[gone35]

[That increasing overall production doesn't necessarily do anything for the lot of the median person] is contradictory to the past 100 years of civilization.

Perhaps, but if you consider the past 35 years in the US (and Britain, to a lesser extent), that's exactly what's been happening. It is quite counterintuitive and hard to fathom, but in fact median incomes and wages today have not risen at all since 1980 (!) despite all these years of GDP growth and a steady rise in productivity, which has tripled since then and previously moved in tandem with [1,2].

Put in another way: simplistically, if US household income had risen along with productivity (as it did ever since modern records began), today the national median wage ought to be around $80,000 and median family income around $150,000 (in today's dollars!); and the still ongoing personal computer revolution would have seen people's wages nearly double within a decade.

Sounds preposterous, but that is what robust economic growth typically looks like.

[1] http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/productivity-and-rea...

[2] http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/real-income-growth-f...