Schumer and Sanders: Limit Corporate Stock Buybacks

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/opinion/chuck-schumer-bernie-sanders.html

by projectramo • 7 years ago

23 12 7 years ago

elektor• 7 years ago

From the article: President Trump promised the typical American household a $4,000 pay raise as he pushed for his tax giveaway to the rich. The reality, however, is that from December 2017 to December 2018, real wages for average workers have gone up by just $9.11 a week.

While I agree with Schumer and Sander's viewpoint, I think it's a little disingenuous to compare a per year value to a per week value.

mcv• 7 years ago

Multiply by 52. That makes it $4000 compared to $474.

dfxm122• 7 years ago

Not at all. 9.11 * 52 = 473.72. At the very least, it's very obviously somewhere between $468-$520/yr, just over 1/10 of what was promised. There's no insincerity nor obfuscation...

creaghpatr• 7 years ago

Well, except 'household' is not the same as 'worker', and 'typical' is not falsifiable so it could mean anything. When you take a 'typical' household, say 2 employed parents 2 kids and they own a home or other assets it's far from an unreasonable estimate.

But this isn't about reasonable estimates, of course. Hence the deceptive per worker per week comparison. You got played by the household versus worker they snuck in there.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh2• 7 years ago

Like most such proposals, there's very little chance of anything happening. Still, it would amount to a $15/hr minimum wage for companies that are doing well and want to return value to shareholders (unless doing so via dividends would be more efficient). Alternately, companies could just sit on the profits until a friendlier administration came into power.

Why not just pass a $15 minimum wage if that's the policy goal? Asking this question as a Democrat. This seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to achieve the outcome.

dfxm122• 7 years ago

Why not just pass a $15 minimum wage if that's the policy goal? Asking this question as a Democrat.

US Senate Democrats don't have the power to do this. You do see this in local governments where they do (like NY).

I might also wonder if this is the true policy goal nationally, or if they are just floating ideas out there to see the public opinion on them. e.g., If a $15/hr minimum wage isn't passable in their careers, maybe this would be and is a step in that direction.

Additionally, saying something new like this gets their name in headlines, which tends to be a goal for national politicians (especially when not attached to a scandal).

ijpoijpoihpiuoh2• 7 years ago

US Senate Democrats don't have the power to do this.

They don't have the power to limit buybacks preconditioned on $15/hr wages either. Their lack of power to effectuate a national minimum wage doesn't seem to explain the choice to float this policy.

thinkmassive• 7 years ago

A few paragraphs deep in the article: “Our bill will prohibit a corporation from buying back its own stock unless it invests in workers and communities first, including things like paying all workers at least $15 an hour, providing seven days of paid sick leave, and offering decent pensions and more reliable health benefits.“

LarryDarrell• 7 years ago

It's amazing how many of our current awful cultural and financial trends can be traced back to "during the Reagan Administration."

OliverJones• 7 years ago

Something I wonder about here.

Isn't this idea that corporations should not buy back their stock a consequence of the idea that company shares are for speculation, not to get the company operating capital?

What about a company that sells shares, builds a business, makes a profit, and fulfills their mission? Can't such a company then return some or all its value to its investors by redeeming--buying back--its shares?

That's what happens when a company is sold. VC investors expect it.

Another model of company responsibility is to account for externalities. For example, if a company pays such poor wages that workers need public aid (SNAP/"Food Stamps") to feed their families, that's an unaccounted externality. The company's profit in that case comes at a cost to the government's human services operations.

Similar arguments apply to exhaustion of natural resources, and to pollution.

All that being said, the speculative framework for company valuation is certainly the entrenched model. All big companies are basically financial entities with a side hustle in some kind of product or other.

For what it's worth, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet and colleagues) rescued General Electric on the condition that they definancialize and stop treating their products as a side hustle.

WalterSear• 7 years ago

What about a company that sells shares, builds a business, makes a profit, and fulfills their mission? Can't such a company then return some or all its value to its investors by redeeming--buying back--its shares?

As long as it didn't do so by paying people less than $15/hour and provide no sick leave, Sanders and Schumer don't seem to have a problem with that.

donjigweed• 7 years ago

They might be off base on this one....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buyback-derangement-syndrome-15...

Schumer and Sanders: Limit Corporate Stock Buybacks

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