Assuming McArdle isn't secretly worried about Marx's declining rate of profit in capitalism, then maybe returns to capital are falling because returns to labor

Assuming McArdle isn't secretly worried about Marx's declining rate of profit in capitalism, then maybe returns to capital are falling because returns to labor are increasing. That should be good news for people who work for a living -- unless the only workers capturing those gains are in the boardroom. Uh oh. BTW, average (geometric) returns for the US have been around 6% after inflation. The global average is about 5%. No country has averaged as high as 8%. http://chrismealy.blogspot.com/2009/08/real-return-on-stocks.html http://chrismealy.blogspot.com/2009/08/real-return-on-stocks... In the old days (before the 1970s), with expensive brokers, expensive commissions, no index funds, and taxes incurred from rebalancing, just getting the average market return easily could have eaten up 2% of your return. It shouldn't surprise people that stock returns would fall as costs fell. The after-expenses return was never as high as those historical charts suggested.