[md_]

I don't know. That seems oddly zero sum to me (which is why I alluded to it before). It suggests that there never are real productivity gains—in the sense that any resultant wage increases are followed by compensatory inflation.

Yet even if that were true, if we treat this purely as zero sum (and don't account for economic growth), we can still easily look at _distribution_ of wealth and income, and the trends there (as I noted elsewhere), both in the US and the developed world more broadly, are directionally consistent with less income due to labor and a greater role of capital ownership.

I don't think this inflationary argument (which may be valid) would explain why capital ownership would be an increasing share of overall wealth. I tend to think this is better explained by (crudely summarizing) Piketty's thesis that the Kuznets curve is simply wrong, that (unfortunately) war and commensurate economic upheaval is associated with a flattening of inequality, and that the long period of relative growth and stability in the west almost inevitably leads to increasing inequality and a relative weakening of the labor force.