Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to Invest

Re:Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to... by imtringued on Saturday August 10, 2019 @08:18PM (#20665380)

That's basically a planned market and those do not work without a perfect government that has total access over all information in the economy. Such a government will probably never exist.

Remember you are talking about denying a CEO the ability to decide whether to invest or not invest in additional production capacity and instead assigning this task to the government. The CEO has more information about his own company than the government, which means that the government is not capable of making this decision. The government is also insulated from the consequences of making the wrong decision, if a company loses revenue or even shuts down the government is not directly affected.

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Re:Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to... by WalterBright on Saturday August 10, 2019 @09:22PM (#20665613)

The government will also intrinsically allocate money based on political considerations, which are not necessarily congruent with practical ones.

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Re:Companies Use Borrowed Billions to Buy Back Stock, Not to... by foota on Saturday August 10, 2019 @11:53PM (#20666134)

What? How does what I commented at all resemble a planned market?

I elaborated a little on an alternative proposal for increasing investment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665196

I think the only thing similar to planned economy here is that you're shifting tax burden and resources invested from larger companies to smaller companies. The idea being that small companies are a beneficial resource because they contribute more directly and locally to their economies.

You could argue that this is a distortion but I think it's a long way from a planned economy.

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