Retail ownership may now make up a greater population but for the lower 50% of Americans, stock ownership has been declining. And for all but the top 10% of Americans, the amount of stock owned (as a fraction of all stock in circulation or even inflation adjusted value held) has been declining.
So in a very real sense, the stock market has an increasingly negligible direct impact on the lives of a significant chunk (if not a majority) of Americans (however it still may have an indirect effect via exposure from their employers).
Rolling back protections, or implicitly suggesting that shareholders don't deserve much protection (by virtue of them being wealthy), serves to reinforce this though. If owning shares is made more risky, only those who can afford to take more risks will be able to capture the benefit.
> Unions are simply a rent-seeking mechanism to extract more wealth from the shareholders by restricting their contract rights.
and the choice between that money going to the workers creating that value vs the shareholders matters.
If ownership of stocks is concentrating and fewer working class Americans are owning stocks, then shifting wealth distribution from the shareholder towards the worker should generally be regarded as good for the working class. And regardless, maybe if more of the money went directly to the workers, they'd me more willing to put money into the market than they currently are.
Wages have stagnated, cost of living has continued to rise, and corporate profits have soared. It's really not a surprise why working class Americans don't invest in the market, they just don't have the money to "waste" or "risk" on it.
If you make the US inhospitable to business, corporations will not site manufacturing plants in the US, or conversely, will be forced to site them in the US and then will pass the costs onto consumers. The end result is Americans having less purchasing power, i.e. lower inflation adjusted wages.
Capitalism is the only model that can maximize economic growth and social development. No amount of ideological wishful thinking will change that.
Shareholders being rewarded for investing is how you get more investment, which is how you get productivity growth, which in turn is the only way to increases wages that is not zero sum, i.e. is sustainable.
