Just in time for Christmas, American stock markets have plummeted. Amid debate over whether it was Trump’s trade wars or the Obama-era dovish monetary policy that paved the way to our unstable markets, everyone can agree that our markets in free fall gravely damage the country.
Well, apparently not everyone.
“wow in a christmas present to all of us, rich people are losing a shitload of money today [sic],” wrote ICE abolitionist, socialist, and would-be private property eliminator Sean McElwee on Twitter in response to the new that the S&P 500 has sunk to its lowest level in over a year.
wow in a christmas present to all of us, rich people are losing a shitload of money today https://t.co/zEXsEwkcQa
— we’re going to abolish ICE (@SeanMcElwee) December 24, 2018
Regardless of the moral inferiority of such unabashed envy of wealthy Americans and evil of wishing them all ill, McElwee’s just dead wrong from a factual perspective. Collapsing markets hurt average people more than anyone. The public stock market tends to have regressive effects, insulating the wealthy more than anyone.
As of 2016, outstanding corporate American stock was valued at nearly $23 trillion. Retirement plans, such as IRAs and 401(k) plans, account for more than one-third of that value. A quarter of the stock market is owned by foreign investors, and another quarter is owned by individual investors or other taxable funds.
That’s right; a plurality of the stock market is responsible for ensuring that lower- and middle-class Americans have enough money to retire.
McElwee’s take is the kind that could only be spewed by a trust-fund baby who can rely on parents wealthy enough to qualify as private investors or someone with open disdain for economic or financial literacy. But in fact, this sort of ignorance characterizes the modern socialist, who has to ignore all history up to this point in order to embrace his discredited ideology.
If only we had some warning beforehand that spreading the wealth actually involved so much spreading of poverty.
