If a company parks $1 in a treasury bond during good times, they have that $1 + approximately inflation in bad times.

If a company buys back their stock at $N and then has to sell a large amount of stock at $M for M << N (or take a leveraged loan), then the company is only getting fractions on the dollar of that original $1.

Unfortunately, the scenarios where huge companies really need cash now pretty well overlap with the scenarios where there are huge liquidity shocks and crashing equities prices. Such as a financial crisis or a pandemic.

If every business had to consider every possible risk scenario (WW3?) then nothing would function. We need a kind of 'insurance' that nobody else will provide. The government is well-positioned to do that if they do it responsibly.

These companies are generally not getting free money - they are getting loans, or in some cases the gov. is getting equity. The government could have actually made a profit were they to have held their auto-bailouts a little longer.

The reality is, Auto Companies cannot prepare for an 'apocalypse' in an adjacent, much bigger market - banking.

Credit is the right thing to do to keep that system going, again the government did loose a few billion, but it was small in the grand scheme, moreover, they should have broken even.

There are quite a few social programs provided by gov for individuals, moreover, those are 'freebies'. The gov is not taking a chunk of 'ownership of you' and they're generally not extending loans.

Banks also paid back their loans, the sneaky thing there was when the Fed allowed banks to dump mortgages on them at face value - which was a 'bailout' of banks and home-owners.

Of all the things that drive unfairness and inequality - these are not them. These are generally good bits of intervention.

Low-interest rates that drive massive home inflation is a primary driver of inequality. Lack of some kind of socialized medicine. Lack of reasonable healthcare regulations. Garbage public schools in some areas. Prison Industrial Complex. These are much more obvious areas for reform.

Every financial decision does.

I'm saying that the popular notion of 'stock buybacks' as somehow a 'windfall' for investors is just not really true at all.

The notions that some individual investors are literally selling their stock, but instead of to some other party but the company itself, is not a big deal.

Stock buybacks are a rational and normal part of financial operations not some 'special win' for investors as some of the rhetoric implies.

the repurchased stock can also be held or destroyed on buyback, which affects the timing of the benefits.

and lastly, buybacks are primarily useful to executives for their signaling value (e.g., luring less sophisticated investors into buying).

the benefits are not uniform to every shareholder, especially through time.

How is it a "forced reinvestment"? Buyback requires two parties to the transaction, the company is buying shares, but someone has to sell them. This can be you. It would be forced reinvestment if the company just kept cash and never returned it either through buyback or dividend, which incidentally is what most people grinding against airline stock buybacks seem to be suggesting.

Really, stock buybacks and dividends are mostly equivalent, with the exception of the tax treatment, which is the whole reason why companies increasingly prefer the buyback route.

That it won't ever exactly happen that way means some will win/lose depending on their individual situation, but it should be something approaching a wash on average.

Again - stock buybacks are not 'windfalls' for investors it's just a normal part of financial operation.

The question of how much cash on hand certain businesses should have to have ... is a separate issue.

If the government wants to regulate this like they do banks, well, that's an idea, but I don't think it's the best one, but spurning businesses because they did a buyback last year and are otherwise operating normally is definitely not the right approach.