Stock Markets Are Not Measures Of Real Wealth

The stock market has risen a lot since its recent bottom. There are those that say that this is because the stock market is a forward thinking entity that has already priced in the coronavirus pandemic.

The stock market is not a forward thinking entity. It has no brain, no conscience, no ability to predict or determine the future. People try to turn it into something it is not. Even if the stock market was a thinking being, it still could not predict the future or be more predictive of the future than anyone else.

The United States gave away much of its manufacturing and industrial base to China in exchange for cheap labor, fewer environmental and workplace regulations. In exchange, much of the United States has become a low wage service economy where many struggle financially, and where a small number of people are fabulously wealthy. The stock market is completely divorced from this reality and the economic realities of most people's lives.

The stock market creates the illusion of wealth. Is the world really richer if the stock market doubles or triples from here? Is there less environmental damage? More opportunity for average workers? Less nuclear weapons proliferation? Less war, hate or violent religious fanaticism? The dependency on rising stock markets is an unhealthy addiction. Not just for the people with gambling addictions that lose everything in the casino type aspects of the stock market when it is played short term, but also for the health of the world's environment - the true measure of wealth- that gets sacrificed at the altar of ensuring the stock market keeps rising.