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Stock buybacks are a great way for executives to further line their pockets inconspicuously and to allow shareholders to dodge corporate and dividend taxes. It does nothing for the health of the company.

There should be a cap on executive compensation - say 100 times the average employee salary. Barring that, there should be a millionaires and/or wealth tax, so that they at least pay the same tax rate as their secretary.

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Stock buybacks look extra suspicious when majority of compensation for executives is based on stock value... So they can both manipulate the price of stock and also reap benefits from that manipulation. With dividends they have to actually hold the stock to benefit from them.

The "Wealth Tax" proposed currently by Sen Warren & a few others seems more like attention grabbing than a serious plan. They've been tried in other countries & failed miserably. They're hard to manage & imo seem like a poor choice.

If you want to increase taxes on the wealthy I would go after loopholes instead, which Sen Warren & others are also trying to do to be fair. You could also look closer at trying to slightly increase tax on sales transactions or taking loans against your equity. It would need to be a small enough amount that makes a difference to tax income but not enough that people try hard to avoid it.

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