[nathantotten]

When you read "public returns" that doesn't mean the middle class. The "public market" the deck is referring just means that the trading happens on the open market (NASDAQ, S&P, etc.) rather than in private deals. Regardless, it is always the big players who make the big returns. The average investor wasn't the one making all the returns on Microsoft either. So you are right that the rich use these tools to get richer, but it is hardly a new thing.

[Spooky23]

So, those 30% annual returns my dad made in the 90s were some sort of dream? The early players made more, but plenty of people rode Microsoft and Intel up through the 80s and 90s. We all missed the first decade of Dropbox.

Billionaires make wacky amounts of money in stock because we stopped taxing them.