[engineeringwoke]

> Let's check the numbers. Collective wealth of all the billionaires in the entire world is 8.6-8.7T USD [1]. Collective retirement and pension assets in just the US is 19.1T USD [2]. So it seems that commoners, relying on the retirement and pension assets, would benefit much more from a stock market recovery than the elites.

Pensions are not equity. Pensions also usually fall very high on the cap table, saving them from restructuring in bankruptcy.

> Maybe yes, maybe not? UK / France / Italy / Germany / Spain all have public healthcare and have ~320M people between them, roughly the same as the US. And yet, their COVID-19 deaths are ~100K vs ~55K for the US when both the continents had fairly similar advanced warnings. Why is this simpler (and presumably better, from your tone) system producing a far worse outcome?

That's not really how pandemics work for one; the Milan fashion show arguably killed tens of thousands of people as a superspreading event. The US healthcare system is terrible, whichever way you slice it (cost, infant mortality, outcomes).

[RestlessMind]

> Pensions are not equity. Pensions also usually fall very high on the cap table

I am talking about pension funds which have to invest their money in something, with public stock market being an obvious choice for such investments.