[Yiin]

Your comment ignores that "richer" in this context mean basically breadcrumbs in comparison to all the other assets poor people can't realistically invest in. If economy in general goes up 20x and your own wealth increases 1.5x, yeah you got wealthier compared to before, but poorer compared to everything else.

[dgoldstein0]

This sounds fine to me if "your own wealth increases 1.5x" means an increase in purchasing power as opposed to the 1.5x being wiped by inflation. E.g. if housing costs quadruple you can't use that extra cash to buy a nicer house/rent a nicer apartment than before, and probably you want to save the extra money as a result of the higher housing costs rather than buying better food (assuming it didn't also rise significantly in price)

We like to hand wave and approximate costs via a single "inflation" number but smart phones are infinitely more cheap than 20 years ago - they didn't exist back then - whereas they don't solve basic needs like food & shelter. So we need better metrics.

So I have to hand wave a bit but if the economy grows such that everyone has better purchasing power, but the top 5% or 1% benefit 100x more than everyone else, I think that's a win; it'd of course be better if the new wealth was spread closer to equally, but the main thing is to make sure as much as practical that everyone is better off.

I'm not actually sure we know what the right economic policies to promote this sort of goal are.