The amount the company I work for did in stock buybacks last year, were that wealth instead taxed or returned to the people, would have been able to:

Build 10,000,000 sqft of high schools, or, around 88 $45,000,000 high schools.

Or

Could have provided ~6.3 million women with young children or infants with supplemental health and nutrition through the WIC program for 8.5 months

Or

80 $50 million mental health facilities

Or

According to Dept of HUD, would have been 20% of the total needed to eradicate homelessness entirely from the country

Or

Fed 363,636 families of 4, for a total of 1.45 million people, for an entire year.

Or

Put solar panels on 250,000 homes.

My company did an entire BILLION less in buybacks. Adding up the top 5 companies I could find data for, we get the following: ~$56billion buybacks, which could have instead been used to:

Build 140,000,000 sqft of high schools, or, around 1200 $45,000,000 high schools.

Or

Could have provided ~6.3 million women with young children or infants with supplemental health and nutrition through the WIC program for 9.91 YEARS.

Or

1120 $50 million mental health facilities

Or

According to Dept of HUD, would have been 280% of the total needed to eradicate homelessness entirely from the country,

Or

Fed 5,090,904 families of 4, for a total of 71.2 million people, or 20% of the entire population of the country for an entire year.

Or

Put solar panels on 3.5 million homes.