Go back 50 years, and 95% of Americans should be raising Cain. Of OECD countries, the US has ridiculous income inequality distribution and effective reductions in purchasing power over time. https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM

Anecdotally: Someone would need to make $350k/yr to live where I grew up in a not great area where there were robberies, shootings, and thumping radios all the time. Also, where my blue-collar grandparents lived requires an income of around $475k/yr to afford a 30 yr mortgage. The latter is equivalent to a salary of buying 2 houses/yr where I live now.

Going back 50 years is the mid-late part of the post-WW2 economic boom. Sure, you can have that kind of growth back but only if you're willing to go through World War 3 to get to it.

The tax cuts and other regulatory shifts allowing things like share buyback and the carried interest loophole (might be closed now) have shifted up the share of the GDP held by the top 10%. This has slowed the velocity of income, as a wealthy person doesn't spend their income the same month the way a person in lower quin-tiles does. This has caused a stagnation in middle class standards of living. This is a headwind that didn't exist 60 or 70 years ago. There was also a demographic advantage as WW2 had thinned the heard and there was a once ever level of economic prosperity. The tax code encouraged big business to invest in labor, which isn't happening now.

> income inequality distribution

Money in a capitalist society is not distributed, it is created.

The elephant in the room is the amount of money vacuumed up by the government which then disappears. Remember the Fire Aid for the LA fires victims? They raised $100m which disappeared without a trace. Then there's all that money for the California bullet train. Still no track laid.