The argument he makes about buybacks just doesn't work. If the money didn't go to buybacks it'd go out in dividends. If there were no way to extract profits from a company and return them to shareholders then the whole investment model doesn't work. At the end of the day the owners of the company have the first claim on the profits. If the profits don't get paid out in dividends or used in buybacks they don't suddenly become the property of the employees. Having said that, yes stock based compensation works to align CEO incentives with share holder incentives and yes share holder short term incentives are to drive down employee wages.Fundamentally I think the bigger issue is the taxation system not only preferencing unearned income, but then also being full of loopholes to mask income entirely. I think you'd be much better off proposing new rules around what it means to "realize" a capital gain (for example, if your asset is used as collateral, you are realizing it's value and it should be taxable). Rather than creating more byzantine rules around who can earn what.
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