Not to mention little old ladies, 50 year old ex fire fighters and retired unionized school teachers get full generous pensions because of stock market value of companies created by billionaires
Very little stock market wealth is held by pension funds on behalf of workers, as opposed to the already wealthy. See https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Pension-scheme-holding-less-t..., for example. And the value on these schemes are disproportionately held by those who own and/or run companies rather than those who work in them: the Small Self-Administered Scheme is a popular means of UK tax avoidance for business owners who would like their capital gains tax free, and assets held in these schemes (on trust for the owner) will also be included in these figures.
Returns on capital flow, unsurprisingly, to those with capital. And the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands is precisely the issue that people are objecting to.
> But 401(k) plans can still take a significant hit in market downturns. In 2008, for instance, as the S&P 500 dropped 37 percent, the average 401(k) account balance for those who were in their 50s fell 24 percent.
> People with retirement accounts are keeping more of their assets in stocks now, as opposed to bonds or a mix of other investments. “There has been a growing complacency of people keeping most of their nest eggs in stocks,” said Monique Morrissey, who specializes in retirement at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute. “There has been a fundamental misunderstanding — returns do not always average out.”
> “It’s not just the loss from January; it’s what happens going forward,” she said. “If you were counting on the amount that you have in your 401(k) to continually grow, well, then you may never get to what you had planned for.”
Tying retirement plans to the market only looks good when there's a continuous bull market, less so when the bottom falls out.
