan doesn't have a final victim tally yet

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    All solid points, all still not putting people in death camps and stealing everything from them. The hyperbolic bullshit of calling everyone Hitler in American politics is just childish.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Hitler was in power from 1933 to 1945, and the death camp program started around 1941. In the Wannsee Conference in 1942 it was decided by Heydrich and Eichmann that the Jewish ghettos cost too much to maintain and it was impossible to deport the Jews on the grounds that no-one else would take them. (That was his argument, but yes, even the US was turning back boatloads of Jewish refugees.) So you're demanding that we compare events in the US to the last couple years of the German Reich.

    Here in the US we're comparable to around 1935, when the Nuremberg laws were getting passed that stripped untermenschen of their rights, which states are doing to women and trans folk right now, in 2023.

    It was during the Reagan administration that the prison industrial complex and the law enforcement industrial complex were established, mostly as a way to funnel government funds into building prisons and letting the DEA harass and shoot up poor people. But to this day, our prisons remain impacted, and the US has the highest rate of imprisonment compared to any other nation, including China and North Korea, and not only are prisons super scary (with a prisoner sexual abuse / violent abuse rate of about 33% from the prison staff and an unreported rate of deaths, often by grisly means like getting willfully denied water and dying of thirst, or getting locked in the showers and braised with scalding water).

    No, the concentration camps are here. The gulags are here in the US, and that's not even getting into the immigration detention centers or the people still detained (without due process) from the war on terror, often who have been tortured.

    It might have been hyperbolic in 2000. But shit got real in 2003 and has never gotten better. In 2017 when the Trump administration went over, the transnational white power movement kicked into full fascist gear, and hasn't even slowed down since Trump left office.

    So yes, comparisons of the United States to the German Reich are scary apt, and unless we don't turn things around, possibly by having to force or coerce the federal government to take it seriously, then we can expect a genocide machine that could exceed the Holocaust, especially since the law enforcement unions nationwide are aligned with the movement.

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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Going public is a way to make certain people money, I grant you that. If businesses want a loan they can apply for one or issue a bond.

    In practice the problem with this is that the number of shareholders shrinks. Which means the company can focus more on short term goals since the shareholders are going to get paid either way.

    Let's consider an example. I buy control over widget co. We make widgets and are turning a nice steady profit. I take the profits and instead of investing in new machines I buy back stock. My personal wealth rises. Long term the company is not investing for the future and is instead consuming itself.

    Now my underlings don't like many of my ideas such as forcing the company to hire my nephew as a consultant for ten million a year. Normally they could fight my ideas and would be motivated to do so. Since if the company goes under they are unemployed. They can go over my head to the board and complain. But I am a smart guy, I made sure when I did my buyback that the entire executive class had plenty of shares. They made a fortune. I have paid for their loyalty and I am going to get it.

    Everyone going along with my plan is making more and more money in personal wealth. The company is bleeding but we are all getting rich. Eventually the company is going to go bottom-up. Which is fine, because we are going to suspend operations long before that happens and pay out the major shareholders. I.e. the executives who went along with it.

    This is only one scenario, and know I didn't come up with it. Read up on what happened to Sears and Toys R US or Lehman Brothers. Bankruptcy for a company doesn't mean what it means for a person. You going bankrupt means rice and ramen for dinner for a year, for them it means a golden parachute.

    Try to think of this stuff as a government, it isn't the worst analogy. The more stakeholders and the more people vested in success in the government the more people are getting public programs (democracy) the less people are vested in success with less power the less the government is going to make it rain (dictatorships). The justifications are the same. People shill for dictators claiming that they are above petty squabbles and can focus on long term goals. While the history of humanity does not show this to be the case.

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  • [+] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    People aren't fundamentally good. People are fundamentally social, and the social pressures and incentives of their society drives the way they act to a large degree.

    In this case, it drives very rich people to do very messed up stuff to become even more very rich.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (6 children)

    as then the company is no longer saddled with their primary responsibility as making money for their stockholders.

    Hah! If only that were true.

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  • [+] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    What I'm trying to say is, these companies don't use stock buybacks with the intention of going private. They're doing stock buybacks to keep the stock price high, so they continue to please stockholders.

    Stockholder pleasing is unfortunately not going away anytime soon.

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  • [+] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    The companies value doesn't change, but shareholders hold X number of stock, so to them their portfolio improves.

    When companies split their stock, it's to keep the price at a reasonable amount for people to buy - when 1 stock is worth $100 it makes the "minimum buy-in" very high. If the stock is split 1:10, the share price drops by 10x but all shareholders get 10x more share, so it doesn't affect them much.

    Ultimately listed companies work for shareholders' benefit.

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