Does this need an /s? Don't see how this is a nightmare unless you're a billionaire.

Its clearly sarcastic, does that mean it needs an /s?

Original comment was definitely a Poe's Law contender. Hacker News, despite its "gratify curiosity" motto, has never strayed far from its Silicon Valley VC roots, and so these comment threads are brimming with corporation lovers: tech money, people adjacent to tech money, and people who simp for tech money in the hopes that they might be given a slice someday.

Or a retiree with an investment based pension.

Half of stocks are owned by pensions. The overwhelming majority of that half is owned by a small segment of privileged individuals

TIL people with a pension are privileged individuals.

40% of Americans 65+ only source of income is social security. The trend is increasing.

So 60% have some kind of investment income.

Yes retirees get hurt but you have to understand that these retirees are benefiting from exploitation. Also, they are trying to pretend that there won't be a shortage of workers in 20-30 years as the population gets older.

This is an argument of the 'wtf happend in 1971' thesis. I think however, there is another way of looking at it: by treating company profits and employee compensation as obeying a sort of conservation law. So if companies are hoarding profits that would go to workers, then this would be reflected in rising shareholder equity, so if employees invest their wages in stocks, the productivity-compensation gap is lessened. Indeed, the gap between productivity and wages began widening a lot in the early 80s, when the bull market began.

What a bad idea that would be though.

Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket. I'd have a hard time believing anyone would suggest that you do this, as the risk for things going bad if the company fails is double. You lose income as the company stagnates (or worse get laid off) AND you lose money as the company's stock drops.

This all assumes that the working class can even afford to dabble in equity markets when it's being soaked by ever rising rent/healthcare/childcare costs.

Given the latest news showing that 89% of stocks in the US are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans you aren't wrong, at all.

That report did not account for pension fund and other retirement account investments.

2/3 Americans have less that 100k in retirement or pension by age 50.

You don't have to invest it in your company. Invest it in whichever company is hoovering up all the profits.

To some extent people have been doing it, which is behind the massive stock price gains from FAANGs. Only benefits you if you did it before everybody else, though, otherwise prices get bid up so high that you don't get a decent number of shares.

Spent three years an eight months working in retail hell, and this was exactly what the company pushed employees to do - they were kind enough to sell shares to employees at a 10% discount but you had to be crazy, grossly miseducated or drank a bit too much of the kool-aid to believe that this organization was a good value store.

> So if companies are hoarding profits that would go to workers, then this would be reflected in rising shareholder equity, so if employees invest their wages in stocks, the productivity-compensation gap is lessened

Unless the company is paying dividends (and the distribution is proportional to earnings), we can't assume that a company "hoarding profits" would have a correlated stock price.

Cash holdings and investment into physical capital are assets that should reflect in share price, no?

This is of course assuming the profits aren't siphoned off into some offshore tax haven.

That’s how it looks to me. How dare the low ranks want to benefit from economic growth. How can a country exist without billionaires getting richer?