> Where actually went all the productivity gains of the last decades?

Productivity gains by design go primarily to the investor class, the owners of corporations. There’s no mechanism for those gains to go to laborers. If a company performs 10x better, you don’t get a 10x raise, but the equity might be 10x higher.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

In addition to that, the monetary policy of money printing has severely diluted the dollar since 1971, with an extreme surge that happened during COVID. This policy effectively reduces the wealth of the labor class and increases the wealth of the investor class. If there’s 100x more dollars and the same amount of Tesla stock or houses, the Tesla stock and houses are suddenly worth way more in dollar terms and whoever only had dollars has effectively 1/100 of what they used to have. So any productivity gains the labor class received have been getting leeched away for decades.

On top of this, the investor class has the entire system rigged in their favor. They're protected from their bad investments like in the 2008 financial crisis or the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco. The tax code allows many of the investor class to get away with paying little to no taxes. There are restrictions on building new housing because the current owners don't want to see their homes devalued. It's basically easier to make money the more money you already have.

Now, these aren't really strict "classes." If you own a retirement fund, you are at least partially in the investor class. But there are many people who don't own any assets, and because of this dynamic where it's easier to make money the more you already have, the people at the top of this pyramid scheme are always extracting the most out of any gains that society achieves.