Political Quotes

“Mr. President, one other issue--I mentioned earlier that one of the major consequences of the Trump tax bill was the explosion of stock buybacks. In 2018 alone--just 2018--U.S. companies announced plans to repurchase more than $1 trillion of their own stock. It is a staggering figure and the highest amount ever recorded in a single year. When companies buy back their own stock, it boosts the earnings of wealthy shareholders and executives but does little for average workers. The vast majority of Americans don't own stocks. In fact, the top 10 percent of Americans own 85 percent of stocks, total. When corporations direct so much of their resources to buy back shares, they restrain their capacity to reinvest profits in R&D, equipment, higher wages, medical leave, pensions, worker retraining, and more. I would like to see a study of how many companies bought back their stocks while leaving pensions underfunded. What is happening is that corporations are promising their workers that they will have a good life in retirement, and, instead, the corporate executives and their top shareholders are enriching themselves. Think about this. Between 2008 and 2017--the last 10 years--466 of the S&P 500 companies did stock buybacks. Do you know how much? It was $4 trillion. That is equal to 53 percent of their profits. More than $1 out of every $2 in profit just went to stock buybacks--not improving our economy, not helping workers, and not helping communities.…”