The booming stock market has been given ample opportunity to translate into even some sort of relief for so many working class Americans living in poverty. Is it just a matter of allowing more time?
Your thread title indicates you have no understanding of the concept.
The purpose of stock buyback is to protect a publicly-traded corporation from raiding or closure. I will provide you with examples to explain.
Krogers (a grocery store chain) typically keeps 1/3rd of its assets as cold hard cash.
When KKR attempted to buy Kroger's, which would have resulted in the destruction and closure of the company, Krogers took its cold hard cash and started buying back its own stock. That drove stock prices up and KKR could no longer afford to purchase Krogrer stock.
Zenith used to be a US company. It competed against a Korean company called Life's Good. You know them the LG company.
Zenith and its union workforce could not compete globally against Korean LG and its union workforce.
LG amassed lots of profits from the global sale of TVs, cell-phones, CD/DVD players and other electronics. It used those profits to buy Zenith stock.
Eventually, LG had bought enough Zenith stock to become the majority shareholder at 51%.
In other words, LG owned Zenith. Zenith did not have any cash to buy back its own stock to prevent LG from taking over Zenith.
Zenith had to file bankruptcy and LG bought Zenith.
As part of their union benefits, Zenith workers now work at Wal-Mart and McDonald's, since Zenith is no more.
So, the purpose of stock buyback is to keep the stock prices of a publicly-traded corporation high enough to prevent a hostile takeover, leveraged buyout, forced merger, forced acquisition or complete closure and going out of business.
That is what keeps American workers employed.
Purely and simply, America's biggest problem that causes the unrest and violence is income inequality.
State the law, corollary or theorem in Economics that requires income equality.
Can a booming stock market deliver? Trump staked his popularity on the stock market bringing hope for the working class American.
That was his mistake. The 3% of US businesses that sell stocks and employ 5.6% of the work-force sell stocks as one of several ways of raising cash.
Note that neither stocks, a stock market nor publicly-traded corporations are necessary for a successful economy.
If 100% of US companies were not corporations instead of only 97% not being corporations, people would have to use different investment vehicles to get additional money.
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