There is no such thing as doing "everything right" a capitalist society is a zero sum game.
You only make money by taking it from someone else. Sure the reserve can print more money but that only leads to currency devaluation on a macro level which on a whole reduces purchasing power of the society.
You can't really address income inequality without fundamentally reshaping society.
> you only make money by taking it from someone else
This is false. Money is an expression of labor and is exchanged in return for labor or the product of someone else’s labor. Totally dismissing that the exchange of money requires both parties to gain something is a deceptive (and in my opinion, immoral) trend.
When my money “grows” in the stock market. It isn’t because I took money from another person. It is not a zero-sum game.
A retail investor in the stock market is playing an almost entirely zero-sum game. You're not supplying valuable information about which companies deserve capital. You're not providing scarce savings to stimulate investment. You're simply laying claim to the future earnings of society by bidding against others.
It's like buying a home in San Francisco -- it's not adding value that makes your wealth go up, it's the fact that other people want what you have and you got there first. And there's a healthy helping of government interference making sure that your stake is protected against outsiders.
Actually... you are providing liquidity to the market.
Until recently, there was no easy way to transfer wealth intertemporally -- livestock died, grain spoiled, precious metals got stolen, land got invaded, etc.
The faith that people have in the stock market -- that they can buy something now and sell it in 50 years with very low frictional costs, allows the market to function, which ultimately lowers the cost of acquiring and deploying capital. This also ensures that capital is matched to risk tolerance, and that capital is deployed most effectively.
Imagine if each VC individually had to find a retail buyer for their shares.
Are we not talking about income inequality? Fact is hard currency is finite, perceived wealth or value is something else entirely.
Income is typically tied to hard currency.
When you make money in the stock market, you invested in a business, one that would supply a goods or services (or a derivative), of which requires taking someone else's money in exchange for that good or service.
You only make money by taking it from someone else. Sure the reserve can print more money but that only leads to currency devaluation on a macro level which on a whole reduces purchasing power of the society.
You can't really address income inequality without fundamentally reshaping society.