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Financial responsibility
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I'm so sick of companies pissing away all of their profit and money to make rich people richer then when the smallest problem hits it is our problem. We pay. Fuck them.
Looking at this (below) with some super sloppy math they have made in the last ten years 25 billion in profits and 5 billion in losses totally 20 billion in profits (give or take as my interest in totalling this accurately is zero). The fact that they used their money irresponsibly and didn't say for a raining day, or it's raining planes day, is not the tax payers that need to save them. I'm in my mid 30s, you know how many times I've seen extremely profitable and successful "too big to fail" businesses bailed out. Fuck the fucking fuckers and anyone who trys and correct my math.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BA/boeing/gross-profit
Between 1998 and 2018, the plane manufacturer also manufactured a whopping $61.0 billion in stock buybacks, amounting to 81.8 percent of its profits. Add in dividends and Boeing's shareholders received 121 percent of its profits.
Stock buybacks should be illegal or at least heavily regulated. They're stealing money from their employees, putting their company in peril by not having cash on hand, and stunting innovation. Imagine if major companies had to put profit back into their company? Instead it's a game to see how much you can exploit the working class, how little you can innovate and still get by (it's easy when you have no competition), and gamble (after lobbying with minimal money) that your political plants will force the taxpayers you're exploiting to bail you out. It's pretty disgusting.
https://greenalphaadvisors.com/boeings-struggles-highlight-the-perils-of-stock-buybacks/
https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/ba/buybacks#google_vignette --> they're still doing it as of March of this year.
Stock buybacks aren't really the issue, if they didn't exist they'd just be paying dividends with the money instead. The real issue is the reckless pursuit of maximising shareholder payouts, particularly for too big to fail corps.
While you are correct that dividends would be paid, it just wouldn't happen on this scale or to this detriment, imo. Buybacks are used as a crutch to generate Short-term profit and lead to executives and companies focusing on short-term goals. They artificially increase EPS for executive compensation. This is all exacerbated when companies know they're going to be bailed out by taxpayers because there are only 2 companies that make planes now, or 3 media companies setting prices together.