It's not a foregone conclusion that gains from increased productivity go to the worker. Suppose someone builds an extremely advanced machine where all the worke

It's not a foregone conclusion that gains from increased productivity go to the worker. Suppose someone builds an extremely advanced machine where all the worker needs to do is push a button, where in the past they needed ten years of training to do the same work with hand tools and the skills to do it were rarer, even if they produced less. The gains would rationally go to the person selling the machine. In fact this is what has happened and why Wintel etc sucked up a lot of the gains, creating so many of those rich people these kinds of articles complain about. Also this whole statistical view of people is flawed. For the kinds of jobs where increased productivity should go to the worker, perhaps it did, and we call them rich now and move the goalpost to exclude them. As for cultural changes, if you compare to other countries there are clear differences today. I think of government participation broadly as a "theraputic" institution. You contribute to something larger to make yourself feel good. This could mean building things or cleaning up trash etc. In the US however, for the last few generations this disproportionately means vote/protest for social progress agendas (in the eyes of the citizen), such as to impose "fairness" or lifestyle change. People's civic energy is basically channeled into just drama as the fight goes back and forth producing nothing.