> The motivation would be to maintain one’s station, whether that station were impoverished or rich. Most of America isn’t in poverty, yet still works hard to try and achieve higher status, greater luxury, etc.

Poverty is relative, but I do recognise the distinction between needs (survival) and wants.

> Is this the root cause behind productivity gains not going to workers for the last five decades? Genuine question, cause that’s the main issue I see.

Yes! Absolutely. I believe it's the primary mechanism that's behind the enormous gains in efficiency going to the rich rather than the general population.

It's a deep subject, but to try and summarise as best I can: Every decade in the USA the banking system and government combined creates double the currency out of thin air (in the form of loans) and charge interest on it [https://imgur.com/a/1ljSLgA]. The deal is that they must destroy the money when it's repaid. By keeping interest rates below the natural free market rate, they both monopolise lending and incentivise borrowing and so the total borrowed just keeps increasing over time. They can still profit enormously because the money they lend is not really theirs and was created out of nothing as the "loan" was made.

This has been going on for decades and sped up in 1971 (wtfhappenedin1971.com) when the dollar was "temporarily" non-redeemable for gold (because of all the money printing they had already done)

Each time the money supply doubles, the value of the monetary unit halves. It works out at about 7% a year over the last 100 years.

It's no coincidence that that's the approximate rate of increase in real-estate prices over the decades. It's not real-estate going up in value - it's that the dollar is falling in value.

Consummables are falling in value at around 5% a year (due to the productivity gains), giving a net price increase of 7-5 = 2%. So if you are getting an annual nominal pay rise of say 2%, you're actually getting a pay cut of 7-2=5%, but "luckily" consumables are falling in value at the same rate, so you can still afford food, a car etc. What you can no longer afford are the things that haven't gone down in value - hard assets like real estate, gold etc. - things that have a relatively constant supply/demand and therefore, value. These are the things that the bankers and their friends buy with all the interest they are collecting.

By giving the entire world a stealth 5% pay cut each year, the banks and those closest to the money printers are stealing away all the productivity gains. Look up the Cantillon Effect. It's a kind of pyramid scheme where the bankers take the main gains, but then reward those who support the system by taking out loans with a cut. Once you realise that the money is devalued at a faster rate than the interest, you can see that you're paying back less economic value than you borrowed, even with interest. The people who really suffer are the savers who have their savings stolen essentially at a rate of 7% minus whatever interest rate they are getting. Obviously pensions are affected too. Anything that's denominated in dollars, pounds, euros etc.

It all started with banks lending out the gold you'd given them to look after, behind your back. A fraud that has grown to monumental proportions. They are now collecting interest on all the money in the world, and they printed it all out of thin air.