Living standards have absolutely been rising for just about everyone, and continue to do so - for example in terms of income growth[0]. People in all income tiers have seen their incomes grow consistently, albeit not equally.
That's the crux. It's the same in almost all developed countries, we all have been getting more income, but most of us are not getting richer. The widening of the scissors is becoming more and more obvious, because even middle incomes suffered hard during the cost of living crisis, and continue to suffer.
This is mostly because of housing prices, not unequal distribution of income gains. If you gave everyone more money house prices would just go up more, because houses are being built far slower than the population is increasing.
Rising inequality increases asset prices as the wealthy look for more places to invest and extract rent. Gary's economics on YouTube explains this very well, with credentials.
The rich are demonstrably less discerning of every marginal dollar. They will pay more for the exact same asset than someone who is only middle class or lower. This means the rich own everything, and therefore just keep getting richer, because the US abandoned any form of redistribution.
For example, Kennebunkport is a very fucking wealthy town in Maine, including having a large vacation property for the Bush family. My father's entire business as a half retired contractor is predicated on rich, gay, techbros moving here from California and just throwing money at him until stuff is built. He can literally double a project price overnight, and they give him a bottle of $200 wine for it. The same is true of many businesses in the area.
This is one of the reasons nobody builds lower class housing. Profit is usually percentage based. Why would you build ten starter homes, and work your ass off pleasing a bunch of poor people who have to be careful with their money because even getting a loan nowadays is stupidly difficult, when you can just build a couple mcmansions for the same output effort, where a bunch of rich fucks will come in and buy it in cash, for above market price, no questions asked, so you don't even have to build it well because the rich people are buying vibes and dreams, not an actual house, and they will happily eat a much higher profit margin per product.
Large income disparity means that people stop serving the lower market, because Wall St won't invest in something that doesn't make line go up as much as just treating rich people as idiots that will pay stupid prices for things.
This "makes sense", or at least is obvious when you remember that at a certain point of wealth, you have more money than you know what to do with, and you still cannot buy even a single extra second of time with infinite money, so spending time being discerning with your purchases is explicitly a waste.
Being "gay" has nothing to do with it, you are simply exacerbating homophobia by such an ignorant comment. MOST rich tech bros are heterosexual, just SOME are gay.
The people with "too much" (everyone with more than the person saying the phrase "too much", presumably) aside, giving everyone more money will mean house prices will be bidded up and rents will rise, because there is an oversupply of people vs accommodation.
Think about it now, if you are bidding on a house and the other bidders are multi millionaires and billionaires, who do you think will win the bid? House prices are going up because those with a lot of cash are bidding them up. Many of those are being converted to rentals. This is why inequality matters.
Your link does not support your claim or in fact mention living standards at all. The fact, widely evident to every American not in the upper 20%, is that your paycheck is bigger, your house is worse, your food is worse, your healthcare is worse, your life expectancy is worse, your children’s education is worse, you have less free time, you can take fewer vacations, and you can buy less of what you want.
The US was #1 on the Human Development Index in 1995, and is now #20, sandwiched between Slovenia and the UAE.
What your link does show is widening income inequality.
According to Wiktionary, the standard of living is "the level of income, comforts and services available to an individual, community or society."
Levels of income have risen. Comforts and services available are not as simple to measure as income, but consumption (a decent proxy) is also trending upwards.
Your link shows inequality growing. There is income inequality and wealth inequality and both have been growing. Incomes rise while everything around you gets much more expensive, especially assets.
That's the crux. It's the same in almost all developed countries, we all have been getting more income, but most of us are not getting richer. The widening of the scissors is becoming more and more obvious, because even middle incomes suffered hard during the cost of living crisis, and continue to suffer.