S&P 500 firms paid over three trillion dollars in dividends in a decade.

Evidence

Dividends may appear benign, but like stock buybacks, they are profits that are not reinvested by the company into productive means, such as new hires, higher wages, or increased research and development. Instead, they are payouts to investors that are disproportionately already wealthy. Between 2010 and 2019, the publicly traded companies in the S&P 500 Index spent over $3 trillion on dividends. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with stock-buyback claims and shareholder-value logic that deWaard likely foregrounds in Part One on finance shaping industry.
• SEED: The $3 trillion dividend figure anchors an essay on how shareholder payout math starves creative-industry labor budgets.