distributed through buy backs executive comp and the banking system as opposed to that invested in new business formation, cap x and job creation which is the basic conservative thesis i agree with. what we have for mork. hang on mark hang on mark. what we have heard from ceo when polled he asked ceos to raise hands if you were doing anything other than reinvest wages in buy backs. and no one is saying this is going back into the economy in terms of wages. because it s missing the final piece which is the inincentive to reinvest the money. this includes inincentive to write off capital expenditures in the coming years. closes and penalizes executive compensation and abuses of that. there are many factors which aren t getting coverage but that encourage companies to put this
$4 billion more than that last year purchasing back their own stock from the market. just to inflate which is something that s great for investors. great for executive comp. compensation. that money could have gone back to the workers with all the productivity gains. there s a parallel there between as we face a fiscal cliff, how we think about what our citizens. i love this, is labor a cost to be minimized or the workers that we maximize. it s the same sort of questions. do we invest in health care, education because our citizens are our great american resource or do we think let s spend as little as possible and leave people as out there as they can. whoever realizes and whoever gets this. and realizes this and the bad press and people can go with wallets or say i choose to shop someplace else. somebody says i m going to treat my people great, they re part of the advertising campaign. this is a great moment.
workers a raise. and it would create 100,000 jobs. you are putting money in hands of people that are going to spend. it would be a stimulus. a private sector retail-led stimulus. that s great. but you want your black friday flat screen. the question is how much would it cost? the whole large chain store sector would cost $20 billion to do this kind of wage flip. how does that compare? one, it s actually less than just the top ten largest retailers spent buying back their own shares in the market last year. it s something they do to boost earnings per share. it doesn t have productivity improvements. it s good for executive comp. when it comes to consumers, right, it would be, at most, on average, 15 cents per shopping trip if they passed the entire cost of that wage increase on to consumers. so, 15 cents, less than a