The issue isn't the total amount of money in the real economy -- it's the distribution and accessibility of money within the real economy, as workforce particip

The issue isn't the total amount of money in the real economy -- it's the distribution and accessibility of money within the real economy, as workforce participation falls off due to the lack of jobs. While the financial economy does hoover up vast amounts of money, the people who own the "wealth" in the financial economy (and you're right: they're pretty much arbitrary asset valuations rather than real actual wealth) are also increasingly the only ones with real access to the real economy. The gains from automation weren't gobbled up by the Fed, "Wall St." (generically), and the US Govt. They were gobbled up (specifically) by the IP holders and financiers who enabled that automation. Those entities not only lack any incentive for their gains to be redistributed to the poor and middle classes -- they don't even have the means to perform such redistribution (shareholders' rights prevent banks and technology firms from acting as charities). The only solution I see is for a portion of those gains to be channelled into a Universal Basic Income, in which case automation would genuinely enable real wealth gains for everyone. At present, however, it is not.