Corporations are owned by people. Profit is distributed back to the society thru dividends. The largest shareholder category is pension funds, not billionaires. So effectively boomers are robbing younger generations.
[1] https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2023/03/data-update-7-f...
[2] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...
All that differs between them is the tax treatment each gets come tax time.
And that if you hold a stock for say 10 years and somehow sell during a recession you could make ~0$ on that stock if it only did buybacks. While with a dividend you'd have come out ahead.
Conceptually they have very different incentives as well. With buybacks you want a company to have high volatility as well as to make short term decisions so that you can buy a dip, ask for say lay-offs, and sell as it goes up. With dividends you want the company to make longer term strategic decisions so that their revenue goes up and you get a larger dividend.
A stock with buybacks should be compared to a stock with dividend reinvestment.
If you do something other than reinvest dividends, you should sell some shares every year.
You're reading this on a device made in an underpaid Asian sweatshop, wearing clothes that are the same. Old people with pension funds are no more or less complicit in the brutality of the system than you are. Try blaming the people who are causing this situation on purpose, not the millions who are just trying to navigate it as best they can.
I am complicit in a rigged system with no escape.
If the population pyramid inverts and there are too few young people, the whole concept of "retirement" becomes unsustainable, unless AI advances enough to make up the lost productivity.
Pensions are just a way of formalizing the obligation to old people, but they are not themselves the root source of the problem.
Retirement should not mean a life of air travel and cruises, achieved by pension savings.
Retirement should not mean continuing to live in your 2,500 sq. ft. ranch house in the suburbs with only car access.
John Maynard Keynes famously predicted we would be working 15 hours a week due because of increasing productivity. Where did all that productivity go?
If it's because we believed we needed ('deserved') more, then change those beliefs. If it's because of the concentration of wealth into the 0.01% then AI productivity improvements won't fix things.
The AI-mongers sell the false and unsustainable promise that AI will magically solve things so people don't need to change their habits.
Yet we can achieve a lot of savings by building more compact areas to live which don't require a car, and by building mass transit with the needs of the elderly in mind (no steps, low-frequency lines which run through neighborhoods, for those with limited mobility, etc.)
We can save money and get better health outcomes with a tried-and-true single-payer health care system done in every other developed country (eg, "Medicare For All".)
That can all be done now.
Yet we aren't. Because it's easier, and more profitable to those with money, to ignore the festering problem, with the fig leaf of 'AI' or some other future technology, and let someone else deal with it,
The US system has worse overall health outcomes, so it's like we aren't really trying.
Like, with the US privatized medical system and its parasitical medical insurance system, we can see how medical costs are higher and overall health outcomes lower than in countries with single-payer/national health care.
And if I happen to choose a health insurer which decides my cancer treatment is inappropriate, I'm either bankrupt or dead.
Yes, I'm still dependent on healthcare, but one is better aligned to my health.
Similarly, the personal pension system requires staff and/or custom software to handle customer relations, and the individual funds have marketing budget to convince people to join. This disappears with a nationalized system where it can all be part of the same social security system, and benefit from the economy of scale.
Furthermore, companies justify all sorts of unethical practices because they point to all the (abstract) pensioners who will lose their retirement, which relies on those pensioners not being able to say 'no, don't do it in my name.'
While something like the Government Pension Fund of Norway can select funds and influence the corporate governance in a way which is aligned with national goals.
Yes, there are all sort of ethical funds I could invest in. The paradox of choice and my complete lack of expertise means I must hire that expertise, like when I got advice when I set up my account.
Furthermore, if I happen to select green energy stocks, but they go down the toilet after the invention of Mr. Fusion, I'm currently screwed. While a public pension has the mandate of supporting everyone.
Yes, I'm still dependent on stock investemtns, but one is better aligned to my retirement.
Lastly, the government can raise money from taxes. The government can pay for more nurses and doctors, and training hospitals. The government can pay for high-quality retirement housing. The government can do a lot of things that a private pension plan cannot do.