One of the arguments that I see against crypto being a Ponzi scheme is that the stock market is just people looking to sell stock to some other sucker for a hig

One of the arguments that I see against crypto being a Ponzi scheme is that the stock market is just people looking to sell stock to some other sucker for a higher price so its the same thing. We seem to have become almost completely detached from the idea that investment valuations should be tied to present and future cash flows from an operating business that is providing value. So yes, more and more the whole top-half of the economy is a bubble, while the bottom half is being overrun with flat-out scams (and crypto is sort of the best of both worlds). The actual best outcome I think we can hope for is that the labor shortage is real and workers have much more negotiating power now which will lead to a wage-price spiral with high inflation for the next decade and resetting the game through dollar devaluation. This is the high employment solution where wages rise faster than e.g. housing prices and without falling prices there's just a slow corrosive effect on the real value of housing without a sharp drop. The real value of debts would also be erased by inflation. The alternative would be a hard deflationary stop to the economy. Since everyone is terrified about inflation, though, this is what I expect will happen. This will be the high unemployment option but the value of the dollar will be retained, while asset prices will crash. Right now that seems impossible in the current climate, but if this happens we will suffer a sharp reversal (people will correctly blame the bubble on inflationary policies and then predictably apply harsh austerity during the crash). That fact that I probably sound delusional to a lot of readers here is why I'm pretty sure the latter outcome is where we're heading. Everyone is now a believer in the quantity theory of money and that the Fed is irresponsible. When the wind suddenly does a 180 we're going to make it all worse.