Your "precise statement" was a manipulative statement, for which both the question and answer are meaningless. Just because you state a question does not mean y

Your "precise statement" was a manipulative statement, for which both the question and answer are meaningless. Just because you state a question does not mean you get to dictate the discussion. Growth of income is one thing, but the far more important thing is wealth inequality, and the U.S. has one of the worse in the world, especially for a developed nation. As wealth inequality goes up, more people die, more people suffer, etc. Here's the equivalent of your statement: If I throw a penny into a fountain at the mall, has the wealth of the fountain gone up or down? Here's more realistic and relevant discussions on the relative gross of the lower classes: * https://www.cbpp.org/research/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality https://www.cbpp.org/research/a-guide-to-statistics-on-histo... * https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a... * https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/income-inequality-increased.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/income-inequa...