[quote=no_such_reality]If you actually look at the Dow 30 from 1965, you might be shocked. The effective companies and their products are quite alive and dominating. Post, no longer Post, was Phillip Morris, then Altria, now Kraft and another company. Don’t Kraft and Post products pretty much own one of the aisles in most supermarkets. Little known firms like united Aircraft, still around, you may recognize their new name United Tech. UTX. $64B in revenue, total slouches. AT&T recently booted from the Dow, still around. In 1965, they were huge, $3.1B in revenue, those losers barely rake in $132B today.
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I have looked and while their are wildly successful stories there are also complete failures. In addition these are supposedly some of the biggest most influential companies around when they are in the DOW. If it were true that capitalism ends up with the rich always getting richer and concentrating wealth then GM would have never gone bankrupt, Woolworth and Bethlehem Steel would still be around, AA’s market cap would be vastly greater than it was 20 years ago.

GDP in 1965 was ~ 750 million now it’s 16.7 trillion (you’d have to grow revenue 22x just to keep up with the general growth of the economy) . I would hope there’s some success stories in the DOW from 1965 like AT&T, PG, GE, and Post. Go back even further and there are even more failures. My point is that all the rich companies don’t just keep getting richer they surprisingly end up replaced by some new innovation more often than you would think.