Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

According to Rachel Maddow in the clip above — and according to the chart from Jed Lewison at DailyKos below — the stock market certainly is doing well under the socialist jackboot of Pres. Obama’s anti-capitalist policies.

As Maddow said, referring to the chart on her MSNBC show last week, if you focus on the line going up after the inauguration of Pres. Obama, “Regardless of how you personally are doing, this part of our nation is living large. Despite what you hear about the economy at home, the stock market is in tall cotton.”

Maddow pointed to this article from McClatchy to explain why middle-class families and small businesses find themselves relegated to the short cotton while mega-corporations and the stock marketeers are availing themselves of the tall rows:

Corporate profits grew 36.8 percent in 2010, the biggest gain since 1950, according to Friday’s latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. No sign could be more clear that U.S. companies see the so-called Great Recession in the rearview mirror.

The strong profits, however, mask the continued difficult terrain for businesses. Yes, profits are high, but that doesn’t mean business is strong…

[Analysts] think several factors are behind the strong profits, which seem to contradict other indicators of an underperforming economy, especially the 8.9 percent unemployment rate. These factors include record low interest rates since late 2008, muted demand for borrowing by companies and a surge in productivity that has allowed companies to do more with the same number of workers or fewer.

Profits aren’t rising solely because companies are making and selling more widgets to keep up with customer demand, which would be the case in a healthy, booming economy. Instead, they’re more profitable because it now costs less to make the same widget, often because there are far fewer workers needed to make it…

That’s not to say things aren’t improving. Over the past six months, the economy has gathered steam, and demand is picking up — from factory orders for parts needed in assembly, to a rebound in automotive manufacturing, to consumer purchases rising.

That’s a healthy growth trend, but the bigger part of the story remains workforce reductions, technological advances, low lending costs and minimal borrowing. All have combined to give companies unusual control over their balance sheets, and thus their profits.

It could be said that this chart proves that if Barack Obama really were pushing a socialist agenda, he’d be doing a terrible job at it.

But what it really shows — as if we needed more proof — is that trickle-down economics do not work. George Bush Sr. called it “Voodoo economics,” but, in practice, the supply-side theory is not even as effective as Voodoo. What we have seen since the Reagan era, over and over, is that when the rich get richer, they hold onto their money or invest it overseas, not in America.

The chart should also serve as more evidence that it is dastardly for Republicans to insist on balancing the federal budget by cutting programs for children, the sick and the elderly while giving American plutocrats a free ride by extending the Bush tax cuts for the uber-wealthy.

Update: Here’s the link to original chart and here’s the data source. Maddow described the chart as “smoothed out a lot.” There was a spike to 13,930 in October 2007 that is not reflected here. Over the next year or so, the market declined by about 5,000 points to 8,829.04 on Nov. 1, 2008.

Connect: