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‘The Dow soars, wages don’t.’
That’s “inequality in a nutshell,” according to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who fired off those words in a tweet response to NBC’s coverage of a fresh high for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.21% on Friday.
The New York Democrat was making the point that while the blue-chip index rallied more than 20% last year, U.S. average hourly earnings gained less than 3%. And since stocks are generally held by those with higher wealth levels, the data would support her “rich getting richer” stance.
Of course, President Trump constantly touts record highs in the market — like his “409K” tweet last week — but critics like Ocasio-Cortez maintain that such a message is irrelevant to the working class, which has missed out on such gains.
Only about half of Americans own stock, according to the Fed.
Check out: It now costs the average U.S. worker a record 114 hours of pay to buy the S&P 500
These attacks on Trump are nothing new. Here’s a tweet from early last year when Ocasio-Cortez delivered the same message:
At last check, the Dow had yet to reclaim the 29,000 mark, but was still trading higher in Monday’s trading session, as were both the S&P 500 SPX, +0.49% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.78% .
