America turns 250 this weekend. Two days early, the Journal published a sweeping essay asking whether U.S. capitalism still works. The authors — Dartmouth’s Matthew Slaughter and Brookings’ David Wessel — did not bring a cake.
They brought numbers. The median male full-time worker earned about $1,325 a week in 2025. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly what his counterpart made in 1979.
Read that again. Half a century of computers and progress, and the middle paycheck barely moved.
The mobility numbers sting too. About 90% of Americans born in 1940 grew up to out-earn their parents. For Americans born in 1985, it’s only about half.
Meanwhile, the top 1%’s share of the country’s wealth climbed from 22.8% in 1989 to 30.8% in 2024.
Three big forks
Those three numbers are the birthday card. They explain why the argument about capitalism has gotten loud, and why it won’t quiet down soon.
From that, the authors pose three questions. First: redistribution or growth? Do we tax wealth harder, or invest in research and skills?
Second: walls or bridges? Tariffs — taxes on goods crossing the border — now sit near Smoot-Hawley levels, and net immigration is near zero. Do we stay closed, or re-engage the world?
Third: regulation or competition? Do we set guardrails and let companies fight it out, or drift toward crony capitalism, where the government picks the winners?
The authors’ twist is that the hard part isn’t designing the policy. It’s finding leaders willing to make the case for it.
That’s a political question, and we don’t do politics here. We do arithmetic.
You don’t get a vote
Here’s the awkward truth for investors: nobody knows which road the country takes. Not us. Not the authors. Not the loudest voice on your favorite channel.
A plan built only for the sunny outcome — growth, bridges, competition — gets hurt if the country picks walls and redistribution instead. Think higher taxes on capital, slower trade, stickier inflation.
A plan built only for the gloomy outcome has the opposite problem. It misses the boom if AI and clean tech deliver the productivity surge the optimists expect.
So we build for the fork, not the forecast.
Broad ownership of productive businesses captures the growth case. Whoever wins the argument, somebody is still selling groceries, electricity and medicine.
Tax-aware placement of assets softens the redistribution case. Real diversification and a gold sleeve carry the walls-and-inflation case.
And durable domestic cash flow pays the bills under all three. That’s not a prediction. That’s a design.
The 30-year test
A retirement that has to last 30 years will live through several answers to all three questions. Probably several answers each.
The country argued its way through 250 years of these choices. It will argue through the next 30, too.
That’s why the birthday lesson isn’t optimism or pessimism. It’s humility.
We don’t position for the country we hope for. We position for the range of countries we might actually get.
Then we check the picture every quarter, as the country makes up its mind. It has 250 years of practice at changing it.