Wall Street is thriving, Main Street isn’t – and Asia should worry

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NEW YORK – Wall Street has never had it so good. America’s workers tell a different story. Corporate profits, asset values and productivity have risen strongly over recent…

NEW YORK – Wall Street has never had it so good. America’s workers tell a different story.

Corporate profits, asset values and productivity have risen strongly over recent decades, yet most workers feel they capture only a small share of the gains. That gap is often framed as a domestic political problem. Increasingly, it is an international one.

If the spending power of US households weakens, Asia’s export-dependent economies may find that the consumer they have relied on for generations can no longer play the same role.

The causes are many, but the multi-decade shift of GDP priorities from labor to capital stands out. In the second quarter of 2026, labor’s share of income fell to 52.8%, from 65.5% in 1947. The trend accelerated in the Reaganomics-dominated 1980s and continued through the recent midterm blowout.

The Democrats’ big win over Donald Trump’s Republicans on November 3 seemed a hinge-point moment. In the 10 days since, it’s become clear that Trump’s all-in embrace of Tech Bros trumpeting AI as an economic utopia in real time backfired.

It proved wildly tone deaf as Americans turn against data centers that drive up electricity and water bills so they can train AI models to eliminate entire industries, while the Iran war boosts oil and food costs.

Among major world leaders, Trump has been the most enthusiastic champion of unregulated AI. Turns out, a Silicon Valley Wild West 2.0 experiment isn’t popular. Nor does the working class buy trillionaire Elon Musk’s chatter about a coming “age of abundance” awash with generous universal income programs.

Few in the MAGAverse seemed to notice that Musk’s views are more in conversation with Karl Marx than Adam Smith. Rather than buy the White House’s line about Democrats’ “radical socialism,” US voters cast a powerful anti-AI, anti-war, anti-inflation, anti-tech-oligarch vote.

The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances finds the US wealth gap remains wide.

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