Thanks for the interesting data point regarding purchasing power. I think we would agree that you’d expect purchasing power to increase when efficiency increases, rather than staying constant. And as efficiency (as measured by value i.e. usefulness/efficiency of capital) has continued to increase while purchasing power stayed mostly stagnant since 1971, those earning their income from labour are drawing the short stick, while those earning their income from capital gains (ie efficiency of productive stuff) are doing much better.

If I misinterpreted your comment (I think we agree), I welcome your explanation of why purchasing power stays the same when efficiency increases since 1971.

> why purchasing power stays the same when efficiency increases since 1971.

i would expect that purchasing power remains consistent for people doing the same work.

It's true that capital gains is captured by those who own the capital - but those who do own such capital had to take capital risk to obtain such gains.

Labour income (aka, wage income) increased if the labour changed to be more efficient without said use of capital - for example, programmers' income is very high. But for someone whose labour output hasn't changed from the 70's, is it expected that their purchasing power somehow increases (compared to someone else's)?

I appreciate your argument that most labour have not increased in value - I guess this metric would be called “labour productivity”. If you have the graph you linked with a longer timeline - it starts just before 1970s - thatd be interesting.

I still see graphs as these https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/im... as clearly saying labour compensation correlated with advances in technology until 1971, when there was a dramatic shift, and that this is also the time when supply of $ was put in the hands of central bankers rather than any real and external asset.