It's topics like this that get me incensed, because there is this feeling that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only the "rich" people's money, that only the "rich" are going to be hit, and that the "rich" deserve to take it on the chin.
The people with money, the "rich" people, are the ones making financial choices that influence the rest of the private sector. If you hit the rich, you hit the rest of the private sector. When you hit the rich, you hit the venture capitalists, the people who gamble with money to try to make more money. And people think this is a good thing: "Good riddance, he's got enough money already! He's taking money off the poor's backs!"
If you believe that: FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL.
The economy is NOT a zero-sum game. The people engaged in the economy are constantly investing their time and energy to make MORE WEALTH than there was before. Time = Money, and with 300,000,000 people investing their time everyday in the creation of wealth (except for the government liberals), wealth has abounded for years and years, because people were given the incentives to create wealth by getting tax cuts which allowed them to keep more of their own money, percentage-wise, than they had had before.
What do they do with this wealth? They INVEST, they VENTURE into new opportunities, putting people to work, creating jobs, and creating a flow of wealth to people who get those jobs. It's the underpinning of Reaganomics--trickle-down economics--that money flows from the top-down, not the other way around.
Think of money like the water cycle. Time and the sun's energy is inputted to the water, say the oceans, causing the water to evaporate into the atmosphere. In the same way, time and energy is spent by corporations (and small businesses) in producing goods and services that people want to buy, and, for the sake of argument, people buy them.
That water which evaporated condenses into clouds—some big, some small–that contain the water, and which carry the water from place to place. The small clouds vastly outnumber the big clouds, so the vast majority of rain is produced by small clouds. In the same way, money is collected by the businesses which sell the goods and services, hopefully for a profit, and therein they take that money, pay the people who helped them produce the goods and services, and take the additional money (PROFIT) and either re-invest in the business, or give profits to stockholders via dividends.
The rain has therefore been taken from those who have water (the oceans and clouds) and given to places that need water (landmasses, rivers, lakes, etc.) And you know what? That water eventually re-evaporates or trickles down into the oceans, where it is recollected and the cycle starts all over again. Meanwhile, areas that needed water got water, and the rain cycle sustains life as we know it.
In the same way, by the businesses paying the people who helped produce the products or services, and by giving dividends to stockholders, ultimately, the money that the corporations make goes back into the economy, benefiting a whole host of people along the way.
So, when you hit the rich, you really hit the poor. The stock market is just the after-effects of this happening. So, delight in the misery of people—it's not going to produce one more dollar, one more barrel of oil, and is not going to solve any problems. The free market is adapting to the roadblocks thrown in its way by the US government and world politics, so be sure to thank your Democratic Congress for really helping the US economy. It's the least they've done for us.
Q-"
A rising tide lifts all boats; a sinking tide drops all boats"-BE