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It makes the rich poorer but keeps the poor in the same place.

It makes the rich less rich, the poor more poor.

Not really. Stock value is just paper. Stocks going down just means they are valued less now relative to other stuff.

Imagine if everyones socks were suddenly valued a million bucks, except yours. Would you "stay in the same place" or would you suddenly be too poor to afford to buy the labor of all the newly minted millionaires? I'd bet on the latter.

It’s hard to understand this scenario at all. If everyone’s socks suddenly became worth a million dollars but nothing else at all changed, the price would immediately crash back down when the first person tries to sell them and can’t because no one is going to pay a million dollars for socks.

If you want to make the example more intuitive you can imagine strain of fungi that has the potential to evolve to an incredibly potent medicine (prolonging life by 30 years) some day in the future. The fungi grows on everyones socks except your just by random chance.

Suddenly everyone in the world owns a vial of potentially the elixir of life, except you. Can you still buy tomatoes when your neighborhood has sold their socks to Bezos and they suddenly each have a million bucks of cash in hand?

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