The Lair
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I always thought the American dream was that anyone and everyone has the opportunity to reap the rewards of the work they've done. You could actually earn wealth equal to the demand for the work you could do, regardless of your birth or nationality!
If somebody earns lots and lots of money, then marries and has children, there's a good chance that those children will start off life rich without having done anything, themselves, to earn that wealth. They could laze by the pool for the rest of their lives if they chose to do so. But you see, the wealth belongs to whoever earned it, and that person can dispense with it however he or she wishes. It is not the right of the government, or of any other party, to decide where that wealth will go- even after the person who earned that wealth is dead. Personally, I know that my parents are not planning to pass their wealth to my siblings or to me, and if I earn a great deal of wealth over my lifetime I don't plan on passing it along to my children because I'm not a great believer in free money. What you do affects what happens to you. But it's the right of the individual.
If those children who inherit lots of money choose to invest it in a company, so be it, that is their right and their decision. They run the risk of losing all that money if they make mistakes or misjudgements; they run that risk in the hope of earning a great deal more money. That is a choice open to everyone and anyone- you could get rich tomorrow yourself, if you wanted to run the risk. You might disapprove of a system in which people can 'get rich and do nothing', but in fact, they're not doing nothing. They're doing quite a lot. If you suddenly decided for everybody else that that opportunity is closed off, then you are deciding how they should dispense with their money and restricting one of the most cherished and important freedoms of a competitive society.
The stock market allows for the inventions and ideas of people to be brought to the population. The rational self-interest of the inventors and the 'greed' of the investors, who may want only to get rich, benefits the entire population- and the investor as well, if he or she makes good decisions on how to dispense their money (this is yet another issue of incentives, which so many non-economists simply do not understand). Lose the stock market, and you lose the gravity well of capitalism. That's it.
The stock market is the most efficient mechanism that matches resources with ideas. When somebody invests in a company and gets rich as a result of doing so, that wealth is the willing result of consumer preferences and improved products brought to the population. Benefits all around.
