MO MONEY:
The DOW hit 50K today. I remember when Bush 41 left office it was around 3,5K. That shows you how much wealth has been created in the US since 1993. From the Inception of the DOW until Bush 41 left office it went from 0 to only 3.5K.
I always have said "What someone else has has nothing to do with what you don't have. There is enough for everybody. Ya just have to know how and where to find it. I'm always lookin'..
"STAY THIRSTY MY FRIEND" ~ The Most Amazing Man In The World
A Rising Tide: The Conservative Case for the American Engine of Prosperity
A recent social media post, reflecting on the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s historic climb past 50,000, offers a profound, albeit folksy, conservative truth. The observation is stark: the Dow, from its inception in 1896 until President George H.W. Bush left office in 1993, had reached approximately 3,500 points. In the three decades since, it has multiplied over fourteen-fold. This isn’t just a statistic for traders; it is a towering monument to the unparalleled wealth-creating power of the American economic system when it is unleashed. The post’s accompanying philosophy “What someone else has has nothing to do with what you don’t have. There is enough for everybody. Ya just have to know how and where to find it” encapsulates the core conservative belief in opportunity, personal agency, and the moral superiority of growth over grievance.
From a conservative perspective, this astronomical growth since the early 1990s is not a random accident or the inevitable result of technological progress alone. It is the direct reward for a series of policy decisions that unshackled the private sector, incentivized investment, and affirmed that the purpose of the economy is to generate prosperity, not to be an instrument for social re-engineering. This period encompassed the tech boom of the Clinton-Gingrich era (fueled by deregulation and the internet), the Bush tax cuts that left more capital in the hands of those who create jobs, and the Trump-era tax reform and deregulatory blitz that supercharged business confidence and investment before the pandemic. Even the Biden administration has, at times reluctantly, presided over a market whose underlying strength was built by these prior policies. The Dow’s journey is a market verdict on the power of low taxes, sensible regulation, and free capital flows.
This narrative stands in direct opposition to the progressive zero-sum worldview that dominates much of contemporary political rhetoric. The left’s economic framework is fundamentally rooted in scarcity and redistribution. Its language is of “fair shares,” “taxing extreme wealth,” and combating “inequality.” It views the economic pie as static, arguing that if one person has a large slice, it necessarily means another has less. The social media post’s wisdom dismantles this fallacy: What someone else has has nothing to do with what you don’t have.” The conservative sees a dynamic, expanding pie. The wealth represented by that 50,000-point Dow is not a finite pile of gold coins hoarded in a vault; it is capital. It is investment in factories, research labs, startups, and retirement accounts. It is the engine of business expansion, wage growth, and innovation. Jeff Bezos’s wealth is not a claim on existing resources that deprives others; it is a valuation of Amazon, a company that created over a million jobs, revolutionized logistics, and provided a platform for countless small businesses. His gain is not society’s loss; it is evidence of value created for millions.
The post’s second axiom “There is enough for everybody. Ya just have to know how and where to find it” is a clarion call for personal responsibility and an entrepreneurial mindset. It rejects the victimhood narrative that claims certain groups are permanently locked out of prosperity by systemic barriers. Conservatism does not deny that life presents challenges, hardships, or uneven starting points. But its solution is not to have government attempt to guarantee equal outcomes through redistribution. The solution is to foster a society with the greatest possible equality of opportunity: a vibrant, growing economy where jobs are plentiful, where education and skills are valued, and where barriers to starting a business are low. The “how and where to find it” speaks to the virtues of hard work, delayed gratification, financial literacy, and relentless hustle. It’s the immigrant opening a restaurant, the tradesman building a company, the coder learning a new language, or the investor patiently contributing to a 401(k). The market rewards those who provide value to others. The 50,000-point Dow is a testament to the millions of such individual decisions, risks, and efforts aggregated together.
This is not to advocate for a callous social Darwinism. The conservative vision is of a generous society, but one where generosity is personal, communal, and voluntary—not coerced by the state. A society with a booming stock market is a society with more resources for charity, stronger community institutions, and greater capacity for individuals to secure their own futures and help their neighbors. The prosperity symbolized by the Dow funds the churches, non-profits, and local initiatives that address poverty and dislocation far more effectively than distant federal bureaucracies.
Furthermore, this growth is the bedrock of American strength. The wealth created since 1993 is what funds our military, invests in next-generation technology, and provides the economic resilience to confront challenges like a pandemic or geopolitical rivals. A nation obsessed with slicing the existing pie more “fairly” is a nation in decline. A nation focused on baking a bigger pie is a nation that can lead, innovate, and secure its future.
The post’s sign-off, “STAY THIRSTY MY FRIEND,” is the perfect coda. It is a call for relentless ambition, curiosity, and drive. It is the antithesis of the progressive politics of envy, which seeks to quench its thirst by taking another’s glass. The conservative ideal is to build more wells, to teach people how to dig, and to celebrate those whose efforts create new sources of abundance for all.
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The march from 3,500 to 50,000 on the Dow is more than a financial chart. It is a story of American optimism, resilience, and the transformative power of freedom. It is empirical proof that when government steps back and allows the genius of the American people to flourish, the result is not inequality but unprecedented, widely-shared wealth creation. The task for conservatives is to protect the policies that made this possible: limited government, low taxes, sound money, and the unwavering belief that in America, there is still enough for everybody—for those with the vision, and the thirst, to go and find it.
#DOW #STOCKMARKET #STOCKS
