It was at one point, so if you're saying it doesn't now then your "social movement" is really just goalpost moving. I'm sure the upper class does grow if you just declare that the boundaries of it are now lower. We're all millionaires if we just redefine millionaire to mean "not currently overdrafted".

> In economics, you deduct the inflation rate from growth to get the real rate of return.

Which neglects the impact of inflation on the principal. If I put $100k into the S&P in 2016 I'd have 303k now (303% value). Cumulative inflation during that period was 38.8%, so your metric says I'm at 164% rate of return. $303k today is only worth $218k in 2016 dollars though, so I'm really only up 118% in absolute value.

That's also only using the CPI, and neglecting asset inflation which impacts stock prices outside of actual value creation. More money floating around means more gets parked in index funds, regardless of whether the company is actually doing anything better.