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I don't know how we could through legislation mandate things like banning the US government from doing biz with companies that underpay their workers and enrich

I don't know how we could through legislation mandate things like banning the US government from doing biz with companies that underpay their workers and enrich their C-Suite handsomely, but I support it. With executive pay being over 500x what the average worker at the company makes, no wonder there's effectively 2 Americas - our social contract has been broken. While Japan has its own issues, the social contract between low-wage and high-wage workers has been intact and there's a reason they don't have some of the issues that we do in terms of class disparity and the long-term ramifications of one class of already privileged individuals making astronomical amounts of money by screwing over everyone else. We also need to ban buybacks, or tax them REALLY heavily - over 100%. Make it wildly unprofitable to do so. Or, I like this idea better: for every $10 million you spend on buybacks, you loose your right as a corporation or an officer of a corporation to lobby local, state, and federal governments in any way for a year.

triceratops 2y ago
There's a legitimate use for buybacks, but I don't like seeing them used as a tax dodge over dividends. Rich shareholders can borrow more against their appreciated assets post-buyback. But they're useless to poorer shareholders unless they plan to sell at that exact time. The recent proposal to tax borrowing against assets as realized gains might be the best way to thread the needle.
rpcope1 2y ago
Buybacks shouldn't have ever been made legal in the first place, as the fears that cause them to be regulated in the first place have really come to pass. I'm sure someone will right on queue chime in and talk about how buybacks are superior to dividends for a whole lot of reasons, the least abstract being that they're ostensibly tax advantaged. I really believe we'd all be better off if they went back to being banned and equities go back to just issuing dividends (which I strongly believe is better and more intuitive for small time investors). If nothing else, even though I'm sure a lot of wall street types will lose their mind, buybacks absolutely should not be tax advantaged in relation to dividends.
walthamstow 2y ago
I like this, hit 'em where it hurts, which for most corps is their ability to lobby the state
- highcountess 2y ago
  If you want to hit em where it hurts we need to make money printing and the directly associated deficit spending and national debt accumulation, a cost of the top ~5% of income and asset holders. To your point, the only reason that it makes any sense and that corps can even pay for lobbying is precisely because of the inflation fraud, robbery. It is the very scam and theft of value through inflation (among other methods) that provides corporations with an abundance of money to lavish on politicians who then have an abundance of money to lavish on those corporations ... rinse and repeat. Make the cost of inflation directly payable by the ruling class through taxation on both their income AND wealth and so many problems are solved immediately, literally overnight things would start shifting. Work would become valuable just like your savings from that work that you could put to good use for yourself rather than having is stolen by the ruling class/government woudl also increase; and CEO con artists (persuading into having confidence) would lose value and so would "investors", which is just people who know how to get close to the spigot of value theft from the middle and lower classes, for distribution to those who seek favor and pledge loyalty. In essence what we now effectively have and seems to be emerging ever more is a new kind of feudal and aristocratic structure. We still have the titles and posesions that are given out by the lords and dukes and kings, and we have the peasants that are exploited; only it is now made a lot more efficient and profitable through the currency based money system. Remove the fraud and theft of inflation and you bring the whole system down and you can do that by simply making those who enriched themselves through deficits and national debt that is nothing more than taking out loans in other people's names (yours) in order to bank the money, then also responsible for paying the debt they plundered off/down.
osigurdson 2y ago
I don't really like such socialist ideas, but, really the company's directors aren't helping shareholders much by paying the CEO of Starbucks so much. Is he really going to have any impact? This is Starbucks after all. Is he going to come up with a new killer coffee flavour or snack? I guarantee this person will make zero difference for shareholders. Static companies like Starbucks shouldn't even bother with a CEO.
- NickC25 2y ago
  It's not really socialist to say that a massive corporation, that already profits in the billions, doesn't really need to have a CEO that's compensated to the tune of 10s of millions annually, and also gets a massive stock grant. It's common sense if we want to keep capitalism as we know it from eating itself. And yes, no new CEO of such an organization will fundamentally grow the company to a large enough degree that small shareholders will see significant gains. It's something we should have an AI do. I've met a few CEOs of massive companies, and the ones that don't really have a product/engineering background are good talkers who happen to know how to delegate really well. They aren't in the hotseat to grow the company, they are there to keep the company going on its current path.
- piva00 2y ago
  It's not a socialist idea, there's nothing in that idea pushing towards collective ownership of the means of production by workers. The idea that high-earners should contribute more to the society enabling them to even accumulate such wealth is not socialist on any principle.
highcountess 2y ago
I can simplify all of that for you. The core bottom of the rabbit hole cause is that detrimental things are profitable for the ruling class, which is inverse of a positive or universally desirable outcome, and that has only gotten exponentially worse over time. So, making things like costs of wars, crime, foreseeable natural disasters, drugs, immigration, inflation, deficits/national debt, etc all the financial responsibility of those who profit from these things and are responsible for the outcomes; would immediately stop things like the kinds of wildly disproportionate CEO pay, because it would stop "money printing", which would end deficits, which would end national debt piling higher, which was used to inflate corporations and make "buy-backs" and which would have turned off the need for immigrants to undermine the salaries of workers in order to turn the delta in to profits and executive bonuses. It's not even really that hard, it's basically just a derivative chain that is getting out of hand and will likely cause the collapse of the USA because it has even been driving all the accumulating and overshadowing geopolitical issues. Do you think we would be in the Ukraine trying to ankle bite Russia and bleeding ourselves dry if the ruling classes were suffering massive costs for their little 2014 regime change consequences adventure, rather than making massive corrupt and plundering profits and gains? Think we would have invaded Iraq if it had cost the ruling class $5 Trillion dollars of their wealth? Or Afghanistan for another $5 Trillion? Do you think that 9/11 would have even happened if listening and acting on all the warnings preceding the event would have meant costing them another $10 trillion of their wealth? Would the housing cricsis have happened? Would they have pushed the "target 2% inflation" and would the inflation be "transitory" if it had cost them, effectively all their wealth they accumulated only through that inflation and deficit spending and national debt accumulation? It always frustrates me that people cannot understand that the things they support on one hand that makes them feel virtuous (I won't even mention one because peopel can't handle having their delusion pierced), are exactly the things that empower the things they are opposed to on the other hand. We cannot solve "500x what the avg worker at the company makes" without even really understanding the black box that you get immediate aggression in response to even suggesting we maybe open up and take a look. There are so many sacred golden calfs that people will defend to their proverbial or even literal death; all the while lamenting the things their golden calf causes.
- NickC25 2y ago

triceratops 2y ago

There's a legitimate use for buybacks, but I don't like seeing them used as a tax dodge over dividends. Rich shareholders can borrow more against their appreciated assets post-buyback. But they're useless to poorer shareholders unless they plan to sell at that exact time. The recent proposal to tax borrowing against assets as realized gains might be the best way to thread the needle.

rpcope1 2y ago

Buybacks shouldn't have ever been made legal in the first place, as the fears that cause them to be regulated in the first place have really come to pass. I'm sure someone will right on queue chime in and talk about how buybacks are superior to dividends for a whole lot of reasons, the least abstract being that they're ostensibly tax advantaged. I really believe we'd all be better off if they went back to being banned and equities go back to just issuing dividends (which I strongly believe is better and more intuitive for small time investors). If nothing else, even though I'm sure a lot of wall street types will lose their mind, buybacks absolutely should not be tax advantaged in relation to dividends.

walthamstow 2y ago

I like this, hit 'em where it hurts, which for most corps is their ability to lobby the state

highcountess 2y ago
If you want to hit em where it hurts we need to make money printing and the directly associated deficit spending and national debt accumulation, a cost of the top ~5% of income and asset holders. To your point, the only reason that it makes any sense and that corps can even pay for lobbying is precisely because of the inflation fraud, robbery. It is the very scam and theft of value through inflation (among other methods) that provides corporations with an abundance of money to lavish on politicians who then have an abundance of money to lavish on those corporations ... rinse and repeat. Make the cost of inflation directly payable by the ruling class through taxation on both their income AND wealth and so many problems are solved immediately, literally overnight things would start shifting. Work would become valuable just like your savings from that work that you could put to good use for yourself rather than having is stolen by the ruling class/government woudl also increase; and CEO con artists (persuading into having confidence) would lose value and so would "investors", which is just people who know how to get close to the spigot of value theft from the middle and lower classes, for distribution to those who seek favor and pledge loyalty. In essence what we now effectively have and seems to be emerging ever more is a new kind of feudal and aristocratic structure. We still have the titles and posesions that are given out by the lords and dukes and kings, and we have the peasants that are exploited; only it is now made a lot more efficient and profitable through the currency based money system. Remove the fraud and theft of inflation and you bring the whole system down and you can do that by simply making those who enriched themselves through deficits and national debt that is nothing more than taking out loans in other people's names (yours) in order to bank the money, then also responsible for paying the debt they plundered off/down.

osigurdson 2y ago

I don't really like such socialist ideas, but, really the company's directors aren't helping shareholders much by paying the CEO of Starbucks so much. Is he really going to have any impact? This is Starbucks after all. Is he going to come up with a new killer coffee flavour or snack? I guarantee this person will make zero difference for shareholders. Static companies like Starbucks shouldn't even bother with a CEO.

NickC25 2y ago
It's not really socialist to say that a massive corporation, that already profits in the billions, doesn't really need to have a CEO that's compensated to the tune of 10s of millions annually, and also gets a massive stock grant. It's common sense if we want to keep capitalism as we know it from eating itself. And yes, no new CEO of such an organization will fundamentally grow the company to a large enough degree that small shareholders will see significant gains. It's something we should have an AI do. I've met a few CEOs of massive companies, and the ones that don't really have a product/engineering background are good talkers who happen to know how to delegate really well. They aren't in the hotseat to grow the company, they are there to keep the company going on its current path.
piva00 2y ago
It's not a socialist idea, there's nothing in that idea pushing towards collective ownership of the means of production by workers. The idea that high-earners should contribute more to the society enabling them to even accumulate such wealth is not socialist on any principle.

highcountess 2y ago

I can simplify all of that for you. The core bottom of the rabbit hole cause is that detrimental things are profitable for the ruling class, which is inverse of a positive or universally desirable outcome, and that has only gotten exponentially worse over time. So, making things like costs of wars, crime, foreseeable natural disasters, drugs, immigration, inflation, deficits/national debt, etc all the financial responsibility of those who profit from these things and are responsible for the outcomes; would immediately stop things like the kinds of wildly disproportionate CEO pay, because it would stop "money printing", which would end deficits, which would end national debt piling higher, which was used to inflate corporations and make "buy-backs" and which would have turned off the need for immigrants to undermine the salaries of workers in order to turn the delta in to profits and executive bonuses. It's not even really that hard, it's basically just a derivative chain that is getting out of hand and will likely cause the collapse of the USA because it has even been driving all the accumulating and overshadowing geopolitical issues. Do you think we would be in the Ukraine trying to ankle bite Russia and bleeding ourselves dry if the ruling classes were suffering massive costs for their little 2014 regime change consequences adventure, rather than making massive corrupt and plundering profits and gains? Think we would have invaded Iraq if it had cost the ruling class $5 Trillion dollars of their wealth? Or Afghanistan for another $5 Trillion? Do you think that 9/11 would have even happened if listening and acting on all the warnings preceding the event would have meant costing them another $10 trillion of their wealth? Would the housing cricsis have happened? Would they have pushed the "target 2% inflation" and would the inflation be "transitory" if it had cost them, effectively all their wealth they accumulated only through that inflation and deficit spending and national debt accumulation? It always frustrates me that people cannot understand that the things they support on one hand that makes them feel virtuous (I won't even mention one because peopel can't handle having their delusion pierced), are exactly the things that empower the things they are opposed to on the other hand. We cannot solve "500x what the avg worker at the company makes" without even really understanding the black box that you get immediate aggression in response to even suggesting we maybe open up and take a look. There are so many sacred golden calfs that people will defend to their proverbial or even literal death; all the while lamenting the things their golden calf causes.

NickC25 2y ago