system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are billionaires saving the US dollar?

I have only taken micro and macro a few semesters ago, so please inform me if any of my logic is incorrect. 

The total wealth held by billionaires has increased by ≈$1.6 trillion since March 18th, 2020. This represents 1/3 of total gains over the past 31 years. All of this money has been funneled into their net worth (basically) from the general US population spending their stimulus.

Billionaires holding all of this money are essentially offsetting the amount of QE the fed has done over the past year, and acting as a buffer for inflation. 

They are reducing the velocity of the printed money, but if they were to start spending a significant amount of that money, inflation would be jump started. 

I can’t imagine that this amount of money, held by such a relatively small amount of people will be moving very much in the near future. So are they kind of saving the economies ass as of right now? 

TL;DL: Billionaires are keeping the dollar scarce. Kind of…? for right now…?Also read the last sentence.
gpt
Wealth isn't money and company values going up is not the same as increases in the money supply.

Billionaires generally don't hold a lot of money (relatively speaking). They hold *wealth*. This is important.

If you own a stock whose value goes up, it's just the *value* that changes. Think of it like owning a classic car for example. You bought it for $20000 30 years ago and now it's worth $50000. Does that mean you have 50k in the bank? No, you'd have to sell it for that. So you'd have to stop owning an appreciating asset and own cash instead.

Point being, stock values going up doesn't mean billionaires "soak up" cash. It doesn't even mean they have *more* cash. They just have *assets with higher value*, which doesn't necessitate any actual transfer of money for those billionaires.

Also, *if* this were the case it would just mean the central bank's job is slightly harder. They engage in things like QE to push inflation *up* to meet their target, and making it harder just means they have to increase the money supply more (or do other things).