So, I was listening to some one give investment advice last week and he was talking about the lack of dividends being paid by publicly traded companies. I thought about this, and decided to take a quick look at a company that just filed bankruptcy. It's stock is trading at around a $1.20. In 2014 it was valued at around $245 dollars. That year it appears it paid a dividend of 34 cents, or about .01%, which was about its yearly average. Where did all the wealth of this company go, and was it ever real, since its expected liquidation value must be fairly equal to todays value?

If we take the opinion that a large majority of companies will, in an ever changing environment, eventually dissolve, and if they never payout a market rate dividend, are they nothing more than a Ponzi scheme, with the last holder of stock taking the hit?