Main Street

Share Your World — Taking Stock

Fandango15 Comments

Share Your WorldIt’s Monday and that means Melanie is offering us her Share Your World prompt again. Here are the items Melanie wishes us to share on this first day of the second month of the year.

If the government offered to suspend all laws, and law enforcement for 24 hours, letting you (and everybody else) do whatever you wish, would you be in favor of it, or not?

Hell no. Unlike our former American President, Donald Trump, I am not a proponent of chaos and violence.

What would be the creepiest thing you could say while passing a stranger on the street? (We’re suspending the whole social distancing and COVID involvement in this scenario.)

I generally don’t engage with strangers I pass on the street, so I don’t really have an answer to this question. Besides, I try to limit saying creepy things to the people who are near and dear to me.

As a child, what did you think would be great about being an adult, but isn’t as great as you thought it would be?

Having and being able to spend my own money on anything I wanted and being able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. Then I got married.

What, in your opinion, has been blown way out of proportion?

I’m going with the stock market. So many economists use the stock market as an indicator of the nation’s financial health. Well, only about 50% of Americans are investors, either directly or through their retirement funds, in the stock market. And even though the stock market soared to record highs during the Trump administration, I think that most Americans do not feel that their financial situation has gotten any better. And for many, it has gotten far worse. So let’s quit using the Wall Street as a gauge for the financial well-being of Americans on Main Street.

Where is your ‘happy’ place?

Sitting on the couch in front of a fire and reading a book or reading and writing posts for my blog.

Wall Street Versus Main Street

Fandango12 Comments

D0D31E18-F47E-481E-B833-F1633E716B72As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the premier barometer of Wall Street and the “health” of the American economy, is on a tear. And this makes Donald Trump and the relatively small numbers of American population who are wealthy and are heavily invested in the stock market very, very happy. But what about average, everyday Americans?

According to a Gallup poll conducted in March and April, 55% of Americans reported that they own stock. A high percentage of that stock ownership is from people like me, whose money is invested in retirement savings accounts, like their employer-based 401(k) or IRA accounts. But according to Goldman Sachs, the richest one percent of Americans account for more than half the value of equities owned by U.S. households.

Stock ownership is strongly correlated with household income, formal education, age, and race. It’s much higher among older, more highly educated whites earning more than $100,000 annually than it is among blacks, Hispanics, and the non-college educated.

So yes, a segment of the population is thrilled with the way that Wall Street has bounced back. But what about Main Street America? Are Wall Street and Main Street out of touch?

Wall Street investors are are excited and optimistic simply because they see progress in the reopening of our economy. Yet the continuing health crisis from COVID-19 has killed almost 110,000 Americans and there is no let-up in sight. There is record-high unemployment. Civil rights demonstrations (some violent) have been occurring across the nation. And the president is threatening to use the military against American citizens using their First Amendment right to assemble and demonstrate.

So there does seem to be yet another divide in America. Not the race divide, not the income divide. Not the political divide. But the divide that has a little bit of all of that: the divide between Wall Street and Main Street.