I realize that many people’s retirements are tied up in stocks as well. That doesn’t make us “shareholders”. Without voting rights or a say, we’re not really vested in the same manner executives are. When our 401k’s go off to a fund manager that makes the decisions for us, we’re not really “in the game” as it were. Ideally a company’s stock price should be tied to the health of the company, instead what we have are artificial prices inflated by mechanisms such as stock buybacks or the stock price is speculative.
Either way, it’s a shit show for us (you know, regular people) and only great for the 1%'ers. I think tying up retirements like we have been is a mistake, look at the many examples of people who lost their retirement assets due to MCI Worldcom, Enron, and Madoff.