Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
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Kimberly-Clark, manufacturer of popular household products such as Kleenex, Huggies, and Scott toilet paper and paper towels, has been on the Fortune 500 every year since it was first established in 1955
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from 2015 through 2025. Over that time, the company collectively made 22.8 billion in stock buybacks and dividends — meaning the company paid out the equivalent of 106 percent of their net income to Wall Street.
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Dividends are direct payouts of a company’s earnings to shareholders and have been around for a long time, since at least the founding of the East Dutch India Company in the 1600s, though the amount paid out today is often far more excessive than in the past. What is relatively new is stock buybacks, where companies repurchase their own stock, which they retire, artificially inflating the value of the shares that remain. Buybacks are a surefire way for companies to quickly drive up their stock price
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Between 2009 and 2018, 465 companies in the S&P 500 spent an explosive 91 percent of their net income — $7.6 trillion — on stock buybacks and dividends.
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between 2009 and 2018, 465 companies in the S&P 500 spent an explosive 91 percent of their net income – $7.6 trillion – on stock buybacks and dividends.
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It’s legalized looting,” said Les Leopold, author of Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice. “They are doing everything they can to transfer as much money as possible from the company into their own pockets. They lay off workers, break unions, outsource and offshore jobs, suppress wages, and price gouge. Companies often take on debt just to do buybacks.