Dominic Pino of National Review Online highlights the latest insights from one of America’s foremost political commentators.

George Will has written a scorcher of a column, in a way that only he can, against Democrats’ demagoguery on stock buybacks.

He writes that Chuck Schumer “has spent as much time as an NFL linebacker as he has in private enterprise,” and that for Joe Biden, “the private sector is a region as foreign as Outer Mongolia.” Will writes, “Hostility to buybacks arises from foggy economic thinking that is encouraged by the progressive animus against the people and processes that create the wealth that progressives delight in redistributing.”

Really, buybacks are a way of returning profits to shareholders, similar to dividends. Democrats object that that money is not going into more productive uses. But, as Andrew Stuttaford wrote in August, “the argument that management might have decided that that productive use does not exist, and that it would be better (directly or indirectly) to return capital to the company’s shareholders — which is to say its owners — so that they can deploy it elsewhere generally goes unmentioned.”

Will makes a similar point in his column:

“Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has spent as much time as an NFL linebacker as he has in private enterprise, calls buybacks ‘despicable.’ Of his two recommendations for corporations, one is as predictable as the other is vague: Money spent on buybacks should instead fund ‘significant’ increases in employees’ wages, or ‘meaningful’ investments.

“Schumer seems sure that employees are generally paid below-market wages. Or that the market is less competent than senators are at measuring workers’ value-added. Or that paying wages higher than necessary to attract or retain workers somehow counts as investing. Or that corporations always have at hand investments that are ‘meaningful,’ whatever that means.”

He also points out that Biden applies this same argument to oil companies, which is strange because it would imply that he wants more fossil-fuel production, contradicting his administration’s desire to transition away from fossil fuels.