This is such a critical subject - can I suggest you cover it again in more details. There are few things more important in long term investment management than understanding the difference between the views of, say, JP Morgan, BNY and Northern Trust on the one hand and ,say, Robert Arnott and GMO on the other.

Issues which are critical to me are:
1) If you adjust dividend flow for share buybacks then surely you should adjust for stock issuance?

2) Growth historically has disproportionately come from smaller unquoted companies. Given this and a likelihood of profit share of GDP returning to mean, dividend growth may considerably undershoot economic growth ?

A cynic might argue that many houses simply use expected numbers sufficiently high to justify the equity exposures and - as stated above- no one can really know. Nevertheless, the debate is critical. Perhaps you can invite a proponent on each side to set out their view in detail.