Oh but of course. CBO (PDF) report showing growth in real median after-tax income 1979-2007 where EPI shows stagnation.
EPI uses CPI to deflate wages and IPD to deflate productivity. Neither is wrong, but it makes comparisons difficult. EPI thinks there is no problem in using both: “We argue that it is valid.” But as I wrote elsewhere, if I’m self-employed and make/produce $10k (nominal) in 1970 and $50k (nominal) in 2000 while working the same, my compensation rate has increased by only 12% if we measure by CPI, but my productivity has increased 38% if we measure by IPD. This article explains: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/comparing-the-cpi-with-the-gdp-price-index-and-gdp-implicit-price-deflator.htm
If we examine the flow of workers into and out of the workforce, we see that change in weekly earnings has been positive over the past 15 years, and even more so for full-time employees. But retiring boomers being replaced by new workers have dragged down the averages. http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2016-07.pdf
I’d call both the Syrian chemical weapons attacks and the North Korean nuclear tests, and our responses to each, fairly serious. On the domestic front, there have been some pretty devastating storms that have damaged significant infrastructure in a few parts of the country.
No, there isn’t, but there is no rational, fact-based reason to believe any other state of affairs would be likely.
LOL. You aren’t serious, are you?
‘Of course the stock market would have done better under Hillary. How could we possibly conclude anything else?’
:rolleyes:
Look, I’m content to leave it at us both agreeing that it’s unknown how the stock market would perform in an alternative universe where HRC had not lost the election.
That seems a bit specious, though. Most workers are not self-employed (AFAICT), so measures of productivity would be inverse. Wages apply negative pressure to productivity (workers are a business expense), so increased productivity does not translate to better pay/conditions for workers.
The Dow will increase faster and faster because each 1000 is now a smaller percentage of the base.
The rise from 20,000 to 23,000 is exactly the same as the rise from 200 to 230. The former is psychologically much huger but the percentage increase is the same.
The Dow is an artificial number that could be anything. If we divided it by 100 absolutely nothing would change. Let’s do it. Then when the Dow goes up from 230 to 240 nobody at all will notice or care. And nobody will panic when it goes down from 230 to 220.
Well said.
This is the DJIA:
[ul][li]3M[/li][li]General Electric[/li][li]Nike[/li][li]American Express[/li][li]Goldman Sachs[/li][li]Pfizer[/li][li]Apple[/li][li]Home Depot[/li][li]Procter & Gamble[/li][li]Boeing[/li][li]Intel[/li][li]Travelers[/li][li]Caterpillar[/li][li]IBM[/li][li]UnitedHealth[/li][li]Chevron[/li][li]Johnson & Johnson[/li][li]United Technologies[/li][li]Cisco Systems[/li][li]JPMorgan Chase[/li][li]Verizon[/li][li]Coca-Cola[/li][li]McDonald’s[/li][li]Visa[/li][li]Dupont[/li][li]Merck[/li][li]Wal-Mart[/li][li]Exxon Mobil[/li][li]Microsoft[/li][li]Disney[/ul][/li]
I guess the index is the sum of their common-stock prices.
Self-employment was just an example of how two measures of inflation give you two numbers where there should be one.
I can’t tell you what productivity will translate to. But I can tell you that households have more income than they used to. Whether it is distributed ideally is a different matter. Take a look at that CBO report and see how the increases look for different income quintiles. If you’re the type who is many concern about income inequality, it certainly shows unequal gains.
It is, but it’s adjusted every time a stock is added and dropped so the index doesn’t jump suddenly when this happens.
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How could you possibly know for sure? The DOW, as well as the rest of the stock markets, go up when really deep pocket investors believe stocks will provide the highest rate of return for their money. Stock prices go down when really deep pocket investors opt for the safety/stability of other investments. How do you know that really deep pocket investors would chose to invest in stocks instead of some other investment vehicles providing, of course, that Hillary hadn’t lost her 2nd bid for POTUS? Would really deep pocket investors have as much faith in the future of stocks with a Hillary in the Whitehouse?
As far as NAFTA is concerned, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico were doing business before NAFTA, and they will continue to do business after NAFTA is modified, or dissolved. Some people have been predicting a slump in the economy ever since they were surprised that anyone could beat Hillary a 2nd time. I suppose the stock market will collapse some day, eventually, maybe.
Can I quote you on that? 
Oh, naïveté. Here’s an explanation of the Dow.
The responses to each were minimal. (Which arguably was the best response). For NK we had a Twitter tantrum and some fly-bys. For Syria we had the “do-little raid” which could be characterized, in the words of Bush the Lesser, as “shooting a million dollar missile to hit a camel in the butt”. Syria has lost no chemical warfare capacity and nothing is stopping them from attacking again.
I was talking about international and economic crises, but since you bring it up… hurricanes are severe, but for a presidency, this is not rocket science. You dispatch FEMA, you request additional funds. He met the minimal requirement for Harvey and Irma, but Puerto Rico is an unfolding catastrophe, and Trump’s blaming the victims and talking about pulling the plug on support. Utter fucking fail.
This gives you a hint about what Trump will do in a crisis. He will cast the victims as undeserving, he will do nothing or the minimal amount. That’s a decent answer when it comes to starting a war, but it won’t be the right answer for everything.
What would interest me as a crisis would be a bubble deflation, a trade shock, a major overseas invasion/incursion or act of war, or a terrorist attack targeting numerous Americans. Those are crises. Everything so far is just the regular headaches of holding the office.
Presumably, however, you don’t mean to obscure the fact that the Dow has risen 25% in less than a year. If not unprecedented, this is certainly extremely unusual, regardless of the absolute level.
MHO: We’re in a bubble. I am not looking forward to when it bursts.
Whoever invests in the short term is gambling. Long term things should be fine until robots take over and then we have an issue. Hop on the basic income wagon.
I don’t invest for a 5 year horizon. We are investing for the next 30+ years. A lot of ups and downs happen. I don’t care about the day to day for investing to be honest.
Well, fear is costly. 30 years from now you may regret not riding the ups and downs.
Why? When it bursts it’ll be a good time to buy more stocks.
How old are people here? I’m getting the feeling that people are 70 and heavily tilted towards equities.
It helps to put it in perspective, as this 10 year chart indicates. The Dow has been on a steady rise since it hit the low point in 2009. 2016 also saw a 25% rise, even during a political campaign shouting how awful the economic purportedly was. This certainly is an unusually long consistent rise. But it’s entirely due to a favorable global economic picture and the relative calm of international relations. Has a Republican president and Congress promising to lower corporate tax rates encouraged the market? Obviously so. But while corporations as a whole have been doing well, the Dow is an insanely bad indicator. As the Washington Post wrote:
Nope. Been playing this game long enough to know that if you want to be solvent enough to buy the lows, you have to be OK passing up some of the highs. I’ve also learned that when people are saying that historic highs can keep right on getting higher, that’s a big fat warning flag. But, you do you, I’ll do me.
I just employ a simple strategy. Stick a bit in each week regardless of low or high. Then I rebalance periodically. Then I wait til retirement.
In other words, I don’t consider Trump to be important with regards to the stocks. Again, look at all the real issues in history. As long as we have relative domestic tranquillity things should keep chugging along. If the US stock market goes tremendously low it means US society has basically collapsed.