[JackMorgan]

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards.

We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to afford rent.

It won't continue like this forever. The line doesn't always go up.

[simpaticoder]

Wouldn't it be nice if individuals decided at the start of their career how much money was "enough" for them, and made a pledge to retire once they hit that number. Then society can give them an "I won!" hat or gold card or something, and the next guy can take the role. In this way all enterprises become an engine pulling new hires off the street, and emitting independently wealthy people to go and enjoy their lives.

But instead we have a tiny minority of people who control more and more capital. This has well-known and terrible consequences for society from almost every angle. What I don't understand is why the .1% don't want to step aside and let someone else have a turn. It's funny that our bodies have stomachs, so we know when we've eaten "enough". But money doesn't get stored in the body.

[sidewndr46]

You'd have to have some guarantee that the government would never alter the amount of inflation they create for that to be reasonable

[toomuchtodo]

The drive to become that wealthy and powerful does not turn off. It’s a similar failure mode as a meth addict stripping a substation for copper. Neither persona can help themselves.

> It's funny that our bodies have stomachs, so we know when we've eaten "enough".

Humorously on topic, GLP-1s patch the reward center in your brain and say “enough is enough.” If only there was a similar protocol for wealth and power.

[jordanb]

I think there's a strong case for having maximum wealth above which you'll just get a 100% tax.

All the billionaires are equal parts clearly miserable people, and also terrifying and psychopathic. I assume they didn't start out that way, but there's also probably a personality that just has a need to run up the score.

I think if capitalism had a kill screen, that you get to and then you have to go do something else for a while, both the billionaires and the rest of us would all be happier and healthier.

[abbycurtis33]

Money doesn't sit in the stock market. Value, sure, but the money goes right back into the economy.

[dismalaf]

Money only goes to the company to get reinvested when the company sells shares, so at IPO time, when an insider sells, when more shares are issued, etc...

Otherwise, it's one asset holder selling to another asset holder, usually at ever increasing prices. So yes, a lot of money is simply sitting in the stock market.

Now, some does come back in the form of share buybacks and dividends. That being said, the average dividend yield is significantly less than the long-run average (it's less than 2 percent right now, long term average is above 3%).

[Avicebron]

Tentative book title: The Line Stops.

[graeme]

If you buy a stock from a new share sale, that goes to the company as capital. The company then spends the money.

The unenployment rate is quite low. There are complaints you can make about the economy but the model of money you laid out is completely wrong.

[chao-]

EDIT: I wrote this in a rush intending to refer to general market entry. In a broad sense, what I ended up writing is incorrect. To preserve the accuracy of the comment history I will not remove my mistake.

>All the money has been hoovered into the stock market.

I think you might misunderstand what the stock market is. Or perhaps you misunderstand what what stocks are? When you purchase stock, it doesn't get locked in a vault, with your name written next to it, and the number of shares it got you on that day. That money goes to the company, and they use that to finance their operations (and ideally, further growth). That financing may go directly to salaries, or even if it goes to services, those services are paid to someone who pays salaries.

If your claim is instead that "all" of that money, or some meaningful majority of that money, is going to electricity and AI silicon, I would invite you to do some basic math on the companies involved.

[keernan]

>>That money goes to the company

When you purchase stock, your money goes to the seller of that stock. That's what makes a "market". The stock market isn't a bunch of companies selling their stock to the public.

[sszz]

This is not how stocks work at all outside of stock offerings…