Am I the only one who first read this as Not Enough Socks for Everybody -- and pictured someone with a sock-eating washer.
Nope. My first thought was 'um, buy some at Costco? Price/quality is usually pretty good there.'
Ooo yes, Costco sock are nice. Very soft. And there are enough for everybody. I have a pile of them.
I also think there could be a cascading affect as people notice more folks around them walking out well before traditional retirement age.
Keep in mind that "more folks walking out" is still like .00001% of the population.
Recent stats suggest that about 50-55% of Americans - one of the richest countries - are invested in the stock market. There are billions of people without access to sophisticated stock markets. Hundreds of millions working for $1/day who couldn't afford stocks even if they wanted to.
In the US alone if you cut out the youths and elderly there are probably only 200M adults who could invest. Half don't. So...100M investors max, across all asset classes AND account for the fact that 75M of those people probably just have small 401K balances.
How many people know the folks in that .00001%, then how many folks know them, etc. etc. If that .00001% expands exponentially, it wouldn't take all that long.
The numbers are going up for people and investments. Even if not in the US, a decent number of the children of the $1/day folks are doing a lot better than their parents. Of course, that also makes earnings go up, so that's probably more part of the solution than part of the problem.
So many more eggs in the investment basket than just stocks. Half of our NW is in RE. A lot in low-cost mutual funds and ETF's, how to count those? In fact, I only own one specific stock that I have a share certificate for, and it's only for sentimental reasons (first job). I think I own about 40 shares, set up as a DRIP.
Even if you add in real estate, bonds, and everything else that produces a return, does it really significantly change the math? I don't have any numbers on what the total value/earnings on all of that is, except for the $20T in US federal debt.
Also, I would think that stocks would be the only one of those investments that would be subject to extra investors fueling growth.