John,

I appreciate the care in your response, thanks! But, I feel like we are agreeing, and we are agreeing with Dalio too. I said median rather than average since I wanted my statistic to include a broader swath of the population. Still you are right, it is theoretically possible for the median to rise and still leave behind some groups. But the article you quote refutes this in saying that the gains post WWII were "broadly shared." Elsewhere I have seen graphs showing measures of inequality (I think the ratio of the top fifth to the bottom fifth) went down until the the 1970s, then it started back up.

I think all of this is consistent with Dalio's thesis that in the beginning of a cycle everyone benefits (which I interpret to mean, most everyone... maybe he means 80+% or 90+%??) , and later it becomes very stratified with only a few benefitting. right? And it is consistent with the paper you cite too.

In any case, my PhD is in AI, and I have founded two robotics companies... so I see the writing on the wall, we need some post-employment method of distributing funds otherwise we are going to have some very unhappy and very poor massive subgroups... Personally I dream of something more "meaning-giving" than basic income, but still the direction of your thinking seems correct to me.