[mdorazio]

I'm confused by how your desired situation is compatible with a capitalist market. If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich anymore. Unless we're talking about a post-scarcity or post-labor economy, which isn't really useful to guiding economic policy today.

[jfaucett]

> If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich anymore.

Rich and poor are always tied to purchasing power which itself is tied to productivity, efficiency and innovation within an economy. (as well as the traditional price theory, demand/supply, etc.) I used rich/poor because those are simple terms everyone can understand more easily than PPP or Genuine Savings, etc. (however, wealth is a better term I should have probably used in its stead)

For instance, the phone you can buy and hold in your hand today for $200 is vastly more powerful than the most expensive IBM mainframes of just 20 years ago - A CEO of those times could not even afford the simple phone many refuges have in their Rucksacks these days. Are they rich because of this? It depends on what particular measurement for "rich" you are using.

To answer your question. Yes, ceteris peribus if everyone gets more money instantly (i.e. money supply increases) all prices will rise accordingly and there is a net null effect, however, and this is key, if that increase is in wealth i.e. capital assets, productivity, everyone is better off and prices will increase according to traditional demand-pull.

[mdorazio]

Great, wealth is a much better term to be using here, but you're still hand-waving away the method by which increasing capital assets, productivity, etc. would happen under a capitalist free market. The traditional way you increase these things for everyone is by collective bargaining (unions) or collective ownership of businesses (employee-owned companies). These two things are pretty much directly at odds with American-style capitalism.

Do you think we should be aiming for something more akin to the labor situation in Europe, or do you think there's a different method by which we could create wealth for everyone more equally than today?

[bluGill]

Even the poorest people in the US have electric lights that are brighter than anything even the richest of 200 years ago could have. The cost to run those lights is also significantly less as well. That is just one example of the types of things that improve life for everybody.

So long as everybody is improving their life, and can see things improving (or say they are not interested in the improvements - like the Amish)

[chongli]

Poor/working class today have electric lights, yes, but they also have automated scheduling systems telling them when to work, night shifts and multiple jobs, obesity and malnutrition (instead of starvation and malnutrition), dental cavities, alcoholism, opioid addiction...

The poor today have different problems than medieval peasants. Their lives are better in a lot of ways but not all ways. Medieval peasants had a much better idea of their place in the world, their relationships to their friends, family, community, and church. Today so many people are isolated and dying of depression.