You are being proletarianized. No remaining vectors for new growth, means corporations are now also cannibalizing white collar workers.
The welfare states in northern Europe were created as a bulwark against the threat of unions “going Bolshevik,” that threat has been gone since 1991 so those concessions are being revoked. Elevated wages are also being revoked. Very explicitly in the case of France and Germany.
Americans are buying up EU assets for cheap, the USA is cashing out on their investments during the marshall plan. Either workers (through their unions) regain enough leverage through strikes or capitalists take everything since workers have no leverage.
Crazy rent price increases in metropolitan centers are also really just clawbacks on white collar wages.
If stock buybacks are Capital’s path of least resistance it will self organize, like iron shavings to a neodymium magnet, and make it happen. There is no human agency in the circuits of capitalism and never will be.
If this woman tried to not do stock buybacks, she would be fired by her peers/board and replaced.
If this woman was even capable of considering doing pay raises instead of stock buybacks, she would have been clocked and removed from the circuit like an intelligent species crashing into the fermi paradox/great filter.