Very few rich people will actually get any richer. Most of them are heavily invested in stocks, which have plummeted, or owned or work for businesses which are being crushed. There are very, very few places to hide from what's going on.
One possible exception, and it's quite a small group really, may have had a lot of money in cash and bonds. They may be able to do quite well by buying or investing in businesses at relatively low prices and earn gains during the recovery. This is _not_ a bad thing. The economy desperately needs fresh investment to re-grow businesses, re-hire employees, pay salaries, rebuild supply chains. That takes a lot of capital investment.
I suppose another way would be to confiscate all their wealth and give it to the government to invest, but who do you trust to do that most efficiently and to the best economic effect. Government bureaucrats, or businesspeople with track records of investing in and growing businesses?
So on the business side now is not at all the time to bet on Socialism. We can't afford it at the best of times, let alone the worst. On the other hand, this crisis has starkly exposed the weaknesses of naked market capitalism. It's pretty obvious already that the European model of social democracy with single payer health systems and a robust social safety net has proved far better able to cope with this crisis. It's a system specifically designed to help people suffering hardships, and now it's doing exactly that on a massive scale. I think this comes out of the European experience in the two world wars. Existential crises in which all of society pulled together because we flat out had no other choice. We were all in it together. Now we're all in this together.
I suspect this will lead to similar realisations in the US. If big companies hit by disaster deserve bailing out for the common good to save jobs and economic resources, why are individuals hit by adverse circumstances any less deserving at a personal scale? If it's reasonable to help a business hit by a health crisis, why is it unreasonable to help a family? I'm no socialist, check another post on this discussion where I defend Conservatism here in the UK, but recognising that as a society we have obligations to each other isn't socialism, for me it's just pragmatism.
Very few rich people will actually get any richer, but that doesn't mean that yellow journalists and political activists won't be able to convince the general public that they did by carefully starting their measurements at around the time the stock market was it its lowest, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/billio...
Rich people will get poorer in the part of their wealth that is largely virtual anyway - stocks and other investments, the value of which is so far removed from the real world by now, it's all just make-believe. The actual physical assets that provide them with improved quality of life will be just fine, for long enough that all those virtual losses become gains.
But the poor and the middle class will be hit - are being hit already - at those physical assets. So their quality of life plummets directly and immediately.
One possible exception, and it's quite a small group really, may have had a lot of money in cash and bonds. They may be able to do quite well by buying or investing in businesses at relatively low prices and earn gains during the recovery. This is _not_ a bad thing. The economy desperately needs fresh investment to re-grow businesses, re-hire employees, pay salaries, rebuild supply chains. That takes a lot of capital investment.
I suppose another way would be to confiscate all their wealth and give it to the government to invest, but who do you trust to do that most efficiently and to the best economic effect. Government bureaucrats, or businesspeople with track records of investing in and growing businesses?
So on the business side now is not at all the time to bet on Socialism. We can't afford it at the best of times, let alone the worst. On the other hand, this crisis has starkly exposed the weaknesses of naked market capitalism. It's pretty obvious already that the European model of social democracy with single payer health systems and a robust social safety net has proved far better able to cope with this crisis. It's a system specifically designed to help people suffering hardships, and now it's doing exactly that on a massive scale. I think this comes out of the European experience in the two world wars. Existential crises in which all of society pulled together because we flat out had no other choice. We were all in it together. Now we're all in this together.
I suspect this will lead to similar realisations in the US. If big companies hit by disaster deserve bailing out for the common good to save jobs and economic resources, why are individuals hit by adverse circumstances any less deserving at a personal scale? If it's reasonable to help a business hit by a health crisis, why is it unreasonable to help a family? I'm no socialist, check another post on this discussion where I defend Conservatism here in the UK, but recognising that as a society we have obligations to each other isn't socialism, for me it's just pragmatism.
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