As they say, sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and if Medtronic wants to keep pace with tough competitors like Boston Scientific ( NYS: BSX ), Johnson & Johnson ( NYS: JNJ ), and St. Jude Medical ( NYS: STJ ), it won't want to completely drain its financial resources. However, as it is, most years the company spends as much or more on share buybacks -- which I'm not a big fan of -- as it does on dividends. Shifting that buyback spending and doubling its dividend wouldn't get it to 7.5%, but the 5.6% yield that it would produce would almost certainly bring income investors swarming like bees to honey.