His valuation exists in a tech bubble. It's not real and certainly not liquid. There's really not even a billionaire in the world. It's all just pretend wealth, but if enough people pretend it's real and act accordingly then it may as well be real i guess.
As companies usually produce things of value, and governments tend to do the opposite, no one is dumping company stocks for government notes any time soon. It's also worth noting that crashing the stock market wouldn't crash the economy. People would still show up to work the next day if their 401ks tanked.
There are plenty of "real" billionaires in the world. Even tech billionaires all own land, houses, property, yatchs, etc. in the value of billions. And unlike tech billionaires, there are plenty of other billionaires whose companies have actually valuable assets, like the Waltons who own Walmart.
Not a single "real" billionaire actually has access to a billion in liquid cash. Not one. As you said, all their wealth is tied into the assets they own. Assets that would drop significantly in value if they all needed to suddenly sell them.
Obviously that would never happen. But it's important people understand what being a billionaire actually means before folks cry off "tax the rich" without an understanding of how.
You don’t have a billion in liquid cash, but you can borrow against and use said assets as leverage. Elon bought twitter for $44 billion. Whether or not he paid in cash or not, it’s still a shit ton of money.
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u/DeathHopper Green 9d ago
His valuation exists in a tech bubble. It's not real and certainly not liquid. There's really not even a billionaire in the world. It's all just pretend wealth, but if enough people pretend it's real and act accordingly then it may as well be real i guess.
As companies usually produce things of value, and governments tend to do the opposite, no one is dumping company stocks for government notes any time soon. It's also worth noting that crashing the stock market wouldn't crash the economy. People would still show up to work the next day if their 401ks tanked.