I'm definitely being cynical here, but I don't think the USA would see this as a negative...

Good for them. We need to see a resurgence of unions and strikes if we ever want a pro-labor candidate to actually stand a chance...

Hopefully Biden won't make this one illegal too...

That's a great anecdote but doesn't change the fact that they make hundreds of millions off predatory loans.

A whole bunch of rich executives hold a lion's share of the stock, but they take only a small compensation of salary.

They get, however, compensation in the form of shares of the company.

The company can produce a ton of profit by doing things like cutting corners and reducing salary, that profit can be reinvested in the company or paid out to the shareholders.

But... If it were paid out to the shareholders, they would have to pay taxes on it.

So the idea is, by using the money to artificially lower the supply of stocks through a buyback, you're increasing the proportional share each stock represents in the company.

If you have 100 stock issued, each one represents 1/100 stake in a company worth 10,000$. Each is worth 100.00$. The owners of the company can use their 1000$ profit to buy back 10 shares. Now there are 90 shares that represent 1/90 stake in the company, meaning you've effectively 'given' each shareholder around 0.11 stock for each share they own.

The issue with this is that you're basically giving people money tax-free. Executives and billionaires don't need to pay capital gains tax until they sell their stock.

Then, they have another trick! They just use it as collateral to secure low-interest loans and live lofty lives of luxury tax-free. A bank will happily 'lend' someone enough money to live an expensive extravagant life in exchange for having those assets as collateral.

So they can accumulate billions of dollars of funds, tax-free, by dodging income tax and instead inflating the value of held stock.

They don't ever need to sell that stock because they can buy anything they want using it as collateral.

So they never have to pay taxes on it.

'Buying back' stock also has unpredictable market effects. If a company is frequently issuing buybacks, people may speculate based on that pattern.

It's a big issue, a big scam, not enough people are talking about it and dissecting what it really means.

Two positive numbers can't multiply together to create a negative number, so it should be impossible.

But... if you 'imagine' that there IS some number that is multiplied by itself to get a negative number, you can actually use that 'imaginary' number to get useful results. All we do is define that number explicitly, so you say i*i= -1.

From this you get:

i^1 = i

i^2 = -1

i^3 = -i

i^4 = 1

A 'Complex number' is the sum of imaginary number and a real number. (for example 3i - 1) The complex plain is a coordinate system that plots complex numbers using the imaginary component for one axis and the real component for the other axis.

If you're using a regular x/y coordinate system, you can easily move the point on the X axis by adding or subtracting from the x value, and you can move the point on the Y axis by adding or subtracting from the y value, but what if you want to do something like rotating the coordinate around the origin? It's not super straight forward to find an operation that will turn 3x-y to -3y-x that will work for all coefficients. Sure, you could just add -4x -2y, but that only works for those specific coordinates.

But if you're using a complex plain, you unlock another operation! You can rotate the coordinate around (0,0) simply by multiplying it by some power of i!

Multiplying by 'i' rotates the coordinate 90 degrees clockwise, multiplying by i^x rotates the coordinate by 90*x degrees.

i^4 = i*i*i*i = (-1)(-1) = 1 because you've completed the 360 degree rotation returning the coordinate to where it started.

So if you're using 3i-1 instead of 3x-y, you can easily rotate it.

(3i-1) * i

3(i*i) - i

3(-1) -i

-3-i

And this operation will work regardless of what your starting coordinates are. Say you want to rotate -9i -5 by 270 degrees, you just multiply by i^3.

(-9i -5) * i^3

(-9i * i^3) + (-5 * i^3)

(-9i^4) + (-5i^3)

(-9 1) + (-5-i)

5i-9