> More people working that weren’t previously, are going to feature in the bottom percentiles.

True, if they used to be counted as earning 0$, they are positively counting towards the bottom percentile no matter their new earnings. Since they are not, their low wage could contribute negatively to the bottom percentile, but the question is, how many people are affected by this. Overall, since the unemployment rate has lowered since the 1970s, there is probably a measurable effect, but those people are also affected by low (entry) wage growths on average. Additionally, in the 1970s, many households required only one earning parent, while it has become more common for both to be working (and possibly part time, thus lower wages). However, this might also be a cause of low wage growth for medium to low incomes. This is not entirely clear from the article, it is debatable how much this is relevant though.

> Nobody comes out of long term unemployment, or starts a first job in the top 1%.

You sure about that? You know how inheritance and nepotism work?

> Conversely, as economies grow and innovation thrives, people have the opportunity to elevate through the top percentiles. At the same time, people that were in the top 1% drop back as their circumstances change.

That metric is called social mobility and does not necessarily correlate with either economic growth (e.g., natural resource exploitation causes growth but generally lowers social mobility) nor innovation. And assuming if people elevated to a higher percentile under a constant number of people, someone else automatically drops from the higher percentile to the lower one and subsequently raises the average income of that percentile while doing nothing for the wage of the remaining people in the lower percentile who did not elevate. In that sense, a raise in lower percentile wages does not imply any positive effect for the majority of people, if raises are very selective.

> It’s not like there’s a room of 1%ers that are sitting around for 40 years getting richer and richer.

Yes there is, possessing large amounts of wealth lead to large incomes due to appreciation of assets (which also outpaced employment wage growth for the past 40 years). Taxation loopholes amplified this effect.

> Further, what are the wages in each percentile and how do they relate to standard of living?

The exact numbers are in the article. The standard of living is difficult to measure, since the effect of inflation is different for each percentile (due to different consumption), but generally wage growth often did not outpace inflation for the bottom 90% (avg wage growths of 0.6% yearly). Here is the section in the article:

"This upward distribution of wages over the long term has meant slow wage growth for those in the bottom 90% of the wage distribution—alternatingly slow and stagnant increases in living standards for much of the last 40 years."

The even bigger problem that income inequality is wealth inequality since wealth is providing income, is inheritable and vast societal and political powers and freedoms are linked to personal wealth.

> It’s not just as simple as rich = bad and they got there at the expense of the poor.

No, it does not mean rich=bad, but it is a bad sign for the economic situation of medium to poor income level people. However, there is an argument that this is at the expense of the poor, since the government could raise wage growth for the bottom percentile at the expense of the rich to at least even out the growth of difference in wages, however it does not, which is effectively bad for the poor. Wealth inequality would still grow regardless.