Recessions *always* “clobber” the wealthy. How is someone who doesn’t have a million supposed to lose a million? Booms dis-proportionately benefit the wealthy, as well, and the sum of all booms and busts is a net benefit to the wealthy; they are richer at the end of the cycle in proportion as they were rich at the start of it.

And even if they ended the cycle only as rich as they started, they sure had a good few years in the middle there. I wouldn’t say no to a decade of billionairedom if the price was to be back where I am now at the end of it, if the alternative was to live the next ten years as I do now, and be where I am now at the end of it.

All this is why Gross Domestic Product is irrelevant to most people, and why we should not approve a policy just because it “helps the GDP”, or as the phrase has it, “is good for the economy”.