>This is absurd. There is plenty of money, we could tax something like 5% of stock buybacks and completely rebuild our entire society from the ground up.

Even with a 5% tax, buybacks would still be better than dividends. The bigger problem is that dividends and buybacks are functionally the same (return money to shareholders), but they receive different tax treatments. Instead of trying to patch the differences with more taxes, we should make both have the same treatment when it comes to taxes.