I'd be interested to see where you get your numbers. To my eye, wages for the median worker haven't gone much of anywhere in 20-30 years, while asset prices and other costs have gone up. I'd be happy for clearer vision.
I'm clearly out-of-date on data, as my assertion is more in line with your chart from e.g. 1990 to about 2015.
That said, if I've understood what we're looking at - wages in terms of buying power as measured by CPI, I'd like to admit some other data to the conversation:
1. The series I'm looking at (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB) has productivity doubling over the same time that wages went up 10%. You can argue that productivity is going down now, but the gains up to this point appear to have gone somewhere besides wages.
2. As an example, the rent component of CPI has roughly quadrupled over the same time period, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA ... which I take to mean that less is being spent on other components of the CPI. That's a factor in what's available for present needs.
3. As a percent of the population, there are about as many workers as there were in 1980, down 2-5% from the 90s and 2000s. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO)
With wages up 10%, productivity up 100% and rent up 400%, it seems to me that there's a tipping of the balance toward the future rather than the present.
