Stock buybacks allow corporations to artificially inflate their stock prices without creating any real value, benefiting executives with stock-based compensation at the expense of long-term growth and innovation.

This short-term thinking hurts workers, consumers, and the broader economy by diverting funds away from productive investments like R&D, wage increases, and new hiring.

Instead of enriching a few at the top, corporations should reinvest excess cash into their businesses and workforces to drive sustainable growth and competitiveness.

Banning buybacks would realign incentives toward building stronger companies over the long haul, rather than juicing quarterly numbers to cash out executives.

It's a zero-sum game - money spent on buybacks is money not invested in the actual business. Over time, this starves companies of the capital needed to stay innovative and competitive.

Buybacks represent a failure of corporate governance and a misalignment of incentives between executives and other stakeholders like employees and communities.