I looked at some details behind my 401k investments. A big chunk is in a large company index fund.
Here are the major investments in that fund.
Do you notice anything?
Did you notice that many of these companies and their founders are the targets of certain politicians? They are too big, too wealthy, too powerful, too greedy.
The fact is the success of these and other large companies is important to most Americans investing for their retirement or even if they have a pension when the trust invests for them.
There are two sides to every equation to make it valid.
Don’t be fooled by one-sided rhetoric that ignores the complete picture and the consequences.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
“In return they pay you interest (although it woefully pitiful)…”
Ah, the good old days! I remember when I had a checking account that I paid $5 a month for. Whenever I needed new checks printed, another charge. About $10, I think, with shipping. That was back when $10 was a lot of money, to me. As I recall, I was earning about $500 A month, at the time. Forget a safe deposit box fee, I had nothing worth safekeeping.
Now everything is “free” and I earn interest on savings and checking (interest on checking is a reward for serving my country, about 12 cents a year.) Plus free money orders or cashier’s checks whenever I need them (I don’t.)
It really is a valuable service, all kidding aside. They probably do more “free” record keeping and paper work than my tax preparer. My bank is on your list of investments (mine too), right at the bottom.
However, that does not mean they should get carte blanche from “certain politicians”.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”
Sir John Dalberg-Acton
There is good reason to regulate and oversee them assiduously… and to collectively decide what “fair share” of taxes they and their stockholders should pay.* That is a proper and necessary role of government.
*and executives
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“But I am not an investor because I put my money into a bank”.
Well look at what JPMorgan Chase does with your bank deposits. In return they pay you interest (although it woefully pitiful) which could be compared to form of guaranteed dividend for a given term. JPMorgan invests most of your bank deposits to use in their credit card offerings, mortgages, insurance, and other financial investments. The earnings from these investments help pay for your bank deposit’s interest and outright dividend to actual stock shareholders who also give JPMorgan money to invest.
There are very few people who are “not” investors and they are mostly the very poor without bank accounts.
And for the people that are lucky enough to have pensions, where do they think some of that pension money is invested?
People just don’t see the connection between these successful corporations and their own financial wellbeing.
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