>It is literally illegal for them to not do what's going to provide the best return to shareholders.

That is an often repeated misconception. A director has a duty of loyalty and care. As long as any decision is made in entire fairness or approved by an independent director courts historically give a lot of leeway. And rightly so. Firstly because most decisions that increase shareholder value on an arbitrary timescale are undesirable and a lot of decisions that will have a negative impact on shareholder value on an arbitrary timescale might still be very attractive. Secondly, it would paralyze the decision-making process.

Just like dividends- share buyback is- in theory- a value-neutral transaction for shareholders (except some tax benefits) but it is a pretty bad signal to give for a tech company imo (what apple is communicating to shareholders is that they can't find a better way to invest the money that would generate value) and has some inherent risks for the company.

You said living wages. Apple software engineers with even a few years of experience make at least $250k lmao

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So workers don't deserve to make money equivalent to the value they produce?

Ur okay letting a rich investors take that money from you? Man stop protecting those in power and punch up for once.

Stop punching down at the workers who actually do the labor in this economy.

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Awesome! Map was cool! THIS makes it real!

Fair enough.

I've created a "proof of concept" map (using just the GBIF data), where you can click the states to see a list of the species in that state: https://robslink.com/SAS/democd104/endangered_species_map.htm

We have an awful lot of these issues for being a "developed" country.

You realize how much tech workers make right?

They don't actually have that similar of geography. Mississippi lies completely in the Atlantic Coastal Plain (the area known for plantations across the South), while only a little over half of Alabama is. The end of the Appalachians occurs in Alabama, just south of Birmingham.

Since it's the end, a lot of the subdivisions of the Appalachians, like the Ridge & Valley, uniquely hit the coastal plain only in Alabama. This creates some rare soil mixes at those points.

On top of that, Alabama's rivers quickly spread out like a fan. So there are many different rivers that cross the fall line (the meeting of the coastal plain with the Appalachians), like the Tennessee River, the Black Warrior River, the Cahaba River, the Coosa River and the Tallapoosa. The fall line tends to isolate aquatic ecosystems above the line, so Alabama ends up with five or six uniquely isolated ecosystems in the northern half of the state.

Then there's the Mobile Delta in the southern part of Alabama. Like any other major swampy area, it has all the pieces needed for massive biodiversity (lots of water, mild winters, longer daylight, etc).

Yet, it's not just that. During the last Ice Age (which, in relative terms, wasn't that long ago), Alabama wasn't covered in glaciers. So it really wasn't a mass extinction event there. In fact, a lot of the wildlife that would be associated with anything south of taiga got pushed down into Alabama. And for other than things far more inclined to cooler temperatures like elk, most of that wildlife stayed.

These things combined make Alabama the most biodiverse state east of the Mississippi, and not Florida like many would assume. Other nearby states have similar aspects, but not in the same degree. For example, Georgia has pretty much all the same things except the different Appalachia strata hitting the coastal plain.

It is literally illegal for them to not do what's going to provide the best return to shareholders. Shareholders would need to take issue with whatever action was taken and take the board to court, but nobody is doing a stock buyback to personally enrich themselves.

You've mangled so many terms here I don't know where to start... Do you think there's a difference between owners and shareholders? Cashing out means selling shares, doing a buyback relies on the market to uphold the current valuation and increase the share price to keep the market cap level. If the market thinks insiders are only doing the buyback to 'cash out' and that it's not in the best interest of the corporation, that won't happen.

I'll let you get back to childish insults now.

It is if you don't have 50k bro... The stock market is for people who have money. Other folks like me have to spend what I get in paychecks on things that keep me and my family alive

They probably designed a lot of new items with the emerge of text-to-image generators

Ok whatever bro

I do understand it and I am pointing it out as peak wealth redistribution. It takes all the hard earned labor and value the employees at the company made, and gives it to investors who spend 4times a year advising managment.

It's utterly dispicable and financializes companies into money printing machines. Thus giving management reasons to outsource and costcut and destroy the US economy further.

Ps, I really am getting tired of your strawmanning here, bringing up different points that have nothing to do with my comments. If u want to support buy backs In a public forum, be my guest. I am with the few with a business and financial education of who see the real reason they exist and how they are used. And your pro position is not going to change that truth, no matter how you try to explain the benefits of them.

It is new year holidays

Strangely there isn't a pure blood ravenclaw

Because it's literally the investors running away with the money, leaving the employees who labored for it high and dry.

There seems to be some seasonality

Invest it into the company through living wages for employees, health benefits, r and d, you know... The things companies originally were supposed to do

You're just assuming that I subscribe to trickle down economics, which I don't btw. I would support an initiative for the government to invest some money for each high school student so that they have some wealth to start out. All I'm trying to point out is that stock buybacks are not the enemy you are making them out to be. They are nearly identical to dividends in their effect. Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it evil.

What are you talking about. I have 50k total saved and I own apple stocks through index funds. It's not hard to get into the stock market.

Slovenia's gdp/capita growth from 1952 (no data before) to 1980 was actually the highest of any developed country (apart from Japan) in the world.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maddison-data-gdp-per-capita-in-2011us-single-benchmark?tab=table&time=1953..1980&country=~SVN

It's good for the shareholders' bottom line short-term, but can be bad long-term if good investments are withheld.

Of course the owners of the company (and their proxies, i.e. management) have every right to cash out now when the company is doing well and it's understandable they care more about nice things now than the future of the company, but to suggest this is somehow a "responsibility" is some bizarre balls-gargling.