Could you expand on what you mean here? Do you mean, that for every day, "today does not look like a good time to start", or do you mean that on this May 4th, 2016, you expect that investments made today, will seem like a bad investment on May 4th 2066? (Or whatever is considered a "long term graph")?
Also if you look at long term history you'd conclude something similar : the US has had a very long (if somewhat disappointing) economic recovery since 2008. We're due a bust.
And finally, the playbook from earlier recessions does appear to be unfolding : manufacturing production has dropped by a lot, and services has flatlined. This is very much like the start of previous recessions. Next up is bad loans to commodity producers (ie. miners) and manufacturers actually going bad (meaning banks declaring losses), then a few defaults, then panic, then recovery.
I would expect index investments made today will seem like bad investments in 10 years. I would never dream of predicting 50 years out. To be fair, I would have told you the same a year ago (not about the recession playbook, but probably everything else listed in this post).
High based on what metric? When I look at this graph, it looks like it's been relatively flat for the last half decade: http://i.imgur.com/3gIwjbh.png
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EGSPC+Interactive#{"ran...
It's up 53% over that 5 year period, for a CAGR of 8.9% (excluding dividends).
Truth is that the starting time of an investment determines your results far more than whether you pick active or passive investing.
Word of warning: on a long term graph, today does not look like a good time to start investing, in fact looks like a really good time to sell and stay on the sidelines. This is not affected by passive vs active investing.