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Banning stock trading for lawmakers in any form will even moreso restrict these positions to very wealthy people.

If you’re worth several million, stock trading restrictions don’t change much. If you aren’t, they could be a big deciding factor in the quality of your housing or retirement.

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I don't think anyone is talking about banning lawmakers from investing in broad market indexes and the like. They're talking about banning buying and selling individual stocks because that opens the door to trading on non-public information they receive as government officials.

For the vast majority of people this kind of passive index based investing is actually what will lead to the best returns overall. So I don't think your conclusion that this sort of change would restrict public office to very wealthy people is correct.

I didn't RTFM, but I imagine the difference would be between "sending my investment money to a trusted, independent broker to be put into index funds" and "personally trading stocks over which I have legislative responsibilities".

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