From my point of view, this is exactly the point. Among all of the physical and mental pain and misery this virus inflicted, it also deepened the chasm between

From my point of view, this is exactly the point. Among all of the physical and mental pain and misery this virus inflicted, it also deepened the chasm between people who were already doing pretty well...and everyone else. Several people in this thread are commenting that "well of course staying in the market is the smart thing to do since stable savings instruments don't pay for shit!" Yeah, and that's the problem. In just thirty short years, we've gone from pension plans and savings rates that might actually leave you with more purchasing power than you started (when considering inflation) to...better gamble it all in the stonkz. So much money has been put into stock market-based retirement funds (401k, IRA, 403b, and so on) that the stock market, which used to be for large institutions doing large institution things, cannot fail because it will sink everyone with it. And yet, the stock market has become so detached from the economy at large precisely because of that yawning gap getting even larger. For those of us who can stay home yet still earn our massive salaries of which we are now spending a fraction, we have huge stacks of cash just looking for somewhere to sit. For the first time in a decade, the average American's savings rate has increased, because consumerism ground to a halt. Yet for those who lost their jobs--because that consumerism failed--or who go out and risk infection because that's the only way to draw a paycheck, they are even more screwed. We've left our society with no stable way to save and no mechanism to provide for ourselves except ever-increasing spending relying on the wages and efforts of an ever-gigified economy. That sucks.