Jonathan Blow

I feel like you're mixing inflation-adjusted and non-inflation-adjusted measures. The inflation that the Fed tries to maintain is (as far as I can tell) a legacy artifact based on the financial tools available in our system.

If you inflation-adjust everything, you see some goods getting more expensive and some getting less, and wages being ~flat. You also see income skewing towards the top. So people on the negative side of that skew experience falling standard of living.

I don't disagree with any of that. But my point is that we try very hard to steer the average of the distribution along a course of low positive inflation. Since that's an average, some people win, some people lose. Maybe income inequality means that more people lose over time,

which is interesting and something I hadn't thought of.

The income skew could go the other way over time though (closer to equality).

The other thing is, what is the meaning of ecomonic progress? It should show up as longer healthier happier lives, after adjusting for inflation (i.e. the real standard of living improves, regardless of prices).