That's the US though, and this is Denmark. European countries, and especially the Nordic countries are set up very differently with regards to income equality.

But generally, it's a hard thing to determine that exactly. How much is that 10% gain in life expectancy worth? How comparable is the life of 1970 with that in 2020? Inflation is a difficult thing to tackle.

But sure, changing wealth distribution is an option as well. Unless that happens though, somebody else has to work more to cover what another person works less.

If you look down that thread there's a first valid argument against this : breaking down the "productivity increase" by industry shows the huge growth comes from software, also if you look at how they track productivity in manufacturing it's also misleading - if you account for stuff like outsourcing the only sector that's seeing huge real growth is computer related.

And software/computer economics are a story of their own.

Productivity growth is largely overstated.