; and (B) companies spent more money on stock buybacks than on debt payments, capital expenditures, research and development, or dividends. (4) Stock buybacks benefit large shareholders and corporate executives, the pay packages of whom include significant stock compensation. Those buybacks can also increase the earnings per share for a company and nearly 1/2 of the companies listed in the S&P 500 index link executive compensation to earnings per share. (5) Compared to the typical worker, the compensation for a chief executive officer (referred to in this paragraph as a CEO ) has increased significantly. In 1989, the ratio of CEO-to-worker compensation was 58 to 1, but, in 2017, that ratio was 312 to 1. Over roughly the same period of time, the wealth gap in the United States has widened considerably. Between 1989 and 2016, the share of wealth in the United States held by the top 1 percent of individuals in the United States with respect to annual income increased from just below 30 percent to nearly 39 percent, while the share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent of individuals in the United States with respect to annual income dropped from slightly more than 33 percent to less than 23 percent. (6) Since 2000, corporate profits, as a percentage of total income in the United States, have increased by nearly 5 percentage points while workers’ salaries, as a percentage of that total income, have decreased by 4 percentage points. (7) The economic strength of the United States is undermined by the wealth gap described in this section. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, increasing income inequality in the United States between 1990 and 2010 reduced the per capita gross domestic product of the United States by approximately 5 percentage points. (8) Left unaddressed, the patterns of corporate excess and growing wealth inequality described in this section will worsen and workers will continue to contribute to corporate profits without sharing in those profits. 3. Repurchase of