The New Robber Barons: Part II — Stock Buybacks = Corporate Cocaine 💉💵

By Iron Ideals Ida Tarbell 🧹🪶 (back from the holy divine ✨⛪, still raking muck 💩)

⚡ Ida’s Opening Salvo ⚡

When I unmasked Rockefeller 🎩🛢️, I thought I’d seen greed at its most refined 💎. But lo and behold, the modern captains of industry 🐺👔 have found a new narcotic 💉 — stock buybacks.

They no longer just extract oil 🛢️ or steel ⚙️ — they extract value from their own companies 🏭➡️💀, inhale it like powder 👃❄️, and call it “shareholder value” 📈🙌.

If Standard Oil was a monopoly 🚂🛢️, then Wall Street today is a pharmacy 💊💼, dispensing buybacks like morphine 💉😵 — soothing investors 😌📊 while the patient, America 🇺🇸, wastes away 💀.

📊 What a Buyback Actually Is (The Trick Explained 🎩✨)

• Company earns a profit 💵💼.

• Instead of raising wages 💸👩‍🏭, building factories 🏭🚧, or funding research 🧪🔬, it spends billions buying its own stock 🔄📈.

• Shares shrink 🧊📉 → stock price inflates 🎈📈 → executives celebrate 🍾🐺.

It’s like burning half your house 🏚️🔥 to double the value of the living room 🛋️ — until nothing’s left but ashes 🪦.

💸 The 1982 Deregulation: Pandora’s Box Opened 📦👿

For decades, buybacks = illegal market manipulation 🚫📊.

Then in 1982, regulators opened the gates 🏛️🔓.

Since then:

• Corporations have spent trillions 💰💰💰 on buybacks.

• In many years, the majority of profits 📊➡️ go to buybacks & dividends 🤑, not workers.

• Some companies spend more on buybacks than R&D 🧪🚫.

Imagine Rockefeller refusing to drill wells 🛢️⛏️, just trading oil certificates back & forth with himself 🔄🙃. Even he would laugh 🤡.

🎩 Who Benefits?

• CEOs & Executives 🐺👔💼 → bonuses skyrocket 🚀💰.

• Shareholders (Top 10%) 👑📈 → champagne showers 🍾🍾🍾.

• Not Workers 🙅‍♂️👩‍🏭 → wages frozen ❄️, pensions gutted 💀, jobs insecure ⏳.

Buybacks ≠ investment ❌.

Buybacks = redistribution upward ⬆️🐺.

🏚️ The Hidden Cost: Strip-Mining the Future 🪓🌱

Every $ spent on buybacks is a $ not spent on:

• Worker raises 💵👷‍♀️

• Research & innovation 🧪🚀

• Infrastructure 🏗️🛣️

• Long-term resilience 🌱🌍

It’s strip-mining ⛏️ your company’s future 🔮 — for a quick stock bump today 📈🙃.

🔨 Ida’s Closing Hammer 🔨

In my day, robber barons built something 🏭🚂🛢️.

Today’s barons build nothing 🚫🏗️. They cannibalize their own companies 🍴🐺, leaving only quarterly slides 📊💤 and empty slogans 🙄.

Stock buybacks are corporate cocaine 💉💵:

• short high ⚡

• long collapse 📉

• addiction that ruins everyone except the dealer 🐺👔.

So I ask you, dear reader 🧐👉 — when America’s companies spend billions not on invention 💡 but on inhaling their own wealth 👃💸… who is really being robbed? 🦹‍♂️

👉 Next up: Part III — The Vanishing Corporate Tax 🏝️💼: Playing Hide-and-Seek with Billions 💰🙈.