What about tax havens and such? As you said, if I put some money into the stock market, * my broker/bank takes some. If my broker is a public company, some of

What about tax havens and such? As you said, if I put some money into the stock market, * my broker/bank takes some. If my broker is a public company, some of the money goes to pay operational expenses, and some of the money goes to their shareholders as dividends. * the stocks I bought go up slightly. They get cheaper capital, and their owners get an unrealized gain. Schematically, we can assume all bank employees put all their money into the stock market. So the end result is that the benefits accrue to shareholders of public companies, regardless of which stock you buy. But if money never exits the financial system to go back into the real economy, none of this matters. If a large chunk of the public stock market is held by buy-and-hold investors who just never liquidate their investments nor pay tax, this money will never come to benefit ordinary folks. Some of it will, by way of pension funds and whatnot. But it's worse than spending it on normal consumption, as I see it.