[mjamesaustin]

Yes, and they've optimized our economy in a wonderful place where the average worker today makes less than 50 years ago.

But don't worry – it's not important that poverty, hunger, sickness, and many other social ills still exist even though we have far more wealth than required to solve those problems.

Obviously the answer is that ending poverty is just an inefficient solution the Great Minds have concluded, and our money is better spent elsewhere. Sorry Timmy, but you should be proud as you're dying of cancer because a billionaire's next yacht will surely solve more problems (or at least generate more money) than your life is worth.

[laser]

No, you're simply misinformed likely due to widespread propaganda online. In the US the average worker makes about 10% more than 50 years ago. [1] And this is despite a massive outsourcing headwind of globalization that has made non-Americans vastly richer on average and pulled billions out of poverty globally. [2]

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/wld/wor...

[paulryanrogers]

Considering gains in productivity [0] and rising costs for housing, healthcare, and food, I'd say average workers have been exploited.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1o5u4d1/oc...

[oatmeal1]

Inflation needs error bars. A small bias in how inflation is measured, over a long period of time, would create substantially different results. I personally don't doubt that we have more buying power, but we have basically just created better addictions that we waste that buying power on.