this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Why should you get money for doing nothing? I think that is a good question. If your investments are earning money, for example because you invested in real estate, then you've driven up the price of rent for the rest of us.
But anyway, in reality almost all of the money in the stock market is held by people who are not like you, people who didn't save their money by working a nine to five for 10 or 20 years.
Nobody is stopping you from leaving your money sitting in a bank account. Nobody is suggesting you shouldn't save money.
You keep saying “doing nothing” but I earned that money and now I am risking it in investments with uncertain returns.
You work for your money. But the people making the big investments don't.
If you want to work to earn some money and then save it and then later spend it, great. But you're not content with that.
Let's look at a simple example. Suppose you take your savings and you buy a rental property and start renting it out. You're taking a risk that perhaps property prices will go down, or that maybe you'll run into a string of 10 bad tenants in a row, and you might lose some money. All the while, you're sitting there doing absolutely nothing, and probably you're getting paid for it. But what about your tenants? What's the risk they're taking? They could pay rent on time for decades and yet never be able to qualify for a loan to buy property of their own, because people like you have bought up what used to be more widely available. A huge percent of the population is working paycheck to paycheck, and if they have a string of bad luck that lasts more than a month or two then they're going to end up homeless. Of course their life expectancy will be slashed in a second. In other words, my friend, you're risking some extra money while they're risking their lives.
Also, as several of us have pointed out, most investment money is held by the rich so that they can get richer at our expense. Many people would prefer to get rid of that system rather than try and piggyback on it. There are other ways to structure society so that you can retire in comfort.