Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complains about record-breaking Dow surge: 'Inequality in a nutshell'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) lamented the rise of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a Saturday tweet, complaining that it was nothing more than "inequality."

The Dow surged past the 29,000 threshold on Friday for the first time despite the most recent monthly jobs report showing a slowing employment growth. The massive gain was due in part to large gains in stocks such as Pfizer, Apple, and Coca-Cola.

What did she say?

In a pointed tweet, the freshman congresswoman wrote, "The Dow soars, wages don't. Inequality in a nutshell."

A wide variety of social media users seemed to agree with her — or at least respected the point she was trying to make — as, at the time of this writing, the democratic socialist lawmaker received more than 117,000 likes on the tweet.

According to Business Insider, Ocasio-Cortez's post, "underlined the problem of stagnant US wages and the wealth gap between investors and salaried workers."

What else?

In 2019, while the stock market surged about 22 percent, average hourly earnings only rose 2.9 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau announced that approximately 145,000 non-farm payrolls were created in December, about 15,000 short of what was initially projected.

In a Friday report, Business Insider noted that average hourly earnings did increase 2.9 percent year over year, and unemployment has dipped to its lowest level in 50 years at just 3.5 percent.

Anything else?

At least half of Americans own stocks through a variety of money management means, such as mutual funds, retirement accounts, and more according to a 2019 Politifact report.

According to the outlet — which pointed to a 2017 Time report — just about half of American households own stock shares either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, trusts, and a variety of pension accounts. The outlet reports, however, that the richest 10 percent of that share controlled 84 percent of the total value of stocks in 2016.

A 2019 Gallup report also noted that 55 percent of Americans reported to have owned stock — a 1 percentage point increase since 2010.

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