Comment by dalyons
14 days ago
I never really understood this argument. The billionaires wealth is mostly in stock. In a crash like this their wealth goes down 10% like of all us. They can buy assets on the dip, but it will only regain that 10% they lost.
Surely you get that losing one dollar hurts much more when you have 100 compared to losing 1000 when you have 100 000?
Their wealth hasn't gone down at all. The crash isn't real. It was caused by the tariffs. They just need to hang onto the stocks they have until the value goes back up, which they will shortly after the tariffs are lifted. In the meantime they can buy up more of whatever they want at rock bottom prices.
What are they buying it up with? Their buying power takes the same hit in the crash.
billionaires have a lot of money tied up in the market but they aren't cash poor. They typically keep hundreds of millions in cash on hand. Supposedly, Jeff Bezos keeps over $9 billion in cash. Their day to day lifestyle doesn't change one bit when the market drops. They don't have to stop buying the groceries they normally do just because a stock drops by 10%. Buying up some stock while it's down when they know they can sell it back when it jumps back up is just free money.
Even if they somehow ran out of money in all of their accounts (and that's extremely unlikely) and at the same time lost all the money they had that wasn't in stocks they could very easily borrow money.