I hear you. I'd love you to break up the argument so others can. I had to read it 3 times to get the core argument. No criticism or lecture, just feedback:

I hear you. I'd love you to break up the argument so others can. I had to read it 3 times to get the core argument. No criticism or lecture, just feedback: --- McDs provide monetary return to their investors (complexities of share buy-back or dividend are tax and administration issues aside from the key issue) Executives and many investors focus on short-term goals. If they are focusing on short term goals linked to stock they are motivated to extract capital (I do not say value, your premise is that capital needs to be reinvested, and is not surplus), not build capital. Whether to extract capital via stock actions could be interestingly compared to "What if they raised capital via fixed income [bank loan, bonds] instead of stock. Would they have the same pressure? My answer would be "Hell yes, but they'd probably planned in advance that this repayment of investment was carefully done, and choosing to use stock to raise capital meant the outcome was a lot more uncertain, or they viewed stock as lush/easy pickings compared to a more sane bank loan." - Could go into that more. (Dis-)meeting of arguments (pro and against, not you and me) So you're saying an extraction of capital is an extraction of value, as there's an opportunity cost of the capital for the investors vs return on capital for the company, but the extractors of capital may have a conflict of interest for doing so. McDs management action say there isn't [a conflict of interest], because they can do it and are backed by shareholders [who may also be under a conflict of long term interest] and capital is better extracted (under short term goals) rather than re-invested. --- Reinvestment: Above minimum wage seems broadly independent of the above, and is an argument of retention of people creating value,; does retaining capital lead to improving human of capital or not? Or are there other options? Retaining capital can imply a lot of things. Releasing it means nothing viable is better than what the investors can find. But define this better. Break down the logical arguments into what they are then approach from an fact-based basis. --- I just wanted to break your argument down into pieces, sorry for being so discursive, it just seemed like lots of directions be being stabbed at, at the same time, and I like your story, it just wasn't that clear.