When workers produce a trillion $ and it all goes to manipulating stock price, that is wage theft.

[0:00]Do you think wage theft is when I agree to pay you 20 an hour and I end up paying you 18 an hour somehow? I think wage theft is when the companies of the S&P 500 use nearly a trillion dollars of the revenue generated by their employees to buy back their own stock and boost its price. Before 1980, stock buybacks were illegal because they're a form of market manipulation. You're boosting your stock price by doing nothing fundamental about your business. And when stock buybacks were illegal, corporations use that money to invest in their employees mostly in the form of wages and pension funds, but also research and development and philanthropy like building public libraries and hospitals. The company that owned the warehouse that burned down has done almost a billion and a half dollars in stock buybacks in the last two years. That's almost $30,000 per employee. But then we went from stakeholder capitalism to shareholder only capitalism and now we are where we are. Did the man who did that thing to that warehouse agree to the wage that he was so unhappy with? He sure did, but what choice did he have in an economy with negative net job growth and where the warehouse sector is being hit particularly hard. Could the employees of any workplace decide to collectively bargain for higher wages, lower hours, longer hours or whatever they want if they're unhappy with some condition in their workplace? They sure could, unless of course they're in a right to work state. Or if the company threatens to simply shut down the work site if the workers are threatening to unionize, which they do most of the time. While it's reasonable to find Arson distasteful, we must recognize that the ripping up of the social contract by corporations, billionaires and the government is the single greatest act of violence since the conquest of the Americas. And it doesn't have to be this way. Back when stock buybacks were illegal, there were still millionaires. There were still extraordinarily wealthy people. They still had yachts and mansions and multiple homes and all the things that a wealthy person could possibly want except for infinitely more than he could possibly do with. And while you may believe that it is a man's right to become as indecently wealthy as he desires, you have to live with the physical reality that when that happens, things begin burning down.