"The common person always loses when bubbles burst."
That is a tautology, because you define the "common person" as the person who loses.
I'm sure there were people who made good money in the 2008 housing bubble. Didn't they all live like kings for a while, because they could borrow arbitrary sums against their houses?
Similarly, some people may make good money on that GameStop thing now.
The "common people" who didn't participate in this will probably never even notice. At most they'll notice that their favorite shopping mall is closing, but that is part of a larger trend. And they can now shop on Amazon instead, so their quality of life probably remains the same or gets improved.
Actually, I never defined the common person. Because I felt it's pretty obvious.
The common person is the majority of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck and don't invest in the market.
Those who don't participate will be negatively impacted if this causes another recession, which is likely as investors get spooked by another bubble burst. Which means standard of living, job benefits, and salaries will continue to stagnate.
This also ignores the fact that we've moved from guaranteed pensions to 401ks, which are heavily dependent on hedge funds. If hedge funds lose their shirts, they'll get a bailout from the government because we didn't learn our lesson about too big to fail last time. Which will mean government austerity in other areas, typically starting in social welfare programs.
That is a tautology, because you define the "common person" as the person who loses.
I'm sure there were people who made good money in the 2008 housing bubble. Didn't they all live like kings for a while, because they could borrow arbitrary sums against their houses?
Similarly, some people may make good money on that GameStop thing now.
The "common people" who didn't participate in this will probably never even notice. At most they'll notice that their favorite shopping mall is closing, but that is part of a larger trend. And they can now shop on Amazon instead, so their quality of life probably remains the same or gets improved.