New wealth can be created, but it seems like at least since the 90s, we've been in a pattern where the people with most of the wealth would prefer a sort of stasis, because that way their chunk of the pie doesn't get smaller by comparison to the rest. They'd rather have slow, managed, inflation-swallowed "growth" than the ups and downs that accompany leaps forward but sometimes change who is on top.

So we've gone from "everyone will have flying cars" to "the rest of you will eat bugs." Castles and jets for the few; austerity for the rest of us. Which certainly isn't new, but it's not what was promised, or what seemed possible within living memory.