Woohoo.....DOW over 8000!!!

I kinda think 8000 is a benchmark..... :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :applause: :applause: :applause:

yeah, that's the spin

channel, day in, day out......and no I won't be posting it every time it hits 8000 I just hope now it goes higher. :)

of how our economy is doing.

In the 1990's the dow soared, and real wages stagnated for the middle class and declined for poor people. The was a wall street boom that didn't equally translate to main street, and yet everyone acted like it was the best of times for all.

After the 2000-2001 recession, we had a "jobless recovery." Huh? A jobless recovery is NO RECOVERY AT ALL.

Let's not turn this into a debate about the Clinton Presidency shall we? Clinton left a legacy far superior to either GHWB or Reagan and we all know that. If that was not your point, I apologize. Your post sounded like the standard Clinton defense post I get when I'm not trying to criticize the Clinton presidency.

Without disparaging that man at all, on a broader timeline, we have larger problems. Chiefly, the fact that productivity and wages decoupled around 1980 and have never come back together. This is a big problem.

This is what we mean when we talk about middle class wages stagnating and real wages for the working poor declining.

Poverty did decrease during that period by about 3%. And it certainly rose again under Bush. Clinton = better than Republicans. We all know this. That's not my point.

The point is we have much larger, decades long problems that still aren't resolved. The bull of the wealth gains during the tech bubble were in the upper quintiles. Wage gains were not keeping up with inflation for the bottom 80%. That's a long term problem spanning beyond the adminsitration of one president that needs fixed.

My point is that you can have a soaring stock market and still have deep, real problems of inequality for many Americans. Thus, I dream of a day when our chief "popular" indicator of economic health is not the DOW.

When we see modest gains and losses, then it's settled.