If you spend it eating out, drinking, getting your house renovated, flying somewhere - then you end up paying tax and spending money and there’s some trickle down. If it sits in a bank account or in stocks or real estate, less so.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how an individual’s wealth can be useful to society. Societies become prosperous when they do things that are good for people, and that is what the money is best spent on - making society better. Sure, if they go to the bar every night and spend $200k getting hammered, maybe we netted a little extra tax revenue. And the bar is certainly doing better. But it is far better for everyone if that money becomes the startup capital for, say, a new plumbing business or taco restaurant or law firm or real estate development. Put it into something that actually does something

And that’s essentially what buying stocks is. Putting your money in stocks is good for the economy.