True, but the past 6-7 years make me seriously question whether it’s real growth or inflation.

For >10 years prior I had a fairly flat salary at two separate employers. Yearly raise of about 2%.

Now salary is up about 50% from almost 10 years ago and home value almost doubled during the same timeframe.

I know I’m not that lucky in life… I don’t live in a HCOL area. I don’t work in an industry that is on fire. Nobody actually gets huge raises for performance.

Sure, the stock market has seen enormous gains over the past 10-15 years. Even the major indices have maintained gains that would traditionally be unimaginable.

That can’t be real growth - it’s the recipe for inflation.

If half the country owned $1000 of NVIDIA 20 years ago, would we be richer? No, inflation would follow and the other half would be poorer…