Those funds would either be re-invested in the company (providing a better work environment and a stronger financial position for the company) or distributed to the shareholders and circulated into the economy and generating tax revenue for society. Instead they are stuck in 'paper' stock value that does nothing but allow the rich to borrow against the 'gains' denying society even benefiting from the taxes those funds should generate if not re-invested in the company in an actual, non 'paper' valuation way.
"paper" value does not simply translate to material value, and when it does, it is simply inflationary.
Imagine every company cut buybacks and raised salary 50%. There would still be the same number of hamburgers and houses, and the same number of labor hours would be required to produce them. As a result, you would simply have an inflation on the order of 50%.
There would only be more tax and circulation in a nominal sense, not in real currency.
December 2022 SouthWest canceled all flights for multiple days costing a billion dollars because of poor scheduling software. Running poor quality/inefficient scheduling software most likely incurred other additional expenses/stresses for workers and flight crews during a larger period than December 2022 but there is not a way for me to quickly to put a cumulative value on that for a response here. That 1 billion dollar loss and incurred stress for workers can be attributed to the stock buybacks listed above.
It can't be attributed to stock buybacks though, you just assume it can be. Lots of companies that didn't buy back stocks also have poor internal software and may generally not reinvest that money internally, or invest it incorrectly instead of blowing it on some other thing than buybacks. There is no causal relationship at all, and not even a strong correlative one between buybacking companies and business failures.
Why did you move the goalposts from employee stress, what we were talking about, to business failure? That's a ridiculous level goal move.
I gave an example where the stress from lack of reinvestment in core company infrastructure (the scheduling system is KEY to a successful airline, and the airline knew it was an issue of stress/deficient because it was an important talking point in union/company talks because of the stress it was causing way in advance of it escalating to causing a billion dollar expense). That it didn't shut the company down completely (just for a few days, during one of the business travel seasons) is not relevant to causing employee stress.
Southwest spent billions in the immediate run up on stock buybacks.
Southwest did not upgrade a known deficient scheduling system vital to their core business.
This poor scheduling software had major impact on flight crews during the same period as stock options (to the point their union complained) proving my initial point.
Not only that, Southwest's neglect in order to feed stock buybacks resulted in a cost of a billion dollars to the company itself, let alone my original point of needless stress on employees sacrificed for stock buybacks instead of business re-investment.
Business failures, not business failure, as in failure to upgrade systems as you mentioned, not wholesale business bankruptcy. The point is that there is no causal relationship between stock buybacks and not reinvesting into systems, as many companies who don't buy back stocks also don't necessarily reinvest and may still cause employee stress. That is specifically my point, that people talk about unrelated things that don't relate to the main point. Correlation does not equal causation.
You win. There is zero way to PROVE my exact specific was caused by the over 3 billion dollars of stock buybacks SouthWest did during that period. I can't go back in time, prevent those buybacks, and see where SouthWest would have used that over 3 billion dollars. But I can know that with it going to useless stock buybacks when the company was unstable and have failing core systems the market provided a perverse incentive (stock buybacks) over sound business decisions (making sure core business systems were up to requirements and not needless placing stress on employees specifically flight crews). The market should have pressured the company to ensure it had a sound business. Instead it sucked up over 3 billions dollars. Is that the invisible hand at work?
