Over the time span of five decades, what is "normal?"

The idea that anything in economics in the US stays static for five decades is laughable. Read the history of markets and economics in the US. I don't intimately know the history of markets in Canada, and quite frankly, I don't pay much attention to Canada, Canadian companies, or Canadian equities, because, well, I don't need to play in Canadian markets to make money.

The only thing that has remained constant in the last 50 years is that our currency is denominated in US dollars. That's it. What has backed the US dollar has changed within the timespan of 50 years (we've closed the gold window, probably forever).  How our markets have operated has changed within 50 years. In much less than 50 years, we've gone from having to trade through a broker who clipped you for 3%+ on every trade, to online brokerages that allow you to buy and sell stocks, bonds, futures, derivatives (options) without a broker, and in some cases, without commission. 50 years ago, only professionals could access markets as you can today. 50 years ago, modern options had just started trading in the US, with valuation made with the Black-Scholes equation, which is still done today. Today, options are a highly useful tool, with options on most high-volume stocks, and options trading is open to retail investors.

In your statement "It will probably take 50 years for things ot back to near normal; some never will" you are making three implicit assumptions that:

1) What we had prior to 2017 was "normal,." It wasn't, and the Federal Reserve taking on US debt on their balance sheet to warp the yield curve has not been done prior to 2008. The way the Federal Reserve warped the yield curve (utterly independent of politicians) since 2008 has wrecked assumptions on pension plan returns, hastened the day when Social Security cannot meet retirement demands, and changed investor assumptions about risk:return ratios, forcing investors into riskier investments. All of this happened independent of political party or president.

2) that we'll return to the pre-2017 state within 50 years. Also a dubious assumption, since much of what has transpired in the US economy and markets in the last 25 years is as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and the rise of opaque bespoke futures/swap contracts (especially on debt instruments), and this has had a far larger destabilization on our markets and in fact our economy than anything in politics.

3) and that resuming this pre-2017 state would be a good idea. Resuming a pre-2000 state would be a good idea, but resuming what we saw between 1998 and 2007 would not be a good idea.

At this point, as a mostly lurker here on Market Talk, I have to say this: I have never in my life seen so many adult men act like female teenage drama queens in my life. 

Risk is part of farming and even if you're not farming (as I'm no longer farming), trading and investing in markets has risk. All of life is risk. 

No one can predict what will happen. Sometimes, risk leaps out and smacks you where you never saw it coming. For example, going into 2008, we were invested in "auction rate securities" to the tune of a low six-digit number. The risk in ARS turned out to be that the liquidity in the auction-rate securities market was fabricated by the investment banks - it was not actual a market made of actual ARS investors or traders. We lost some money, I learned a lesson about liquidity and market risk, and we moved on.

Another example of "anything can happen" - including your market completely disappearing: On May 6, 2010, there was a huge drop in the DJIA, and in particular in Proctor & Gamble stock price. This was what is now called the "Flash Crash." I was at gunsmithing school at the time, and I had a written final exam I had to go to, but in the few minutes after lunch and before my test, I placed a "back up the truck!" buy for PG stock that was selling at least 25% down, and on my StreetSmart terminal, it was showing gaps in the tape where the bids all fled, and the bid prices just dropped like a stone. So I put in a market buy for a couple thousand shares, knowing full well that P&G (as a profitable company) was going exactly nowhere. I saw the trade fill, and I left for my test, thinking I was finally acting on an opportunity I'd never been able to do previously.

Later that night, I got a phone call from Schwab, telling me that my trade had been reversed. Man, I was furious. I played by the rules, and I even provided a bid when "professional" bids were pulling in their horns.  Instead, I used options to capture the volatility of that day and make some profit. That was my plan after 2008 on how to respond if the market would not act as I wanted. I could have gotten mad and ranted and raved, or I could just execute "Plan B" and still make some money. I chose Plan B.

After 2008, I ceased worrying about "what will happen?" and assumed that some version of "anything can happen" is the rule of the day, and rather than worrying about "what if XYZ happens?" I now ponder "what is my plan when XYZ happens?" Most every day I'm active in markets, I'm learning something. 

Politicians are mostly noise in the markets, and today the equity market indexes today are higher than they were on April 2, 2025. The whole round-trip took a little more than a month. That's a whole lot less of an impact than what the Federal Reserve did to bond investors since 2008. That's a whole lot less than what 2008 and Obama did to GMAC investors. All you had to do in the last six weeks ... nothing. Which is what most retail investors did. 

Go look at how much CSCO went down, and then back up, in the last few weeks. Today, CSCO is within two bits of where it was on April 2, 2025. I could have whined and cried about a hefty six-figure paper loss a few weeks ago, but you didn't hear me whinge one bit.

So yes, this is a brilliant learning opportunity for people. I suggest people look at the tape(s), options markets, and learn from the data.