<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>bryanlarsen</author><text>Businesses have always been for putting food on the table of their proprietors.   We&amp;#x27;ve got a few more levels of abstraction now, but the fundamental is the same.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jorvi</author><text>&amp;gt; NB that &amp;quot;returning money to the shareholders&amp;quot; is ultimately what companies are for&lt;p&gt;You have absorbed modern market brokenthink.&lt;p&gt;Companies are for creating goods or services to sell to other parties. They existed long before the idea of shareholders. Following your logic, companies pre-VOC had no existing purpose.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;quot;Stock buybacks are a form of stock manipulation&amp;quot; - not really, they&amp;#x27;re a means of returning money to the shareholders while bypassing taxes on dividends.&lt;p&gt;(Not an expert on the US tax system as I&amp;#x27;m a Brit, but it seems that the tax treatment of dividends depends on how long the stock is held, and can be taxed at income tax rates, while stock buybacks result in inflating the stock value which is always CGT. Not sure what the tax treatment is for institutional investors?)&lt;p&gt;NB that &amp;quot;returning money to the shareholders&amp;quot; is ultimately what companies are &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt;, and we should completely expect them to do this because without it investors wouldn&amp;#x27;t invest in the first place. It&amp;#x27;s infinite zero-dividend growth that&amp;#x27;s weird (Amazon).</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Intel Brags of $152B in Stock Buybacks. Why Does It Need an $8B Subsidy?</title><url>https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/intel-subsidy-chips-act-stock-buyback</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>gtirloni</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Companies are for creating goods or services to sell to other parties&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Out of autruism? If not, it&amp;#x27;s to make money for owners. Shareholders are sort of owners thus to make money for shareholders.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jorvi</author><text>&amp;gt; NB that &amp;quot;returning money to the shareholders&amp;quot; is ultimately what companies are for&lt;p&gt;You have absorbed modern market brokenthink.&lt;p&gt;Companies are for creating goods or services to sell to other parties. They existed long before the idea of shareholders. Following your logic, companies pre-VOC had no existing purpose.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;quot;Stock buybacks are a form of stock manipulation&amp;quot; - not really, they&amp;#x27;re a means of returning money to the shareholders while bypassing taxes on dividends.&lt;p&gt;(Not an expert on the US tax system as I&amp;#x27;m a Brit, but it seems that the tax treatment of dividends depends on how long the stock is held, and can be taxed at income tax rates, while stock buybacks result in inflating the stock value which is always CGT. Not sure what the tax treatment is for institutional investors?)&lt;p&gt;NB that &amp;quot;returning money to the shareholders&amp;quot; is ultimately what companies are &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt;, and we should completely expect them to do this because without it investors wouldn&amp;#x27;t invest in the first place. It&amp;#x27;s infinite zero-dividend growth that&amp;#x27;s weird (Amazon).</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Intel Brags of $152B in Stock Buybacks. Why Does It Need an $8B Subsidy?</title><url>https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/intel-subsidy-chips-act-stock-buyback</url></story>