Funny how 401ks can make members of the American public think the stock market is really about them. In capitalism, assets follow a Pareto distribution. A small minority hold the majority of assets.
Yeah, it was a big con to get folks to think that what seemed to them a huge amount of money meant that they were participating in a meaningful fashion.
I've never gotten anyone who is educated in economy/finance to provide a reasonable answer to the questions:
"Is the world economy large enough to support a meaningful number of people regularly investing in it, arriving at an amount able to support a comfortable retirement, and then draw said money out on a regular basis? What percentage of the population can be supported thus? What is to be said to that percentage whose participation would exceed the capacity of existing financial markets?"
The fentanyl addicts drying in the Sun on Tenderloin's sidewalks beg to differ. What a ridiculous statement. There is less poverty in the US, but extreme poverty isn't any easier here.
Also you missed the entire point of the comment you responded to.
I've traveled quite a bit, and I'm well aware of both poverty in the U.S. and in other countries --- that's part of what informed my query --- what is the end-game for capitalism as many countries of the world go into steady state or even negative population changes in the future?
Are you asking what the living baseline would be if there was some kind of global socialist government, and everyone was cut an equal slice of the global income and global resource pie? It would be pretty hard to dial that in because there are so many intertwined factors. But we could be pretty confident it wouldn't land near current first world standards.
No one knows what the end game of capitalism looks like, because we landed on the system because it is largely self-regulating and has worked well for carrying society forwards for the last 400ish years. Everything else has done poorly and kind of sucked.
I disagree. We've seen the endgame of capitalism a few times, and every country decided that was not right. Hence we introduced socialist policies. Like antitrust policies, social security, and nationalized Healthcare (among other necessities).
Meanwhile, I'm not sure if we've truly seen an endgame socialist policy. Captialism seems to turn into imperialism and break that up before seeing the endgame there.
Well, in part you are asking about the world economy. Most of the world doesn’t have 401k retirement vehicles, good access to financial markets, or the spare funds to save at all, whether it’s in stocks, bonds, or other investment vehicles.
So the reason you haven’t gotten an answer is because your question doesn’t make much sense.
A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves. The question makes sense, how many people could the market support if everyone was investing and not spending.
>how many people could the market support if everyone was investing and not spending.
I think the more salient question is how many people could the market support if everyone was consuming and not producing.
Not producing as in the goods and services that people want such as clean toilets and food and nursing home care. Or not producing the kids who will go on to produce the aforementioned goods and services.
> A 401K is just an investment in indexes linked to your pension, there's nothing stopping everyone putting their own money into an index themselves
This is mostly incorrect.
A 401k in the United States is a tax-advantaged investment account. You can buy shares of individual companies, you can purchase index funds, you can leave it there as cash, buy gold, or just about anything you want or you'd expect to be able to purchase using a brokerage account. Depending on the route you take (Roth or Traditional) you can realize tax savings now or at a later point. 401k Accounts are programs offered by your employer as well [1].
One of the many reasons the OP's question doesn't make sense is because not every country in the world has a 401k program.
[1] There are other programs for individual owners or for those who have an employer that does not offer a 401k.
People can invest in markets without a 401k with more options (plans commonly have only a handful of funds available) and less fees (both admin fees and inflated fund expense ratios). And you may pay more taxes with a 401k than otherwise depending on your future tax rate (which is unknowable).
The only pure advantage is employer matching if you have it and stay employed long enough for it to vest.
An overabundance of investment without an outlet would just decrease yields. Hypothetically the yield could go negative.
It is a self correcting problem. If the yields are too low people can spend it on hookers and blow before dropping it into a money shredder. The yield shouldn't drop much below the premium for the time preference of money.
Investment for retirement…in theory at least, should go to projects that will create more goods and services in the future to actually support that retirement. It isn’t about the economy being large enough today, but growth so that it is larger enough tomorrow when you do actually retire.
Any investment alternative, like a private or public pension, works under the same principle. Even traditional retirement plans depended on investing in having lots of kids to take care of you in old age.
The problem is, in the past, the on-going increase in payouts was covered by increasing populations --- much of the world is now at a stable, or even negative population change state for the foreseeable future, so that well is going dry --- the passing away of the Baby Boomers in the U.S. represents the larges transfer of personal wealth in human history, and a lot of it is going into geriatrics/nursing homes --- what happens as the nursing homes empty out and there aren't sufficient folks to keep them operational?
Thats the old fashioned plan: have lots of kids to fund your retirement. Today, we are investing in AI, automation, and robots, which is similar if you think about. We don’t need a population increase if robots are doing the work instead. China is a good example of making these investments aggressively right now to deal with their demographic cliff.
That's a nice idea, and if such devices aren't used to further concentrate wealth for their owners, that would work --- the problem is, LLMs and the robotics which they facilitate look to be the first major technological advance where the enlarging of the economy which they afford does not bring about a commensurate increase in the number of jobs.
There is theory and then there is practice of course. But at least if you are invested in the market as part of your retirement, you are technically an owner of some small share of it.
Which brings us full-circle --- what percentage of the population participating in 401-K or similar investment structures _and_ cashing out at retirement age will the economy support?
You are probably going to be OK if you are invested. If you aren't invested (no i money to invest or you save money under your mattress for poor returns), then I really don't know. It is definitely going to be a problem, maybe we will have figured out a social safety net by then (speaking as an American, and speaking in a very cynical tone).
The stock market is a very large Ponzi scheme. 401Ks are indexed Ponzi schemes. Once the ultra wealthy can disconnect their wealth from any one country, using crypto tokens. The stock market and 401Ks will probably crash. You usually want to do this on a generation that has no real voting block. So it will probably happen when GenX starts retiring.
The market is partly a Ponzi scheme where more people buying inflates the price, regardless of the underlying value. The modern stock market is not focused on dividends (anything but), so there is no'real' return from the actual companies to the shareholders. (Buybacks could be considered similar to dividends).
There is still an element of real economic growth underlying the stock market, but passive investing, derivatives and market manipulation have largely decoupled the stock market from the actual economy.
At least that's my opinion.
I think the answer to your question would be yes IF:
* The world economy keeps growing
* There is a fair distribution of the return on the world economy (which there isn't)
Yes. Fundamentally goods and services at time you retire must be produced by someone. If there is less people producing that means that labour will get more expensive. Or then you must really kick down that population. And well if they don't take it well you might have no retirement...
Even if someone is much richer, 401k owners are still operating out of self-interest. There is still a valid point about income inequality, however I'm not sure that renders 401k into some sort of evil diversion.
Defined benefit pensions are obviously worse. They introduce agency risk where there does not need to be any. I prefer having control of my assets over some fund manager controlling them, it's all going to the same place anyway. Plus you have to pay extra for the fund manager.
Taxpayer funded DB pensions are a little bit better, since they offer outsized benefits due to being able to hose future taxpayers.
It is true enough that "the stock market" is about them.
To stick some concrete numbers on this, combined the world's billionaires have about $15 trillion dollars worth of assets. Combined the world's retirement funds have about $60-$70 trillion dollars worth of assets.
What's driving the major disconnect is the generational wealth divide. Boomers have loads of wealth, housing, their pension funds, non-pension investments. Millenials, not so much. (Obviously, this is in part because wealth builds up during one's life, though the divide is stronger than merely that effect)
If you're a boomer, all this politics that promotes the stock market over the material economy is fucking great. Tech lays off another 16 billion people? Stonks go to the moon, and maybe you'll collect a nice fat severance package on your way out of your last job. If you're young though, it's a nightmare.
It's quite recent that the political balance has changed; Biden fumbled the 2024 election in no small part because of his "But the stock market is good, why are you mad?" stance that had been ol' reliable for the decades prior.
You understand that those small minority of holders are investing your money for your own gain, right?
Perhaps there is issue with shareholder voting, because the funds largely handle that, but generally they are focused on long term growth and stability, and vote accordingly. I mean, then thing you are paying them to do is ensure you have a good retirement fund, if nothing else.
