However, if you start your comparison with 1932 instead, market average value has increased from about $50 into about $26000, or 520 times return over investment over 86 years, a dramatically better result! Illustrating the second most basic rule of investing: buy low.
Consider, if you'd invested in a market fund in 1999 instead, you'd have turned $156,000 into about $253,000 (inflation adjusted) or a gain of about (uh-oh) much less than 2x over almost 20 years. In other words, ROI of much less than 10% per year. Investments not so good in this century, even with the huge stock market run-up of the past few years!
Just for comparison, a plumber in the US seems to have made about $1.25 an hour or so in 1928, compared to about $27 an hour in 1998 (according to BLS). In constant dollars, wages seem to have less than doubled. So, long term, investors did much, much better than workers, that's for sure!
And since 1997 plumbers have just kept up with inflation, according to BLS (going from $17.50 an hour in 1997 to to $27 an hour in 2019 -- equivalent to $17.50 in 1997 dollars).
So, big news. Invested capital has increased much faster than compensation of labor in the US, both long and short term. Well, if you think plumbers are typical.
Obviously in the past 20 years, hacker pay has done much better than plumber pay! In fact, hacker pay has increased much more than return on investment! Does this mean, capitalists should fight for lower hacker wages? Or does it mean, we have met the enemy and it is us? Only time will tell...