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stock buybacks
After Tens of Billions in Stock Buybacks, Microsoft Announces Mass Layoff of 4,800 Workers
"Seeing such strong numbers coupled with the mass layoffs at Xbox is not sitting right with many," wrote one tech journalist.
Jul 06, 2026
President Donald Trump has touted his massive corporate tax breaks in 2017 and 2025 not just as handouts to the rich, but as boons for their employees, who could expect to see rising wages and job growth in the coming years.
But one of the policy's biggest beneficiaries, Microsoft, just announced it was laying off thousands of employees in a move described as "cost-cutting," even though the company has spent tens of billions of dollars buying back its own stock.
When Trump's 2017 tax law reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, Americans for Tax Fairness estimated that the company was saving about $16.5 billion per year.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last July, rewrote rules to benefit companies investing in artificial intelligence by allowing them to deduct the cost of data centers and other equipment up front rather than spreading the deductions out over time, and introduced new deductions for research and development expenses.
For Microsoft, which pledged roughly $80 billion globally toward AI data center investment last year, that could translate to up to $16.8 billion in near-term federal tax savings.
The added windfall has been great for Microsoft shareholders. From 2018-25, the company returned roughly $139.5 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks since the Trump-GOP tax cut took effect, according to shareholder reports.
In the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, the first since the new tax breaks went into effect, the company bought back another $13.3 billion, an acceleration from the previous year, according to a form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
At the same time as the company is ramping up AI investment, however, it is laying off employees.
On Monday, the company announced that it was shedding roughly 2% of its global workforce, eliminating about 4,800 jobs—mostly in its Xbox division—as it allocates more money and resources to the AI arms race.
They are among the more than 20,000 Microsoft employees who have been shown the door since 2025. Additionally, thousands more employees took voluntary buyouts this spring.
Microsoft executive Amy Coleman attributed the cuts to a changing technological landscape.
"Our customers’ needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself—what we do, where we focus, and how we’re organized—has to transform too,” she said. “Companies don’t get to choose whether their industry changes; they only get to choose whether they change with it."
She also stressed that workers were “not being replaced by AI.”
But Eddie Makuch, a writer at GameSpot, noted that the company has been doing terrifically, and despite falling share prices over the past year, remains "the No. 4 biggest company on Earth with a market cap of more than $2.8 trillion."
"Microsoft stockholders might not have been happy with the company’s share price falling, but for the past quarter alone, Microsoft paid out $10.2 billion to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases," he wrote. "These are signs of strength and health for Microsoft. Xbox is a very small piece of Microsoft’s overall business, but seeing such strong numbers coupled with the mass layoffs at Xbox is not sitting right with many."
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Dems Unveil Plan to Crack Down on Stock Buybacks as Trump Tax Cuts Fuel $4.8 Trillion 'Bonanza'
"It’s shameful that wealthy shareholders and executives are profiting while American families pay through the roof for groceries, gas, and rent."
Jun 11, 2026
A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation to hike taxes on US corporations that buy back their own stock as a new analysis estimated that major companies have spent nearly $5 trillion on share repurchases since President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts took effect.
The Democratic legislation, titled the Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2026, would increase the current stock buyback excise tax from 1% to 4%, a change that experts say would raise around $240 billion in revenue over a 10-year period and likely dissuade some companies from engaging in buybacks, which artificially inflate share prices and further enrich shareholders and executives.
“After getting massive tax breaks from Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, giant corporations are turning around and delivering stock buybacks at record highs,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in introducing the new bill to rein in what they called corporate America's "stock buyback bonanza."
“It’s shameful that wealthy shareholders and executives are profiting while American families pay through the roof for groceries, gas, and rent," said Warren. "This bill is an important step forward in making corporations pay their fair share."
The legislation's release coincided with an analysis conducted by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which found that 100 of the largest corporations in the US have spent a combined $4.8 trillion on stock buybacks in the eight years since enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law.
"Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks."
Just 10 companies—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Nvidia, and Visa—were responsible for more than $2 trillion of the $4.8 trillion in total buybacks since 2017, ATF noted. The group estimated that, had the Stock Buyback Accountability Act been in place over the past eight years, the federal government could have raised around $200 billion in revenue from the 100 big corporations examined in the new analysis.
“The huge tax cuts corporations received from the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—which were supposed to be used to increase employee pay and business investment—have instead been wasted on trillions of dollars of stock buybacks,” said ATF executive director David Kass. “Stock buybacks widen economic inequality by making already wealthy shareholders even richer. We need the Stock Buyback Accountability Act now more than ever.”
Stock buybacks were effectively prohibited in the US until 1982, as they were considered a form of market manipulation. Over four decades later, in 2025, stock buybacks by American companies surpassed $1 trillion—a record high.
"Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks," Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday. "We need to dial up the tax on these buybacks, and if corporations decide they’re better off investing in workers and long-term growth, that’s a great outcome.”
ATF noted in its analysis that "the resulting rise in stock price created by a buyback is not taxed unless the stock is sold."
"With the top 5% of households owning 70% of all stocks, that is a big benefit for wealthy investors, who prefer the unrealized income which comes from buybacks to the traditional corporate dividends that are paid out and taxed on an annual basis," the group observed.
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As US Drivers Suffer High Gas Prices, Big Oil Celebrates and Plans Big Payouts for Shareholders
"These companies want Americans to believe price spikes are simply the unavoidable result of global events, but their own executives are openly telling investors that volatility, conflict, and supply disruptions are good for business."
May 26, 2026
A Tuesday report from Groundwork Collaborative reveals how fossil fuel companies are not merely scoring windfall profits from President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, but also using that money to reward shareholders rather than providing relief to consumers.
The price of gas has soared since Trump attacked Iran without any congressional authorization in late February, going from an average of under $3 per gallon at the start of the war to $4.49 per gallon as of Tuesday.
As US drivers have paid more at the pump, however, fossil fuel firms have been concerned with paying out dividends and conducting stock buybacks expanding production to lower prices, Groundwork Collaborative's report finds.
Among other things, the report notes that ExxonMobil is on pace to deliver $20 billion worth of stock buybacks in 2026, even as CEO Darren Woods has insisted that the company's decisions on production will be "grounded in value, not volume."
Additionally, the report documents how Shell recently announced "another 5% dividend increase and more than $3 billion in buybacks," with CEO Wael Sawan describing the company's commitment to paying shareholders as "sacrosanct."
Chevron has pledged roughly $3 billion in quarterly stock buybacks, while also saying increasing dividends for shareholders is its "first and foremost" priority.
Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner, the report adds, recently revealed that the company has no plans to boost output in response to high energy prices, stating that "capital spending and production outlooks are consistent with previous guidance."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, accused Big Oil of using Trump's illegal war as cover to keep prices high without taking any steps to reduce pain at the pump.
"These companies want Americans to believe price spikes are simply the unavoidable result of global events," said Owens, "but their own executives are openly telling investors that volatility, conflict, and supply disruptions are good for business. They are choosing buybacks over production, shareholder payouts over affordability, and corporate profiteering over the economic security of working families.”
The high fuel prices aren't being felt just in the US, but across the world.
Karthik Sankaran, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained in a Tuesday analysis how oil prices are hitting nations in the Global South particularly hard.
"A recent story in The New York Times described how the price for transporting corn into refugee camps in Somalia had doubled or even tripled, as had the price of water at diesel-powered public tubewells," Sankaran wrote. "Meanwhile, protests this week in Kenya against fuel price hikes have led to four deaths, and political and financial stresses are mounting across the continent."
Sankaran also pointed to problems in India, where "sharp jumps in the price of liquid petroleum gas have hit urban households hard, particularly those whose breadwinners work in small-scale industrial establishments."
Despite the actue global economic pain, energy experts who spoke with CNN on Tuesday expressed skepticism that the crisis would abate anytime soon, despite Trump's regular hyping of a deal to end the conflict.
Rory Johnston, an oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, told CNN that he wasn't buying optimism from commodities futures markets after Trump claimed to have made significant progress on an agreement with Iran.
"Nothing has fundamentally changed," Johnston said. "The strait remains closed."
Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said that a deal to end the war wouldn't instantly bring energy prices back to where they were before the war began, estimating it could take months just to get 80% of the pre-war oil supply flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.
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How to Stop Tyson Foods from Destroying 3,200 Jobs in a Nebraska Town of 10,000
Dan Osborn, the independent US Senate candidate in Nebraska, needs a plan. And it's a plan that could and should be embraced in states and communities nationwide.
Apr 15, 2026
Here are some things to know about large corporations:
- Corporations in America are free to shut down facilities, whether profitable or unprofitable, with devastating effects on workers, their families, and their communities.
- Corporations are also free to use their cash to repurchase their own stock shares, driving up their price without increasing the company’s value—a pure and simple case of stock manipulation that enriches top corporate executives and Wall Street investors.
- And corporations in the US enjoy the benefits that come from receiving taxpayer-funded government contracts, while retaining the right to destroy the jobs of taxpayers, if they see fit.
Dan Osborn, the Nebraska independent senatorial candidate, knows all this. It’s a good part of the reason he’s running for office, and he needs a plan. He knows this is a travesty, a disaster, a case of the rich and powerful trashing working people. As he puts it, “This isn’t left and right anymore, this is big versus little,” and he wants to do all he can to stop Tyson from killing 3,200 jobs in Lexington, Nebraska.
Osborn has called for the enforcement of the 1921 federal Packers and Stockyards Act, which was designed to promote competitiveness in the livestock, meat, and poultry industries and prohibit deception and fraud. He claims Tyson broke the law by closing its Lexington, Nebraska, plant instead of selling the facility to a competitor. The closure was “destroying 5 percent of America’s beef processing capacity,” Osborn argued, which will drive up prices instead of maintaining a competitive market.
In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined the fight by demanding that Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollings use the authority she has under the Act to block the Lexington closure. But, on January 21, 2026, the plant shut down anyway. In fact, no plant closing has ever been stopped by this act.
If the law is not enough to protect these devastated workers and communities, where can Osborn find leverage to help them?
It is really hard to stop a plant closing in the United States of America. Of the millions of mass layoffs over the past three decades, I’m having trouble finding any that have been reversed (although my friends at the Teamsters Union say they have been successful on occasion.) There have been at least a handful of worker buyouts of facilities scheduled for shutdowns that kept them open for a time, but all I know about soon went under.
There is one point of leverage, however, that has yet to be used—federal contracts.
Large corporations love to dine at the federal trough, gobbling up as much taxpayer money as they can through federal grants and contracts. Tyson is no exception. It’s got its hands all over our tax dollars. In 2025, it received 170 federal awards for a total of $234 million. It also received, from 2018 to 2020, $727 million from the Pentagon to supply beef to the military. And those contracts have been renewed through today.
Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities.
What if Osborn promised that as senator, he would fight for a new federal regulation like this:
All corporations of 500 or more employees that receive taxpayer-funded federal contracts shall not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs of taxpayers. All layoffs must be voluntary based on financial incentives.
Wouldn’t that be fair and just? After all, voluntary financial incentives to leave a job are commonplace for executives. And it’s not just severance. The idea is that no one should be forced to leave. The financial incentive would need to be high enough to attract voluntary departures.
Is this proposal too radical for Nebraska?
No doubt, corporations and their political handmaidens would vigorously attack the proposal. Isn’t the key to a free society the right of business owners, large and small, to manage their own enterprises as they see fit? When the government intervenes to control hiring and firing, isn’t it stepping towards socialism, which history has shown is both a failure economically and a path towards totalitarianism? Wouldn’t such a proposal harm jobs, our economy, and democracy?
Osborn’s response could be simple: Corporations would be totally free to hire and fire at will—but not if they are taking taxpayer money. If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
We tested this idea and the corporate attacks in our survey of 3,000 Midwestern voters across Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. About half of those voters supported the idea, with very low percentages opposed, even after being introduced to corporate attacks against the policy.
If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
Where would the money come from?
That’s where stock buybacks come in. In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers. They chose to pad the bonuses of Tyson executives and the portfolios of large Wall Street shareholders. It might have made instead a nice start on a worker buyout fund.
The proposal may sound radical, but nothing about this is pie in the sky. The Siemens Corporation in Germany agreed to a no-compulsory layoff proposal with its union, IG Metall, after it announced the layoff of 3,000 workers. As the result of negotiated settlement with the union, the workers could take voluntary financial buyout packages. But, none of the workers were forced to leave. And instead of the scheduled shutdown of five facilities, the company agreed to put in new products to keep the plants open.
Large corporations like Siemens and Tyson have enormous flexibility. They can rearrange production in countless ways. Unless pressured by the workers through their labor unions, they serve corporate needs first and subordinate those of workers. Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities. These companies have the financial power to fulfill the needs and interests of their employees, but they choose not to. But for Tyson, and so many companies today, all that matters is shoveling as much money as possible into the pockets of their wealthy executives and Wall Street investors. The workers be damned!
At this point, the Tyson workers and Dan Osborn know that the plant is not going to be reopened. But Osborn’s campaign could commemorate those workers by becoming the first politician in the nation to offer a realistic and potentially popular solution to this recurring nightmare:
No Compulsory Layoffs at Corporations That Receive Taxpayer Money!
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Meet the 16 Billionaires Making Bank by Underpaying Their Workers
The poverty wage business model that is so prevalent in Corporate America works spectacularly well for a handful of wealthy and politically powerful executives and shareholders. For the rest of us, not so much.
Mar 25, 2026
At least 16 US billionaires owe their wealth to one of America’s 20 largest low-wage employers—corporations where a significant share of workers earn so little they have to rely on public assistance.
Of these 16 billionaires, 8 are associated with Walmart. Amazon and Tyson Foods have two members of this elite club, while Home Depot, Best Buy, Starbucks, and Chipotle each have one.
For detailed data on wages and CEO pay at these and other leading low-wage corporations, see the recent Institute for Policy Studies report "America’s 20 Largest Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis." This article includes updated net worth data from the just-released Forbes 2026 Global Billionaires List.
Walmart
Seven descendants of Walmart founder Sam Walton have accumulated their multi-billion-dollar fortunes off the backs of the giant retailer’s low-wage workers. His eldest son, Rob Walton, leads the pack, with $146 billion. Another billionaire, Drayton McLane, gained entry to this elite club by selling his grocery distribution business to Walmart for a significant share in the retailer.
When corporate resources are funneled into the pockets of those at the top while ordinary employees have to rely on public assistance, we are all subsidizing the executive mansions and private jets.
Median pay at Walmart, the largest US private sector employer, stood at $29,469 in 2024. That’s below the income limits for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food aid benefits. It’s nowhere near the $59,600 income level needed to afford the US average rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
In addition to median pay figures reported in corporate proxy statements, we gathered data from the small number of state governments that disclose corporations’ use of public assistance programs to subsidize their low wages.
In Nevada, Walmart had 4,574 employees, 29.3% of their employees in that state, enrolled in Medicaid in 2024. In four states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan), Walmart had a total of 10,920 employees enrolled in the SNAP food aid program.
The media organization More Perfect Union points out that Walmart not only relies on SNAP to make up for the low wages they pay their workers, but they also benefit when people use food stamps to buy groceries in their stores. According to a Numerator survey covering the 12 months ending July 31, 2025, Walmart ranked No. 1 for SNAP benefit redemption, receiving nearly 26% of all SNAP dollars.
Amazon
Since MacKenzie Scott received 4% of Amazon stock in her 2019 divorce settlement, the ecommerce goliath has had not one but two reps on the billionaire ranking. Scott has become a major philanthropist, but is still sitting on an estimated $28.6 billion. Her ex, Amazon founder and current Trump ally Jeff Bezos, came in fourth in the world in the Forbes list this year, with $224 billion.
Amazon’s typical employees are on another economic planet. Their median pay of $37,181 just barely exceeds the family-of-three income limits for Medicaid and SNAP. With half of Amazon employees earning less than that amount, a significant share of the company’s 1.2 million US employees no doubt have to rely on public assistance.
Indeed, the Nevada state government’s Medicaid report reveals that Amazon had 8,951 employees enrolled in that health program in that state in 2024, making up 48.4% of all of the firm’s employees in Nevada. In the four states that report SNAP enrollee data by employer, Amazon came in second after Walmart, with 9,633 employees receiving those benefits.
Home Depot
Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank holds an estimated $11.1 billion. His fellow co-founder, Bernard Marcus, died on election day in 2024, after donating $9.4 million to the campaigns of President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
While ranking among the country’s lowest-paying companies, Home Depot has had plenty money to blow on stock buybacks. This is a financial maneuver that artificially inflates the value of a company’s shares—and the stock holdings of wealthy executives and stockholders.
The big-box chain spent $37.9 billion on share repurchases between 2019 and 2024. That sum would have been enough to give each of Home Depot’s 419,600 US employees six annual $15,039 bonuses. Home Depot’s median pay in 2024 stood at just $35,196—less than the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid.
State government data show that Home Depot employees had a total of 2,213 employees enrolled in SNAP food aid in Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan.
Starbucks
Longtime Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has accumulated $3.5 billion in wealth off a company that paid its median earner just $14,674 in 2024. Employee discontent has sparked pro-union elections at more than 570 stores over the past four years. But the company has used various tactics to prevent workers from securing a first contract, including during a period when Schultz returned to his CEO post.
Schultz recently purchased a $44 million penthouse in Surfside, Florida, a state with zero personal income tax.
Taxing away excessive wealth could also encourage business models that share profits equitably with all employees.
Rounding out the low-wage billionaires list are the founders of Best Buy and Chipotle and two descendants of John Tyson, the founder of Tyson Foods, a meat processor with a sizeable immigrant workforce.
The poverty wage business model that is so prevalent in Corporate America works spectacularly well for a handful of wealthy and politically powerful executives and shareholders. For the rest of us, not so much.
When corporate resources are funneled into the pockets of those at the top while ordinary employees have to rely on public assistance, we are all subsidizing the executive mansions and private jets, the massive political spending, and all the other trappings of excessive wealth.
Taxing Excessive Wealth
Lawmakers have introduced several tax proposals to curb the size of billionaire fortunes. Under current law, the ultra rich hold most of their wealth in stock and other financial assets that are not taxable until they are sold. In the meantime, they’re allowed to borrow against these assets to fund their lavish lifestyles and then pass their wealth on to heirs tax-free.
One federal bill to address that loophole, the Billionaires Income Tax Act, would impose an annual tax on billionaires’ gains from tradable assets like stocks, whether or not they sell the asset.
Several other proposals would tax billionaires’ accumulated wealth. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) are the lead advocates of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would apply a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion and a 3% tax on those with net worth above $1 billion.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently introduced a slightly different model that would establish a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires. This proposal is similar to a California state ballot initiative for a 5% one-time wealth tax on billionaire residents of that state.
Each of these proposals would raise massive revenue for public investments. At the same time, taxing away excessive wealth could also encourage business models that share profits equitably with all employees instead of extracting from those at the bottom to make wealthy executives and shareholders even richer.
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Don't Just Tax the Uber Rich, Reform the Corporate Structure That Creates Them
The real engine of inequality is structural: corporate and financial practices that concentrate wealth among shareholders while shortchanging other stakeholders who should be benefiting from corporate profits
Mar 13, 2026
Targeting billionaires with California’s proposed wealth tax is an eye-catching idea, but perhaps the real problem is how some of these people become billionaires in the first place.
California has long eyed taxing the ultra rich. In 2024, Assembly Bill 259, backed by progressive Democrats and unions like the California Federation of Teachers, sought annual wealth taxes but was blocked by centrist Democrats, business groups, and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Now, advocates are going for a one-time 5% levy on roughly 200 billionaires, covering everything they own—stocks, businesses, art, private islands, personal spacecraft, even intellectual property—basically the whole enchilada if they were state residents on January 1, 2026. Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers West estimates the tax could raise $100 billion for health and social services.
Backers call it a fair share. Critics cite economic, legal, and retroactive risks.
A one-time California wealth tax might dent the personal fortunes of the Zuckerbergs and Cooks, but it does nothing to slow the corporate machinery that grinds on to produce still more of them.
To many, the logic seems straightforward: Billionaires have absurd, even toxic amounts of money. The richest 1% now own more than the bottom 90% combined. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman note that middle- and working-class Americans often pay higher effective tax rates than the super rich, whose California fortunes grew over $2 trillion in just a few years.
Why not tax them?
But Here’s the Twist
Economist William Lazonick, a long-time critic of the way many US corporations are run, argues that targeting individual fortunes treats the symptom, not the disease. The real engine of inequality is structural: corporate and financial practices that concentrate wealth among shareholders while shortchanging other stakeholders who should be benefiting from corporate profits—and too often creating little of real value to society.
Most billionaires don’t “earn” their fortunes through work. They build wealth by owning stock in corporations. Executives and boards pump up dividends and stock prices, often using stock buybacks, which rocket their own pay into the stratosphere. Managers and professionals with stock options or stock awards can cash in too—but only if they keep their jobs. Everyone else—most workers and the wider public that depends on taxing corporate profits to fund schools, roads, and healthcare—gets left behind.
This shareholder-first model (famously called “the dumbest idea in the world” by former GE CEO Jack Welch), encourages executives and investors to treat companies like giant ATMs, pulling money out rather than reinvesting profits to create lasting value.
Stock buybacks and ownership stakes that line the pockets of executives at the expense of employees, communities, or innovation are a modern form of illth.
Consider Mark Zuckerberg. Nearly all of his mind-boggling fortune—the kind that just bought him a record-smashing $170 million mansion in Miami-Dade County near Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and is funding a bombproof bunker-complex in Kauai that disturbs local wildlife—comes straight from owning stock in Meta Platforms. Meta has spent nearly $200 billion on stock buybacks in the past five years. Those buybacks have fattened the wallets of shareholders, including Meta’s top executives and professionals, while leaving the rest of society out of the gains (Meta is famous for its tax-dodging schemes). With Meta, there aren’t any hedge-fund activists forcing Zuckerberg to do buybacks—they’re happening by choice.
Lazonick points out that “with all the profits that they have, they could be creating stable, high-paid jobs for the workers whom they employ—and thereby put in place powerful social conditions for collective and cumulative learning.” He adds, “Instead they are using stock-based pay, which is always volatile and which results in unstable and inequitable employment, to compete for talent.”
Now, even some of Meta’s highest-paid employees are feeling the squeeze. With stock-based pay being cut back and the AI revolution changing work, some of the people who once seemed untouchable are discovering that their jobs aren’t as secure as they thought.
Then there’s Tim Cook. Much of his wealth comes from stock-based compensation tied to the stock-market performance of Apple Inc. Under his leadership as CEO, Apple’s so-called “Capital Return Program” has spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks—north of half a trillion dollars when counting programs from the early 2010s on—which have helped push up the share price and richly rewarded executives and shareholders. Lazonick has criticized this trend, arguing that Apple’s huge buybacks reward shareholders who have never provided finance to the company, instead of investing in value-creating workers who are the source of innovation. This is the activity that has Cook extremely rich—though he still buys his underwear on sale at Nordstrom, so it’s not entirely clear why he needs all this money.
His workers could sure use a bigger cut. It is a fact that many of the workers who build, sell, or support Apple products have faced stingy pay and labor issues: Some retail employees have pushed for higher minimum wages and better benefits as recently as 2022, and labor-rights groups have documented low wages and complaints about conditions among Apple’s supply-chain workers.
A one-time California wealth tax might dent the personal fortunes of the Zuckerbergs and Cooks, but it does nothing to slow the corporate machinery that grinds on to produce still more of them.
Historically, reformers recognized this issue. For example, Thorstein Veblen critiqued the ways elites could extract wealth while contributing less to society than might be expected. And early 20th-century progressives championed higher corporate taxes and antitrust laws because they understood that inequality was more structural than individual.
This is what 19th-century critic John Ruskin had in mind when he coined the term “illth.” For Ruskin, true wealth, or “weal,” promotes everyone’s health and prosperity. Illth, by contrast, amasses when money is extracted or hoarded without focusing on social value. Stock buybacks and ownership stakes that line the pockets of executives at the expense of employees, communities, or innovation are a modern form of illth.
We don’t want illth.
Taylor Swift Isn’t the Problem
Now let’s bring in someone we can all relate to—Taylor Swift. Her fortune comes from her creativity, work, and audience engagement. She writes songs, records albums, tours, sells merchandise, and negotiates brand deals. Yes, corporate structures like Ticketmaster’s oligopoly complicate matters—but Swift herself isn’t the CEO of a company extracting illth through financial engineering. Taxing her personal wealth dramatizes the issue without addressing its source.
Policies aimed at corporate engines of inequality, rather than individual fortunes, could reshape the system itself. Lazonick and others have recommended a variety of approaches:
- Ban stock buybacks and suppress predatory value extraction. This curbs wealth concentration at the top.
- Encourage employee ownership or provide employee representation on corporate boards. Gains should benefit a broader group of stakeholders—not just shareholders.
- Reimagine corporate governance. Move towards stakeholder models balancing shareholder yields with social and environmental responsibility.
And last, but not least:
- Strengthen progressive corporate taxation. Close loopholes that allow extreme wealth accumulation.
As Lazonick sees it, whether it happens at the federal, state, or local level, government policy should focus on curbing predatory value extraction and promoting what he calls “progressive value creation”—which means passing laws to stop corporations from being looted, a key source of the exploding wealth of the mega rich. “From this position of regulatory power,” he advises, “we should then decide how the top 0.1% should be taxed.”
The real work, from this perspective, is reforming the structures that concentrate wealth. If we want an economy that fosters health, innovation, and opportunity instead of illth, chasing Taylor Swift won’t cut it. We need to start regulating the corporate engines behind her peers’ billions
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Do the Democrats Have the Guts to Outflank Trump on Defense Industry Looting?
The Democrats could push Trump—or go around him to make better inroads with working people—but will they dare to take that leap? One would hope so, but don’t hold your breath.
Jan 14, 2026
Trump has decided that the government should not give money to defense contractors who then reroute our tax dollars via stock buybacks to stockholders and executives.
A stock buyback, for those unfamiliar, is when a corporation repurchases its own shares, thus boosting the share’s price, a legalized form of stock manipulation. CEOs, who are paid mostly in stock incentives, and large investors directly benefit from stock buybacks, and unlike with dividends, don’t have to pay taxes until they sell their shares.
In the weapons industry, this isn’t news. Studies show that defense contractors spent three times more on dividends and stock buybacks than on capital investments needed to fulfill their contracts over the last decade. In Europe, it was the other way around with defense companies spending twice as much on capital investments compared to dividends. (They don’t do stock buybacks.)
The New York Times cited a Department of Defense study during the Biden administration that “found that top US defense contractors spent more on returning cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks between 2010 and 2019 compared to the previous decades, while spending on research and new or upgraded factories had declined.”
You’ve got to wonder why the Biden administration didn’t try to stop this scam. Maybe it feared looking anti-military. Or maybe it thought such an action would be too upsetting to their Wall Street donors who feast on stock buybacks?
Now we have Trump doing what the Democrats should have done long ago, announcing he will stop buybacks and cap executive salaries at profligate defense contractors:
- His Executive Order directs the Secretary of War to take steps to ensure that future contracts prohibit stock buybacks and corporate distributions during periods of underperformance, non-compliance, insufficient prioritization or investment, or insufficient production speed.
- The Secretary shall further take steps to ensure that future contracts permit the Secretary to, upon determining that a contractor is experiencing such issues, cap executive base salaries at current levels (with inflation adjustments permitted) while scrutinizing executive incentives to ensure they are directly, fairly, and tightly tied to prioritizing the needs of the warfighter.
How about Preventing Mass Layoffs?
If the Democrats wanted to show more concern for working people they would jump all over this executive order and push legislation to expand it to include a prohibition of compulsory layoffs at all defense contractors. If a contractor wants to change staffing levels, they should offer voluntary financial buyout packages. No one should be forced to leave.
This is an easy case to make. Why should taxpayers give money to corporations that then lay off taxpayers so that they can shovel more and more of our tax dollars to the wealthy? If the problem is that these defense contractors fail to deliver products on time they need more workers, not fewer.
Instead of wallowing in the Epstein files, the Democrats should declare again and again that mass layoffs are the weapon of choice to enrich executives and Wall Street. Fight for the damn jobs!
In April, the Labor Institute, in cooperation with the Center for Working Class Politics, produced a YouGov survey of 3,000 voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In the survey, we asked voters to evaluate a state ballot initiative we invented that read:
“Corporations with more than 500 employees that receive taxpayer-funded federal contracts are prohibited from conducting involuntary layoffs of American workers. All layoffs during the life of a taxpayer-funded contract must be voluntary, based on employer financial incentives. No one shall be forced to leave.”
Overall, 42 percent supported the proposal, while 26 percent opposed it and 32 percent were not sure. The no-layoff proposal was brand new, unheard of by anyone before the survey was administered, yet it tied for fifth in popularity among 25 economic proposals. Furthermore, we reported that:
“Respondents from key demographic groups that Democrats have struggled to reach in recent electoral cycles showed robust support for the policy, which was tied for fifth among respondents without a four-year college degree and those whose family income was less than $50,000 per year, and tied for sixth among respondents who reported a declining standard of living and those who live in rural areas and small towns.”
This no-layoffs policy would be a big winner for the Democrats leading up to the mid-terms. But it would not be a winner for the financial backers of the party who cherish their stock buybacks.
So here we are again. Trump outflanking the Democrats on a populist economic proposal, like cancelling NAFTA, one that the Democrats failed to address while in power. In this case, the Democrats could push Trump even further by tying job stability to federal defense contracts, something that working people would greatly value but would be upsetting to Wall Street.
The Democrats could push Trump, but will they dare to take that leap? One would hope so, but don’t hold your breath.
The failure to rigorously defend working people over the last forty years against needless mass layoffs may be why so many voters right now are willing to consider a new political party, independent of the two billionaire parties.
Much more on that to come.
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With GOP 'Looking at' Tyson's Alleged Market Manipulation, Nebraska Candidate Osborn Says 'Enforce the Law'
"Candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators," said a worker rights advocate.
Dec 12, 2025
Instead of "another investigation" into possible wrongdoing by meatpacking giant Tyson, independent US Senate candidate Dan Osborn is demanding that elected officials in Nebraska simply "pick up the damn phone" and demand action from the Trump administration following the company's closure of one of the nation's largest meat processing plants in what one antitrust expert said was a clear-cut case of market manipulation.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), whom Osborn is challenging in the 2026 election, said Thursday that his team is "taking a look at any allegation of wrongdoing" by Tyson, weeks after the company announced its massive plant in Lexington, Nebraska is set to close in January—putting more than 3,000 people in a town of 11,000 out of work.
The closure comes months after Tyson boosted its stock buybacks and following an announcement that its adjusted operating income had increased by 26% compared to 2024. Tyson controls about 80% of the US beef market along with three other companies, and the Department of Justice is investigating whether the four corporations are colluding to keep beef prices high.
Despite near-record high prices in the industry, Tyson said last week it was closing the Lexington plant and scaling back operations at its facility in Amarillo, Texas to "right-size its beef business and position it for long-term success."
Basel Musharbash, an antitrust lawyer at Antimonopoly Counsel in Paris, Texas, attended a press conference with Osborn across the street from the Lexington plant this week and said that the "legal analysis here is pretty straightforward" regarding whether Tyson has engaged in market manipulation.
“The Lexington plant accounts for around 5% of the nation’s cattle," said Musharbash. "By shutting down a plant that slaughters such a large portion of the cattle in this region and the country, Tyson will single-handedly reshape the nation’s cattle markets from boom to bust.”
Ranchers will be forced "to accept lower prices, and Tyson will be able to make higher profits," he said.
Osborn and Musharbash say Tyson has broken the 2021 Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibits meatpackers from engaging "in any course of business or [doing] any act for the purpose or with the effect of manipulating or controlling prices."
Addressing Ricketts on social media, Osborn said Tyson workers "don’t need another useless congressional report that leads to nothing. We need ACTION!"
"Tyson workers and Nebraska ranchers need you to demand that [US Agriculture] Secretary Brooke Rollins immediately initiate an action to hold Tyson accountable for any market manipulation," he said.
The USDA told the Nebraska Examiner this week that it is monitoring "the closure of the plant to ensure compliance with the Packers and Stockyards Act," but Musharbash said Rollins can and should "compel Tyson to either keep the plant open or sell the plant to an upstart rival who will introduce honest competition into this cartelized industry."
"There is nothing left for Ricketts to 'look into,' and Nebraskans certainly don’t need some intern on Ricketts’ staff to write a research paper about this issue for the next six months while Tyson hollows out the Lexington community for its selfish gain," added Musharbash. "Nebraska—and this whole country—deserves better leaders than this."
Osborn pointed out Thursday that Ricketts has taken more than $70,000 in campaign donations from Tyson.
“The people of Lexington need their elected officials to fight now more than ever,” Osborn said at the press conference this week. “The law that’s been on the books for over 100 years should be enforced... So pick up the damn phone, call Brooke Rollins, and get the USDA to enforce the law.”
By visiting Lexington and speaking out against Tyson's gutting of thousands of jobs, former Federal Trade Commission member Alvaro Bedoya said that "candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators."
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America Needs To Tax Its Own 'Second Estate': Billionaires
The United States has no nobility, according to our Constitution. But our tax code does protect the very rich.
Dec 04, 2025
Pre-revolutionary French aristocrats—the “Second Estate”—didn’t pay taxes. Amazingly, America too has a second estate, billionaires who pay virtually no taxes. In her very outstanding recent book, law professor Ray D. Madoff shows how they get away with this.
The United States has no nobility, according to our Constitution. But our tax code does protect the very rich.
Federal taxes on income and estates—intended to fund government and prevent development of a hereditary financial aristocracy—were enacted early in the 20th century and originally worked well.
But since about 1980, the estate tax—infested with loopholes—has been nearly abolished for practical purposes and now produces trivial income.
Madoff wants to get rid of the ability of ultra-rich people—billionaires—to avoid having any taxable income in the first place.
Madoff suggests that the estate tax should be completely eliminated because its existence deceives the public about what is really going on. People falsely think that billionaires who pay no federal income tax will at least pay the estate tax when they die. In fact, they are paying neither kind of tax.
Billionaires avoid the income tax by arranging to have no taxable income.
Before 1982 ultra-rich people could not avoid paying income tax. Their income consisted of dividends and capital gains harvested by selling shares of stock, the price of which had increased. Dividends and capital gains are taxable income.
But in 1982 federal regulators weakened a rule prohibiting corporations from buying back their own stock. Since then, many corporations have used profits to buy back stock shares instead of issuing dividends. With fewer shares of stock outstanding and the value of the corporation increasing, the value of each share of stock began increasing dramatically.
What used to be taxable dividends turned into large capital gains benefiting the stock owners, including very rich ones. If shareholders need cash and sell appreciated stock, of course they would owe income taxes on the capital gains (selling price of the stock minus how much the shares cost them). But capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate than normal income like salaries, bank interest, and returns on bonds.
As Madoff points out, however, billionaires need not sell any stock to get cash to live on. Instead, they can borrow the money, using their stock as collateral. Borrowed money is not taxable income, so they owe no tax while living extravagantly.
And when they die, the stock they bequest to their heirs gets a stepped up “basis,” so if their heirs sell the stock they will owe no taxes because the stepped up basis leaves no taxable capital gains.
And inherited money is not considered taxable income. Someone who earns $50,000 pays significant income (and payroll) taxes on it, while someone who inherits $1 billion pays no income or payroll tax on it.
Madoff rightly objects to this situation, but she is not arguing that we should “soak the rich” with higher income tax rates at the top. She points out that there are two kinds of “rich” people. One is the working rich, skilled professionals earning high salaries and, usually, already paying very high taxes. A high percentage of all income tax receipts come from these people.
Increasing the high tax rates these “rich” people are already paying would produce insignificant extra revenue for the government.
Instead, Madoff wants to get rid of the ability of ultra-rich people—billionaires—to avoid having any taxable income in the first place. She wouldn’t tax them while they are alive, but would tax whoever inherits from them.
Rather than trying to fix the estate tax, Madoff would abolish it, eliminate the stepped up basis for inherited stock, and make inherited money and other gifts received taxable income for the recipients.
Assuming an exemption for small gifts (to allow birthday presents and the like), this could be a reasonable reform. It would bring in very large amounts of taxes while reducing today’s extreme economic inequality.
For further details, see Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How The Tax Code Made An American Aristocracy. This is one of the two best books I have read since retiring in 2000.
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Tyson to Close Major Beef Facility, Shafting 3,000 Workers After Boosting Stock Buybacks
"It’s no secret that just a few years ago, packers like Tyson were making windfall profits while the rest of the industry was continuously in the red," said a Republican US senator from Nebraska.
Nov 24, 2025
Tyson Foods, the largest meat supplier in the United States, is shutting down a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employs more than 3,000 people just months after the company rewarded shareholders by boosting its dividend and ramping up stock buybacks.
The company said late last week that its decision to shutter the Lexington, Nebraska plant and scale back shifts at its Amarillo, Texas facility is "designed to right size its beef business and position it for long-term success" even as beef prices are close to record highs. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tyson and other meatpackers, which are facing federal scrutiny for allegedly colluding to drive up prices, "have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars processing beef because of the lowest amount of cattle on U.S. pastures since the 1950s."
Tyson, the latest company to cut thousands of jobs after prioritizing stock-boosting share buybacks, said it intends to provide "relocation benefits" to impacted workers, but provided no details.
"Tyson Foods recognizes the impact these decisions have on team members and the communities where we operate," the company said in a statement.
The plant in Lexington, which has a population of 11,000, is one of the largest beef-processing facilities in the United States. US Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that she was "extremely disappointed" by Tyson's decision to close the Lexington plant, warning it would "have a devastating impact on a truly wonderful community, the region, and our state."
"It’s no secret that just a few years ago, packers like Tyson were making windfall profits while the rest of the industry was continuously in the red," Fischer added. "As we head into the holiday season, I call on Tyson to do everything in its power to take care of the families affected by this short-sighted decision."
Tyson's announcement came days after the company said its adjusted operating income increased by 26% this fiscal year compared to 2024. The company also said it repurchased 3.5 million of its own shares for $196 million.
In early August, Tyson announced that its board "approved an increase of 43 million shares authorized for repurchase under the company’s share repurchase program."
Stock buybacks have long been associated with mass layoffs, wage stagnation, and other harms to workers.
"Tens of thousands of workers are losing their jobs in thousands of companies only because CEOs and their major stockholders want to make a quick killing by artificially jacking up the price of their stock," Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute, told Common Dreams last year after mass layoffs at John Deere.
"We must always call stock buybacks for what they really are: blatant stock manipulation," he added.
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