"How money works" YouTube channel had a nice video about this trend in particular going back to making stock buybacks legal in 1982 I think, which made CEO and execs wealth acquisition driven not by a long successful career with healthy margins and dividends, but a short-tenured local maximum pump-and-dump and a hold-the-bag game funded by endless fiat currency which is printed on the backs of other people. Other people's money , Gordon Gecko, they're not just real, they're celebrity sociopaths running us into the ground because of a fragile ego.