[blunte]

Cost of living increases almost every year. Value of money decreases somewhat from inflation. Worker salaries have not been increasing on pace with inflation, much less cost of living increases, since oh... the Reagan years.

What has increased dramatically since the Reagan years is executive pay and wealth of top 1%. What has also increased is consumer debt, particularly during the Clinton years. At the same time that consumer debt was increasing, interest rates (for consumers, not the prime rate) were climbing quickly to their legal limits. Also, those legal limits were occasionally being increased.

Yes consumers are consuming more stuff, and yes most of that extra consumption is rather wasteful and provides decreasing benefit in terms of quality of life or happiness. But the rate of some consumption is going down. Modern computers, TVs, and even mobile phones now can do so much more than most users need that there is less and less reason to upgrade frequently. Buying a new car every couple of years is a great way to waste money. But generally speaking, "the people" aren't living larger than they did 20-30 years ago.

There's very little doubt that the vast majority of the value of the increased productivity output has gone to the top 1%. That's factually visible even without exposing the many sources of hidden offshore wealth that is sometimes estimated to be multiple times larger than the known wealth.