CheyenneGunslinger wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:13 pm
Look at the shape increases in the DOW since Trump was elected and the slow increases when Obama was in office.
Uh, do you even know how to read a graph? The general trend is the exact same. If you look at any local max or mins, you better also include the huge drop two weeks ago as well.
If anyone doesn't think the average American has benefitted from the rise in the DOW then sadly they are very misinformed. Just about everyone I know has a 401K (and these are average working Americans) and they watch it very carefully.
Yes, most people have a 401k, but what you apparently fail to realize is that for a vast majority of people, these gains are also completely dependent on what your wages look like, along with how much you can afford to put away. Recent decades with little to no wage growth means people haven't been putting away nearly as much as they should have in their 401k, and as company matching usually is percentage-based, if your salary doesn't rise significantly, your contribution doesn't either.
This is no fault of Trump's as it's been going on for a long time, but neither is this rise in the stock market something that significantly improves the standard of living for anybody in the middle class. In fact, it's the opposite, since we're borrowing from future generations to give corporate America a record windfall.
And while we're on the subject, maybe we should talk about how the promise of no more budget deficits was complete bullcrap. After the great recession, we had finally started reigning the deficit in... and now we lower taxes like crazy in a good economy? That's the opposite of fiscal responsibility, and leaves us with no room for stimulus when the next crash happens. 2018's Budget projected deficit is already $833 Billion... compare that to $585 Billion in 2015. There's talk about Medicare and Medicaid cuts now, something we were promised would not happen. But whatever, the poor only have themselves to blame for being poor, right?
And I suppose I ought to point out that I'm a bit of a hypocrite. The tax cuts put more money in my wallet right now, but that's at the expense of not being able to take advantage of itemized deductions anymore. Those would have gotten me a much larger tax return, but I guess it more or less evens out now (I hope). The thing is, I don't
need more. I've lucked out in life and have received quite a few breaks. I recognize that even one wrong turn could have put me in a desperate situation, though, and I'd hate to imagine that somehow not having an adequate safety net for people is justified just because
I don't personally need it, so I'll have more money in my wallet if I'm not paying for it.
Then again, cancer can hit anybody, and if I was to get cancer and lose my job (yes, there are legal protections, but if time drags out, you'll be let go eventually) after not being able to work, I'd eventually be unable to pay for my health insurance and my family would lose everything, so there's that.