So what should be done instead? I pile everything into index funds because actively-managed funds charge higher fees for worse performance, and telling me I must invest with them instead of indexes seems much more straightforwardly socialist than whatever you're fretting about.
Of course you do, that's the reasonable thing to do. It's just interesting to think about what broader shifts will accompany the transition from pension to 401(k) style retirement. My parents and grandparents owned little to no stock AFAIK. They didn't care directly how Wall Street did, they just cared about their pensions (which admittedly, I'm sure was opaquely tied to how well some companies were doing). With a sizeable 401(k) I absolutely care about how Wall Street does, and so does a much higher percentage of the population these days.
You used to occasionally see bailouts of too-big-to-fail companies or industries, now the White House holds buy-a-Tesla day, presumably to boost TSLA. Just today the US Commerce Secretary announced that a UK airline would buy at least $10 billion of Boeing airplanes (Boeing stock is up ~4%).
Maybe it's just me paying more attention to stock market news these days, but my impression is that politicians have recently begun to care a lot more about the overall stock market going up because a lot more voters care about the overall stock market going up.
