Scholarship table
One of the purposes, not the purpose. If a company feels their stock is valued low, they should have every right to buy it back and take shares off the market. Employees are part of corporations and they benefit, too. Most people get a tax break, that means most will get more money out of the deal in the short term. Wages are up (highest since 2009) and with unemployment so low they will go up higher as labor markets are tight and employers have to pay more for talent, economy is roaring right now, but everything is cyclical and will come down again. The question is whether a bust comes on the heels of all of this.The other purpose was to move money offshore to the US. Get it out of Ireland and other low tax situations. Apple is moving vast sums of money ($285 Billion) from foreign countries to the US, as an Apple shareholder I applaud this. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/apples-plan-to-repatriate-285-billion-could-be-a-boost-for-investors.html Good move. Rather have the money here, working for the citizenry here. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/17/16901936/apple-tax-bill-foreign-money-united-states
Overall, I think the tax plan is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Give the wealthy and powerful more wealth and power?
$1,000,000,000,000
Both are mechanisms for putting cash in investor pockets but dividends have a shorter term impact because A) you have to own the stock at a given point to receive the dividend(so you can't buy a stock to get the dividend) B) dividends do nothing to change the scarcity of a stock so supply and demand doesn't factor in like buybacks do. Dividends can drive up a stock price long term if a company is paying them out on the regular whereas buybacks pump the price up because there are fewer stocks and/or people want to cash out of a certain investment at a premium. Regular dividends would indicate continuing strength in a company but that's also why companies have come to rely more on buybacks than dividends...if you cut a dividend just once for some reason it can tank the stock long term whereas not doing a buy back isn't signaled as anything.
Buybacks also increase the EPS (earnings per share) for a unit of stock, as there are less stocks outstanding in the market for the same amount of company earnings. So you are essentially comparing between receiving a larger dividend or owning a larger share of future earnings (stock buyback)....there is not a large difference between the two and the negative connotation on buybacks has never made much sense to me.
Socialism makes no sense.
Wow, I'm very concerned for Benny. Being able to mimic Myron Medcalf's writing so closely implies an oncoming case of dementia.
And yet, no support here for compulsory voting?!?
And yet, no support here for compulsory voting?!? Hypocrites.
Don't worry, Benny, I support compulsory voting ... as long as folks promise to vote for the correct candidates!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/business/shrinking-stock-market.html
Thank you for linking this. There have been a few of these articles on this topic going back the last few years, but with different viewpoints on where it is good or bad.https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/07/the-stock-market-is-shrinking-and-thats-a-good-thing-private-equity-honchos-say.htmlhttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-incredible-shrinking-stock-market-is-bad-news-for-this-type-of-investor-2017-06-09https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/09/investing/stock-market-shrinking/index.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/fewer-listed-companies-is-that-good-or-bad-for-stock-markets-1515100040
What often is not mentioned is that amount of international companies available to invest in has doubled. While the US stock market has shrunk, it ends up being a wash with the combined US and ex-US stocks available. Micro Cap US stocks have undoubtedly shrunk, however.
Apple - along with Facebook, YouTube and Spotify - finally kicked the d-bag conspiracy theorist Alex Jones off their sites. For those who might not know, Jones is now being sued for repeatedly claiming that Sandy Hook didn't really happen, the government is running a conspiracy to make us think it happened, and 20 little kids actually faked their deaths.Jones is claiming this is a First Amendment issue. Of course it isn't. Apple can take any podcast it wants off iTunes, and Jones still can spew his demented world view any time he wants.If there are 10 bigger d-bags in the world than Alex Jones, I can't name 'em.
One side note, I've always struggled with the idea that the stock market isn't "democratic" enough that the common person doesn't have access to it. Even if you raised a minimum wage to $20/hr are folks at that wage level going to invest in the market? Is that a good thing to aspire to? I'm not saying this from an elite "stay out of my country club" standpoint, but pragmatically speaking isn't there a certain income level where market investment makes sense because the risk/reward tolerances are different? The focus on the market as the source of income inequality is really focusing on the symptom more than the cause (IMO it's monetary/tax policy at fault not the markets).
I agree entirely with this. My nit to pick is more with the way the markets are portrayed as indicative of economic health/growth for the entire country. The folks with money in the markets are a desired advertising audience and consume economics-oriented media, leading to a positive feedback loop tracking the daily movement of the markets. But this has resulted in a sort of media creep whereby its now "common knowledge" that the market is an accurate depiction of US economic health as a whole (because people with money in the markets care a lot about their daily movements). This has lead to a lot of those bad monetary/tax policies - "if the markets go up, it must be good for the US economy" type stuff. But that's just not accurate - a lot of policy can be N2O in the market's tank, but have a neutral or even negative economic impact on the majority of US workers. Its kind of an insidious side effect of "checking the markets" on the local 5 and 6 o clock news everyday.