Stock-market valuations, by one measure, have hit levels surpassed only a few times in the past, including the Great Depression and the dot-com bubble.
The stock market has been decoupled from the real economy for years. There are interests who want all of us to make sacrifices when the stock market goes down, but I don't agree with them.
Yeah they are always warning about the stock market and what we need to do to make it go up but most people don't even own stock. Maybe in their 401k if they have one. Other than that the average person probably doesn't care. I hardly even look at my 401k either. Let it tank I don't care. I'll probably work until I die anyways.
The crash is very much a part of the cycle. The rich siphon every single dollar they can during boom times, then increase their market share by buying out smaller, struggling competitors during crashes. And they use taxpayer money to fund their acquisitions.
I'd argue that the class warfare is still raging on as an inborn human trait that happens to be partially expressed with our various economic systems throughout history. We can still win if we manage to breed out our hierarchical tendencies to a point where it's not detrimental to our survival as a whole.
I pulled an old free frisbee out of a box of toys my mom had saved to find it was WaMu branded. Had a little chuckle at the free plastic frisbee outliving them.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
And what's the worst that can happen to them? "Oh no, instead of having 2 villas I will only be left with 1?"
Chances are they already can choose to not work for the rest of their lives. They will never get into a worse position than the average worker already is in.
If there are two classes which are top priority for "rescuing" with public money, is Financiers and Wealthy Investors.
It's the small fry that needs to worry, as invariably they're the ones left holding the bag whenever a way overstreched Economy and associated La-la-Land of Rainbows & Ponies Stockmarket finally get pulled back by the reality that there is nowhere near enough real value in total to justifiy the total value implied by all those sky-high asset prices.
It did to me, because I have a locked-in pension from a former union job and after I quit I transferred it to my bank ... who proceeded to tell me I had no choice but to put it into stocks. As of rn it's finally back up to what I had in 2008.
This is by design. Retirements are more and more tied with risky markets because then the rich can hold everyone else hostage since it's not just them feeling the pain of a market crash. The insanity has to stop at some point or we're all going to be held hostage forever. Regardless, the amount that most individuals actually have is little and often isn't enough to actually retire on anyway.
Depending on why it crashed, it might in some areas to some extent. It might also motivate a drop in rates which could cause prices to start spiking upwards. The biggest issue with house prices is supply has been constrained since the GFC, there hasn't been enough housing built to meet demand. Until that changes I wouldn't expect house prices to ever decline significantly or over a sustained period of time.