The stock market used to be tied to long-term pay raises for employees, back before the Reagan era. In fact that was one of Reagan’s big selling points for deregulating the market: when stock prices rise, so will your paychecks. Except the only reason rising company value ever causes pay raises is when strong labor organizations demand companies pay their workers as much as they can afford to. And oh hey? What else did Reagan do? Why he gutted America’s unions.
And now gains on the stock market are completely decoupled from worker gains but the whole “the stock market benefits and everyone benefits” narrative still remains.
So the moral of the story is, as usual, fuck Reagan and everything he stood for.
valar apologist 