For those of us still in the first half of our working careers, this would be a welcome development.
I was thinking the opposite: that the model of saving for retirement via investment accounts requires good returns in the early part of your career, so the smaller amounts of money you can afford to put away for your relatively smaller early career salary can compound over your career length to be enough for retirement.
Most of the HN audience is privileged class by courtesy of being tech savvy. Unlike many others, most of us can keep investing even in less fortunate times when others cannot. Exactly those investments might yield extra high long term returns.
Stock performance (and any investment) is driven by both cost of purchase and underlying performance. Cost is driven by human psychology as much or more than business fundamentals.
As a result, poor stock performance is in some way an indicator of future improved investment performance because it corresponds with lower purchase price but as you note, deterioration of economic performance is absolutely not an indicator of improved future economic performance.