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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9798114" data-attributes="member: 177">During my lifetime, no, it has not.  Real wages have remained basically flat for most of the American population since about 1979.  That's not "more than compensating" - that's treading water.Cite: Real Wage Trends, 1979-2019, Congressional Research Service.[URL unfurl="true"]https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45090.pdf[/URL]Discussion of public policy gets us into politics.  So, I will limit myself to noting that "mitigating" inequality is patching over the fact that the inequalities exist, rather than correcting the actual inequality.The Congressional Budget office says otherwise.  From 1979 to 2019, real (meaning inflation-adjusted) wages grew41.3% for the 90th percentile, top earners8.8% for the 50th percentile6.5% for the 10th percentile.That bottom is so low that, for some groups (for example - men) real wages have fallen by 3% for the 50th percentile, and dropped 7.7% for the 10th percentile. Again, not really true, as above - the person in the middle or below isn't having an easier time putting bread on the table, getting kids educated, or buying a home.  Especially when you realize that wages do not equal wealth - increased wages in that top 10% may be getting eaten by other costs - like education debt - leaving them with less actual wealth increase overall than wages might imply.Even if it were a simple one-for-one trade, that would be just shuffling around who gets to be poor from one decade to the next.  If that's all you are going to do with technological advancement, why bother advancing?But, in reality, it isn't a one-for-one trade.  We are not in some zero-sum game among the wage earners!  In 1979, the US population was about 219 million, and the GDP was about $2.6 trillion dollars.In 2023, the US population was about 343 million, and the GDP was abotu $27 trillion dollars.Population increased by about 56%.  Real wages increased about 6-8% for the bulk of them.  But the overall wealth produced each year increased by a factor of 10.That wealth is going somewhere - but it isn't to the wage earners who are technically producing that wealth - or real wages could have risen far more than 6% to 8%.  It is getting siphoned out of the wage system entirely.</blockquote>

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