CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

What's funny is that the people who hate on America the most tend to also have a strong belief in American exceptionalism without realizing it. "America is the worst!" in one breath, while in the next breath saying "Everyone deserves to live in America".

What I see missing most in discussions around immigration is what it does to the home countries of the people trying to move to the United States. I know a lot of families who have come into the country from Mexico, and I don't blame them - I'd probably do the same. But if you look at the towns they're leaving (which I've done many times), it's creating a vacuum of good, hard-working people. As a result, crime and drug lords fill the vacuum, making it even more unsafe.

If you ask a lot of those people (which I've done), they'd really like to stay in their home countries - provided that there weren't growing concerns over crime. As Americans, why do we have to act like this is the only place in the world where people can be successful, and the only safe haven? What if we instead supported those countries and encouraged their brightest and best citizens to stay so that their communities can thrive?

I love immigrants, and I also love a lot of the countries they're coming from. I just wish we could stop pretending that everyone needs to move to the United States to be happy, productive, or successful.

And yes, markets tend to be affected by supply and demand, the labor market included. If you have an almost unlimited supply of people looking for work and willing to work at very low wages, of course we're going to see wages stagnate.

Forbes is simply wrong.

Henry Singleton who founded Teledyne is known as the buyback king because he used his high-flying stock in the 1960s to snap up tons of smaller electronics companies, and when his stock crashed to $8 during the years of stagflation, snapped up millions with buybacks. In the end, he had used his stock as a currency to acquire dozens of companies at what essentially became 80% discounts.

http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Dr.-Single...

A very good very in-depth PDF read about him if you're interested in this type of thing.

I think what I've heard is: The buyback is part of a larger scheme where execs / board members can pump the price of the stock, and then make themselves money either through bonuses tied to rising stock prices, or through dumping their own shares once the market price goes up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_repurchase#Criticism

The vibe is that there's a vicious cycle of "Customers are not brand-loyal, let's make our products shitty, hollow out the brand, and then liquidate everything to enrich ourselves" and "Why should I be loyal to any brand when brands that were institutions in my parents' time, like Sears and Craftsman, are hollowing out their brands and making everything shitty for a quick buck?"

Feels like everything has become a market for lemons, and the hand of Moloch has realized that if something isn't a market for lemons, it would be more profitable if it was.

In my head there's a piece of red string connecting this to the Internet Whalefall phenomenon - The Internet used to feel like (again, vibes are all I have for this) a place where the savvy early-adopter techie could be rewarded for their skill at installing any web browser but IE, with secret information shared by other elite techies, about which brands were good and how to get things done cheaper.

But now that Eternal September post-2007 has Pokemon-mega-evolved into Eternal 2007, everyone just buys reviews and nothing online is trustworthy. All the whale meat is eaten and those picking at the bones are left starving.

This led to my personal heuristic of just taking recommendations from people or orgs I meet in person. "Do you like that brand of clothing? How is that USB hub treating you? Where did you buy this?" It's a natural hedge against "I could have _told_ you not to buy that piece of crap" and it's also mathematically similar to best-of-two-random-choices load balancing. Just pick any service or product that one real human halfway-likes.

Am I manipulating a stock when I place a limit buy order? I don't even publicly announce it months beforehand like corporations do.

As a French, it's funny seeing references to the French revolution as some kind of rebellion against the rich.

Most people don't realize that the revolution was led by the nouvelle bourgeoisie ( new nobles) who were tired of paying taxes to the royals. They sacrificed thousands of commoners to reach their goals akin to how Russia is sending in soldiers into the meat grinder, and France was a much worse place afterwards for everyone.

The turning point was when Napoleon took over as a military dictator and ruled with an iron fist until the royalty took back the country yet again.

Merci d'avoir écouté un peu d'histoire Française, mes amis.