Analysis | U.S. stocks continue to post big gains. But what about wages?

A booming stock market therefore has little bearing on the day-to-day lives of most people. This becomes all the more apparent when you compare those gains with the increase in wages over the same period.

Since Trump took office, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index — widely regarded as a barometer of the health of the total market — has climbed about 40 percent. Wages, on the other hand, have advanced just 9 percent during the same period. What’s more, those modest pay gains were largely eaten up by the swelling costs of medical care, housing, education and other necessities.

Relative to prior presidents, Trump is unique in his efforts to claim credit for the market’s performance under his watch. But the underlying trends in the market and in wage growth predate his administration by several decades. Let’s zoom back as far as the data sets allow, in this case to 1964. Ballooning market returns are the primary feature of this chart: Since 1964, the S&P 500 has surged by a whopping 4,116 percent, while wages have climbed a relatively paltry 852 percent . But it also reveals an interesting shift: Stocks rapid surge past wages didn’t begin until well into the 1990s. Before that, the two series were much closer.Given the economy of the past quarter-century, it may seem natural to us that growth in the stock market rapidly outpaces wage growth.

There is plenty of reason to suspect, as many economists increasingly do, that policy choices made in the ’80s and ’90s are big drivers of the income and wealth trends we observe today. Tax rates on the highest earners were

Wages Suck

The Their glass will always be half full when it comes to realDonaldTrump

Stagnant.

We have returned to stocks being the worlds most high stakes casino, decoupled from actual investment or value in the companies themselves.

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