The stock market is putting on a hell of a show these days, with the Dow and S&P 500 reaching all-time highs that make it look like the economy is hotter than a supermodel on a Miami beach. It’s tempting to pop some champagne and toast to our collective prosperity, but beneath all that glitter and gloss, there’s a much less glamorous reality playing out—one that’s more about the haves flaunting it while the have-nots are still just trying to make rent.
The truth is, those record highs don’t mean much for the average American who’s hustling just to stay afloat. As stock prices soar, wages stagnate, and that vaunted economic growth feels like a mirage in the desert—beautiful from a distance, but not much use when you’re dying of thirst. It’s no secret that the game is rigged in favor of the players at the top, where the rewards of a booming market are pocketed by the few, while everyone else is left waiting for some trickle-down magic that never quite arrives.
It wasn’t always this way.
There was a time when the success of big companies meant good news for everyone. If the factory did well, so did the workers. If the stock went up, so did wages. But that was before the 1970s, when the gospel of profits-above-all took hold, reshaping corporate America into a lean, mean, shareholder-pleasing machine. The idea that a company’s only responsibility was to increase its profits became the mantra of the day, and everyone fell in line.
Now, that mantra drives the kind of financial engineering that juices stock prices at the expense of just about everything else. Stock buybacks and dividends have become the go-to moves for CEOs looking to keep Wall Street happy. Companies are spending billions on share repurchases instead of investing in their workers or R&D—essentially choosing to keep their stockholders flush rather than giving their employees a raise.
We’re seeing towns like Brokaw, Wisconsin, bear the brunt of this obsession with shareholder value. There, the shuttering of a century-old paper mill wasn’t due to some unforeseen disaster or poor management but the demand for higher returns. It’s a scene that’s played out time and time again across the country, where the quest for immediate gains has left behind a string of broken promises, shuttered factories, and people who wonder what happened to their shot at the American Dream.
The stock market has become the ultimate showman, luring us in with record-breaking performances while we ignore the signs that the plot is falling apart. Those numbers flashing across the ticker tape might look like success, but they don’t tell the whole story. When only half of Americans own stocks at all—and most of those who do only have a little bit—the market’s triumph feels less like a national achievement and more like an exclusive club where only the most connected get to reap the rewards.
Let’s be honest
The market’s high-flying act is mostly about optics. It’s not an accurate gauge of the everyday economy but a reflection of investors’ aspirations, hopes, and, yes, even fantasies. The idea that the stock market reflects the health of the nation has always been a bit of a stretch, but we’ve taken it to the next level, clinging to every new peak as if it were proof that we’re on the up and up.
For Wall Street, the stock market is a playground where the rules are different than they are for the rest of us. It’s a place where fortunes are made and lost on the flick of a wrist, and where the pursuit of shareholder value can justify just about anything. As long as share prices keep rising, no one seems to mind if jobs disappear or entire towns are left in the dust. But when the music stops, it won’t be the titans of finance who are left scrambling for a chair—it’ll be the folks on Main Street who never got invited to the dance in the first place.
It’s not that the market doesn’t matter—it absolutely does. But if we’re going to keep worshipping at the altar of stock indexes, maybe it’s time we redefined what real value looks like. Shouldn’t it be more than just making shareholders richer? Imagine an economy where companies rewarded their workers just as eagerly as they did their investors, where towns like Brokaw thrived instead of withered, and where “growth” meant something more than just a number on a screen.
Sure, the stock market’s record highs are a thrill, and who doesn’t love a little excitement? But the question we need to ask is whether that thrill is worth the price we’re all paying—and whether we’re content with just the illusion of wealth while the real thing slips further out of reach.
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