I’m so sick of companies pissing away all of their profit and money to make rich people richer then when the smallest problem hits it is our problem. We pay. Fuck them.
Looking at this (below) with some super sloppy math they have made in the last ten years 25 billion in profits and 5 billion in losses totally 20 billion in profits (give or take as my interest in totalling this accurately is zero). The fact that they used their money irresponsibly and didn’t say for a raining day, or it’s raining planes day, is not the tax payers that need to save them. I’m in my mid 30s, you know how many times I’ve seen extremely profitable and successful “too big to fail” businesses bailed out. Fuck the fucking fuckers and anyone who trys and correct my math.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BA/boeing/gross-profit
Between 1998 and 2018, the plane manufacturer also manufactured a whopping $61.0 billion in stock buybacks, amounting to 81.8 percent of its profits. Add in dividends and Boeing’s shareholders received 121 percent of its profits.
Stock buybacks should be illegal or at least heavily regulated. They’re stealing money from their employees, putting their company in peril by not having cash on hand, and stunting innovation. Imagine if major companies had to put profit back into their company? Instead it’s a game to see how much you can exploit the working class, how little you can innovate and still get by (it’s easy when you have no competition), and gamble (after lobbying with minimal money) that your political plants will force the taxpayers you’re exploiting to bail you out. It’s pretty disgusting.
https://greenalphaadvisors.com/boeings-struggles-highlight-the-perils-of-stock-buybacks/
https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/ba/buybacks#google_vignette --> they’re still doing it as of March of this year.
Stock buybacks aren’t really the issue, if they didn’t exist they’d just be paying dividends with the money instead. The real issue is the reckless pursuit of maximising shareholder payouts, particularly for too big to fail corps.
While you are correct that dividends would be paid, it just wouldn’t happen on this scale or to this detriment, imo. Buybacks are used as a crutch to generate Short-term profit and lead to executives and companies focusing on short-term goals. They artificially increase EPS for executive compensation. This is all exacerbated when companies know they’re going to be bailed out by taxpayers because there are only 2 companies that make planes now, or 3 media companies setting prices together.
Can’t correct that which is correct. Shine on, fam!
Just-restrained-enough fact-based rage is damn sexy
Oh yeah, I’d bang Herding Llamas. And I’m a straight guy!
Hrmm… I miss the part where that’s my problem.
Nationalise it if it’s too big to fail but can no longer operate as a public company.
Communism! Muh free market!
Alright, then the market is free to let Boeing fail
As a big fan of capitalism - go die Boeing. It’s not the taxpayers job to bail you out because of stupid decision you made.
It’s not the taxpayers job to bail you out
It literally is. That’s the only way privatization works.
If the only reason you exist is because you’re too big to fail, maybe you shouldn’t exist?
It’s not the only reason Boeing exists. That’s the problem. Airframe manufacturing is a critical infrastructure componemt for the nation’s airline mass transit network. And there are only two companies in the world that operate at the scale necessary to support the volume of flights.
Boeing can’t fail any more than ATT or Citibank can be allowed to fail.
If government has to bail them out, then government gets to nationalize a proportionate amount of the company. And the dividends then go toward government spending.
Something about fiscal responsibility…
And the next government can sell it off for less than they paid for it and the cycle continues.
They shouldn’t pay for it, they should just seize it.
That would be the smart thing to do, if the government was serious about both protecting the capital/labor base and not pissing away infinity dollars forever.
Hey Boeing, welcome to capitalism!
Capitalists: Under capitalism inefficient companies fail, and this is good.
Also capitalists: Save Boeing!!!11oneone
Boeing isn’t the best example of a capitalist enterprise. It’s too big to fail. The US government is too dependent on it and the country depends on Boeing strategically.
Boeing is basically a pseudo-state corporation.
It’s too big to fail.
Then FTC has some work to do. Or nationalize.
What would the FTC do? Boeing builds aircraft for the US military. Breaking up the company or allowing it to fail jeopardizes the US’s strategic interests.
Nationalization is an option but the political climate in the US is extremely hostile to that option. Instead what I expect will happen is a massive bailout and a forced reorganization of management to fix all the issues. The government will dictate the changes the company needs to make but otherwise will remain hands off. This is how the US has done these things in the past.
What would the FTC do?
Break it up. So it won’t be “too big”.
Breaking up the company or allowing it to fail jeopardizes the US’s strategic interests.
Ah. So you see the problem with capitalism.
The government will dictate the changes the company needs to make
And what will happen if nothing changes? Another bailout?
Ah. So you see the problem with capitalism.
It’s a double-edged sword. Boeing developed these aircraft. They’ve given the US the military advantage they’ve enjoyed since the Second World War.
Boeing developed the aircraft with taxpayer money, they build the aircraft with taxpayer money, and then they get a ton of money as profits from our taxpayer money, and lastly we bail them out with our taxpayer money.
*Engieneers hired by Boeing
Maybe Boeing should have thought of that before making poor decisions. It should learn a little something called personal responsibility and if it goes broke, well, that’ll be a shame. Anyway!
Boeing stopped pulling on its bootstraps and wants government welfare.
If Boeing had just put a few dollars a week into a savings account when it was 18, it could have retired by now.
This is one of the supposed benefits of the free market. If left alone, under normal conditions, what’s supposed to happen is that badly ran, uncompetitive firms end up showing themselves the door, making room for new market competitors who may not be so badly managed. Don’t fucking save them, especially don’t advocate for saving them if you claim to love free markets.
we dont have a free market. We have what i can only describe as Inverse Socialism
its socialism for the wealthy and the corporations, and “free market” for everyone else
this is part of the reason why theft of property from the rich, or violence against them, is not morally wrong.
They get tax breaks that we all pay for, and they influence policies that help themselves while killing us.
You cant steal what you already paid for, and its not murder when its self defense
It is, afaik, the literal, actual, unironic definition of the fascist economic model. Basically, the public sector only really exists in the form of “private” companies that are tightly coupled to the government.
thats what they taught us about communist Russia when i was in highschool
Our economics class learned that their “public” sector was a mix of private companies acting as both private citizens AND government agencies.
And my teacher was like “imagine if all the roads and utilities and infrastructure for the country was run by private, FOR PROFIT businesses that benefit from laws written for citizens, AND from laws written for corporations but are not bound by either”
20 years later i realize thats how its been here the whole time
Agreed, but the big players have their hands tied up in Congress and the military so much that it’s not gonna happen.
Then they should be nationalized, because they’ve already got the benefits, but none of the downsides, while the public get none of the benefits, and all of the downsides… At this point “too big to fail” are essentially critical government infrastructure setup by wealthy criminals to steal directly from tax payers.
Nationalizing industries? In America? We don’t do that here, friend. We give corporations massive bailouts and forgive all felonies.
I mean the US came shocking close after the Penn Central collapse, even operating Conrail for several years as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Federal Government for several years
I would bring back Conrail immediately.
Ya know… I was going to say “You dropped this /s”
But then sadly, I realized you didn’t :-(
I think you could make the argument it is already nationalized if the government bails them out to protect it’s military industry sector.
That’s actually really sad to think about.
The problem with free markets is they are incredibly unstable and create booms and busts and people don’t like this so we get the worst of all worlds which is unfettered capitalism and no competition or failure weeding out poorly managed companies. Maybe free markets are just a shitty ideal?
Maybe free markets are just a shitty ideal?
Yes. The answer to that question is yes. Free market capitalism encourages cutthroat competition in which the only factor in any decision-making process is maximizing profits. Safety isn’t a factor. Employee well-being isn’t a factor. National security isn’t a factor. The economy at large isn’t a factor. Long term investments aren’t even a factor. Line go up this quarter equals good quarter. Regulations ensure mandatory minimums for societal prosperity.
Until corporations realise they can cheat and change the game by bribing politicians to tip the scales in their favour.
Business exists only for one thing; exploiting systems, even if that means meta-exploitation, since that’s the highest form of exploitation, and the inevitable endgame.
Historically I don’t think that’s what the term “free market” was referring to, although some people do use it that way now. As always, we need to remember that there are no normal conditions, and free markets aren’t free. If you don’t have anti-monopoly legislation, if you don’t have anti-corruption legislation, then large corporations will win.
Did they try not cutting costs to the point planes fall out of the sky?
Mmm, then they wouldn’t have had the money to buy back their shares to boost the stock price. So no, your ideas would not pass muster at a board meeting.
You know, I caught a few minutes of his show. my grandparents were into it, I guess. Not that they ever made money off his tips, or anything. The reality is his show was a coke fueled investment-related infomercial. Like the shamwow guy, but shorter and bald-er
(in the 90’s he gave an interview about how as a fund manager or whatever, he’d pay the press to run hit pieces, even. now he is the hit piece.)
“WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE POOR CORPORATIONS???”
Fuck Jim Cramer by the way.
Capitalism as it is supposedly “intended” say whuuuut? O.O /s
Solidarity to all the workers at Boeing!
Did they try pulling themselves up by their bootstraps?
“We moved all our production to non union factories across the country and put out shittier products, now we can’t pay bills anymore!!”
