The Best Buy NOligarchy Profile
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NOligarchy Score
40.2
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Best Buy scores 40.04 on the NOligarchy Index — a number that demands explanation. On a scale where 100 means zero lobbying, zero executive pay excess, and zero regulatory infractions, a 40.04 means concentrated political influence, a CEO paid more than five hundred times a typical worker’s salary, and a steady stream of workplace violations. The country’s dominant electronics retailer uses its scale not to lift its workforce but to return cash to shareholders while dispatching lobbyists to shape the rules under which it operates.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
22.9
Wealth Extraction
32.1
Playing by the Rules
93.4
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
The Pillar Grades:
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Political Access Grade: 22.88/100. Best Buy channeled over $3.39 million into federal lobbying and another $317,000 through its Political Action Committee (PAC) from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). That spending grades them near the bottom of the accountability scale for political influence.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 31.61/100. The company spent roughly $1.1 billion buying back its own stock across fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026 while paying a median worker $32,018 a year — and handing its chief executive compensation totaling about $17.3 million in a single year.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 93.41/100. Two workplace safety violations — both caught by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — and $45,050 in penalties over the two-year tracking period. This is the strongest of their three grades, though Best Buy still ranks last in its sector on penalty exposure.
The Sector Context: Best Buy ranks 12 out of 12 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Electronics and appliance retailers), with a NOligarchy score of 40.04 against a sector average of 83.5. The gap isn’t close — every other company in the peer group scores better on accountability. Best Buy doesn’t just trail the industry standard; it sits in a category of its own at the bottom. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Retailer That Runs on Worker Wages and Returns the Profits to Wall Street
Best Buy generated $41.7 billion in annual revenue. Its median employee earned $32,018 — a paycheck that, before taxes, comes to roughly $615 a week. During the same period, the company deliberately reduced the number of shares in circulation to pump up stock-based metrics, spending approximately $1.1 billion on buybacks and an additional $2.4 billion in dividends across three fiscal years. The single sharpest imbalance in this data is straightforward: Best Buy chose, year after year, to funnel billions to shareholders while the people selling refrigerators and laptops took home just above the poverty line. It then spent $3.39 million in lobbying fees to make sure Congress knew exactly where it stood on the rules governing how that money moves.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
Over the two-year tracking period, Best Buy poured $3.39 million into federal lobbying — an average of roughly $424,000 every quarter. Their PAC added $317,000 more, split nearly down the middle between Democrats (49.1%) and Republicans (50.9%), suggesting a strategy not of ideology but of access: keep a foot in both doors. On top of that, Best Buy executives personally donated $39,798 to federal candidates and committees. Their lobbyists knocked on doors at the House of Representatives 73 times and the Senate 70 times, with additional trips to the Department of the Treasury, the National Economic Council, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Executive Office of the President.
Best Buy's PAC gave $115,000 to Democrats and $119,000 to Republicans — a 49.1% / 50.9% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
49.1%
50.9%
Democrats · $115,000
Republicans · $119,000
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
Why Best Buy Cares About Washington
The issue areas are a map of the company’s pressure points. Trade and taxation each appeared in 16 separate lobbying filings — the maximum for any single issue. For a company that sources consumer electronics from global supply chains, particularly China and Vietnam, every tariff decision is a direct hit to margins. Lobbying filings cited issues around “trade with China, including Section 301 and de minimis,” and “tariffs” — blunt references to the cost pressures that come from sourcing overseas. Corporate taxation showed up just as often, with filings referencing “issues related to corporate taxation” session after session.
The financial-sector filings reveal a second profit pressure: interchange fees. Best Buy’s lobbyists repeatedly referenced the Dodd-Frank Act’s debit card interchange provisions and, across four separate filings, cited both the House and Senate versions of the Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 — legislation that would require larger card networks to route transactions through competing networks, potentially lowering the fees retailers pay on every swipe. For a company running billions of dollars in consumer transactions, even a fraction of a percentage point in interchange savings translates to tens of millions of dollars annually.
The organized retail crime filings show a third priority. Lobbyists filed repeatedly on the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act — the 119th Congress version still in progress as of April 2025 — connecting it to issues spanning law enforcement, transportation, and environmental filings across multiple quarters. Cargo theft and coordinated shoplifting cost major retailers enormous sums, and Best Buy’s lobbyists cited the bill quarter after quarter.
The Inside Track
Best Buy deployed three lobbyists who previously held government positions. Connor Crowley served as a legislative aide to multiple members of Congress before joining the company’s lobbying effort. Austen Jensen previously served as Chief of Staff to Rep. Patrick McHenry and in leadership roles for two other representatives. Janelle McClure brought experience as Legislative Director for Rep. Colin Allred and as legislative counsel to two U.S. Senators. That collective congressional experience is now pointed at the very institution these lobbyists used to work inside. Best Buy also retained one outside lobbying firm, Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid, LLC — a firm that simultaneously lobbies for CVS Health Corporation, suggesting a shared-access model where the same firm cultivates relationships on behalf of multiple large corporate clients.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Best Buy
client
KOUNTOUPES DENHAM CARR & REID, LLC
lobbying firm
CVS Health Corporation
also a client
Why it matters: the same firm argues Best Buy’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Best Buy’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Prioritizing Wall Street Over the Workforce
Best Buy’s CEO pay ratio is 542:1, per the SEC DEF 14A. That means for every dollar earned by the median Best Buy employee, the chief executive pocketed 542. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $17.3 million. The median employee earned $32,018 — which works out to less than $616 a week before taxes. To put that gap in human terms: the CEO’s yearly earnings could cover the annual salaries of more than 540 front-line workers.
The Shareholder Payout
Over fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026, Best Buy executed a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — spending $340 million, $500 million, and $273 million respectively, totaling approximately $1.1 billion in buybacks across three fiscal years. On top of that, the company handed out roughly $801 million, $807 million, and $801 million in dividends across those same three fiscal years — a combined $2.4 billion returned to shareholders as traditional cash payments. Add it together: Best Buy directed more than $3.5 billion to investors over three fiscal years. That money went primarily to the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of all stock.
The Missed Raise
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 82K employees
Spent on buybacks
$1.1B
directed to shareholders
÷ 82K
workers
Per-worker raise
$13,626
per employee, 3-year total
Spread over those 3 years, that's a 14% annual raise on the median worker's $32,018 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 81,685 workers a $13,625.51 raise, spread across the last 3 fiscal years.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 81,685
Your share of the buyback
+$13,626
Per biweekly paycheck
+$262.03
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $1.11 billion.
Spread across Best Buy's 81,685 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $13,626 per worker — about $262 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
The Dividend Factor
Best Buy did not abandon traditional dividends in favor of buybacks — it ran both in parallel. That matters because it underscores the scale of the choice. The company simultaneously paid out more than $2.4 billion in dividends and spent $1.1 billion shrinking its share count across three fiscal years. The workers on the floor didn’t get a version of either. Best Buy could have maintained its entire dividend commitment to investors and still funded a meaningful raise for its workforce. The data shows it simply chose not to.
Executive Bonuses
When Best Buy engineers a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses, the executive whose compensation package includes Earnings Per Share (EPS) targets benefits directly from that math. With a 542:1 pay ratio, the CEO’s annual earnings already dwarf what most employees will accumulate in a decade. The buyback mechanism then functions as a second lever: it shrinks the denominator, lifts EPS, and unlocks bonus thresholds — all approved by the same leadership team that benefits from the outcome.
OSHA’s Regular Visitor
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, Best Buy accumulated two workplace safety violations — both issued by OSHA — totaling $45,050 in fines. Both cases fell under the same offense category: workplace safety or health violations. The two-year period captured here is a fraction of the company’s full enforcement docket on the source site, and the pattern in this window alone points to a recurring relationship with federal safety regulators rather than a one-time lapse.
The Big Case
The largest single penalty came in 2025: a $35,000 OSHA fine — more than three-quarters of the company’s entire two-year penalty tab in a single enforcement action. A second OSHA citation followed in the same year, adding $10,050 to the total. Best Buy ranks first in total penalty exposure among all twelve companies tracked in the Electronics and appliance retailers sector — meaning it carries the worst enforcement record of any peer company in the group.
The Subsidy Flip
While OSHA was issuing workplace safety citations, government bodies were simultaneously handing Best Buy $256,004 in public subsidies between 2024 and 2025. The largest single grant — $241,228 in 2024 — makes up nearly all of that total. Taxpayer dollars flowed to the company even as federal regulators found it falling short of basic safety requirements for its employees. The math is striking: Best Buy received approximately five times more in public subsidies than regulators collected from it in penalties.