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As far as I know the stock market has winners and losers. If you're not rich but invested whatever you could over the course of your life and now the market ta

by nickjj 2y ago

As far as I know the stock market has winners and losers. If you're not rich but invested whatever you could over the course of your life and now the market tanks to where you've lost half (or more) of what you had then someone else is going to win that from you. A massively rich company can hold out a lot longer than a software developer who tucked away what they could over the years. If a real crash happens that software developer just got 30 years of their net worth mostly vaporized in a few months. How much of the population is in that category? It's the whole middle class basically. It's a crushing blow to most folks when the market crashes for a long period of time. It's even worse for folks who are already in a position of barely scraping by while putting a little bit aside whenever they can. That person is destroyed if a majority of that disappears because they may have to sell it off on the spot just to survive because if the market really crashes, you can be sure a ton of people are going to be out of work.

ryandrake 2y ago
In other words, if your retirement savings is $200K and you lose 50% of it, at best you're going to have to make major changes to your plans. At worst (depending on how much debt you have) you're in for some real pain. A billionaire with $200B in wealth could lose 99% of that and still have $2B, generational wealth that will perpetually fund an entire family tree down to great great grandchildren.
- nickjj 2y ago
  Yep and losses are only losses when it's realized. A billionaire can just ride out the crash for 5, 10 or 15 years while investing more when the market is near the bottom. What they are investing in is buying the shares that the middle class has to sell off to pay their rent. I don't know what you want to label it as but being able to ride out a crash and having your unrealized losses go back to normal while still having capital to buy a ton when the market was near the bottom of a crash sounds like a lot like transferring wealth to me (from the middle to the top).

by nickjj 2y ago

ryandrake 2y ago

In other words, if your retirement savings is $200K and you lose 50% of it, at best you're going to have to make major changes to your plans. At worst (depending on how much debt you have) you're in for some real pain. A billionaire with $200B in wealth could lose 99% of that and still have $2B, generational wealth that will perpetually fund an entire family tree down to great great grandchildren.

nickjj 2y ago
Yep and losses are only losses when it's realized. A billionaire can just ride out the crash for 5, 10 or 15 years while investing more when the market is near the bottom. What they are investing in is buying the shares that the middle class has to sell off to pay their rent. I don't know what you want to label it as but being able to ride out a crash and having your unrealized losses go back to normal while still having capital to buy a ton when the market was near the bottom of a crash sounds like a lot like transferring wealth to me (from the middle to the top).