In absolute sense (number of dollars) the pie grows and so does everybody's share in the pie. But you have to take in to account buying power as well and once you do that for lots of people their actual take drops.
But also remember that there are things they can buy now with those dollars (even if they have less of them) that before they just couldn't.
They might be making less inflation adjusted dollars than their parents did in the 70's working at the Ford plant, but how many 1970's dollars did it take to buy an iPad, or laser vision correction, flat screen HD tv, cable with 500 channels etc etc? (1)
Steve Jobs is a billionaire. I make less programming than my dad did at my age as a lowly salesman. But I have so much more. I'm OK with that.
(1) I don't mean what would the inflation adjusted price of the iPad be in 1975 or whatever. I mean all the money in the world in 1975 couldn't have bought even one seeing as how they didn't exist and all. "The Pie" is more than dollars.
