Perhaps not in a dollar standpoint but from a actual one, by widening the divide between the haves and have nots. We see a lot of money was made by very few in the great depression, or at least coming out of the Great Depression.
Is it in the best interest of a super rich guy who only cares about being part of that super elite class and make it more elite and exclusive to (if they had the means, for instance has gained control of the office of the POTUS) cripple the economy for their own self interest?
If they lost half their value, but demoted much of the middle class into poverty, are they better off? If they found a way to in-debt every person with $100,000 including themselves, would they be better off?
They could enrich themselves, but only if the economy eventually roared back to life.
Step 1: Cripple economy (but in a way that will lead to future recovery), thus causing prices of everything to plunge
Step 2: Buy up as many valuable assets as you can, while they’re cheap
Step 3: Wait for economy to surge back to strength
Step 4: Sell those previously-purchased assets, this time at a higher price
Not individually. Bezos has about one eight of one percent of the total wealth in the country. No one person has nearly enough wealth to meaningfully hurt the economy with it.
The super rich have tried cornering markets before, it’s been done.
Back to op, nations with very high levels of inequality seem to be more prone to dictatorship, which makes the amassing of wealth far easier for those at the top.
Corrupt dictatorships make it very easy to grow wealth inequality. So in that regards it could be a positive feedback system, wealth inequality leads to corruption and dictatorship, which causes more inequality.
Idk about now but this is largely attributed to the great depression. Who it was escapes my memory but basically someone super rich kept putting money into a false economy then decided to just stop, causing or contributing to the crash. Then bought a whole lot of stock , real cheap.
Let’s say, for example, that somehow the top one percent gets to keep what they have. But everyone else loses half of what they have. On first consideration, the top one percent effectively got wealthier. Compared to everyone else, their assets were effectively doubled. The amount of wealth overall has shrunk but their percentage of it has grown; they still have the same amount of dollars but those dollars are individually now more valuable.
But that amount of overall wealth shrank a lot. That kind of drastic widespread reduction would be, as the OP said, crippling to the economy. I don’t see how the economy could take that kind of blow and just shrug it off. There would almost certainly be an ongoing economic crisis with further reductions. Companies would be going bankrupt and stop producing goods, people would lose jobs and stop buying products, crops wouldn’t get planted, maintenance wouldn’t be done, services would deteriorate and disappear.
Being among the wealthiest people in such a situation isn’t an attractive option. Your wealth wouldn’t shield you from the negative effects that everyone is experiencing. It’s like having a first class seat on board an airplane that’s lost two engines; you’d probably be happy to trade places with somebody sitting in business class on a fully functioning airplane.
Depends on what you mean by “rich”, and by what you mean by “economy”.
You see, it’s not just about having a lot of money; it’s about the total “buying power” you have. A person with what we consider a moderate level of cash could be considered rich if the prices drop steeply. OTOH, having huge amounts of cash doesn’t do you any good if prices skyrocket (as the Nazis discovered).
An unscrupulous upper economic class can increase their wealth (buying power) by upsetting the economy in hopes of increasing the number of poor, creating a decrease in demand and pushing prices down.
I’ll leave it to you as to whether or not that is currently happening.
Depends , not all by themselves exactly, but enough to be the trigger.
Though I was conflating two different crashes in that post.
Otto Heinze single handedly triggered the 1907 panic by simply trying a short squeeze on his families company.Causong thd whole market to drop 50percent.
Rockefeller was able to temporarily stop or slow the 1929 crash.
A move which incidentally ( unless you’re a conspiracy type) contributed a lot to their wealth.
Since they bought huge amounts of shares at an already heavily declined price after banks temporarily stopped it by pumping in money.
With current regulations idk if it would be possible but one could theoretically strategize a chain reaction…maybe?
Could say bezos tank the economy by doing a pump and dump… After effects of which would be temporary if people held faith but devastating if people panicked?
Absolutely, cutting their fortunes in half while creating massive social unrest to threaten the remaining half is a well-established goal of the super-rich.
One of the world’s richest men (Bill Gates) has made no secret of his plan to depopulate the world, which represents a logical parallel goal.
As mentioned it wasn’t one person who caused the crash. Buying on margin and things like that caused it, and it was made worse by (IIRC) Smoot-Halley and some other things.
Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK and Ted) made much of the Kennedy fortune by selling short during the Depression, using what would now be called insider information. But he was taking advantage of something that he didn’t cause.
The short answer to both is No. I don’t think it helps me much if I lose half my fortune, even if everybody else loses much more. And I don’t think it is a good idea to make everybody else owe me money, while at the same time making it more difficult to repay me.
Rich people aren’t damaged as much by recessions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t damaged. If I had to choose between making everybody else rich and me richer, and making myself poorer and everybody else poor, I know which way I would choose, and not necessarily out of pure altruism.
Understand that being rich is one thing, but being rich also means being powerful. Being super rich means that, as a class, over time, you can position yourself to control all intersections of financial activity. The problem with creating a billionaire class isn’t that it’s “unfair” or “unethical,” it’s that it’s anti-democratic. Oligarchs have inherently different interests than those who aren’t oligarchs, even those non-oligarchs who, for the moment, seem to be earning high income.
The problem with any exceptional class, whether it is created by a capitalist market or whether it is created artificially through some sort of proletariat, is that the elite end up having completely different interests than the general population. I have no beef with people becoming super rich, provided there are mechanisms in place that limit their influence on the political system. That can only come through public power, the creation of a strong bureaucracy, which in turn must have limits placed in it to ensure that a bureaucratic class does not in and of itself become too assertive.
Tanking the economy - crashing it, I suppose - is one thing. But pursuing policies that weaken the economy? Certainly.
Promote deficit spending. Perhaps as a ‘starve the beast’ thing or other.
Cut taxes. Reduce government income.
Increase spending, or at least don’t try to control it commensurate with tax cuts.
Government needs money to cover expenses.
Lend government money from your wealth, get repaid tax-free.
Voila. Weaken the body politic and the national economy through deficit spending and uncontrolled tax cuts. Then help government cover it by lending money at interest. One has become richer - while avoiding taxes - at the expense of the overall ability of the government and economy to expand.