How we "live"

As often argued by capitalists, economic improvement of a society requires a section of it to lead the quest; that section who can channel accumulated capital, has risk appetite and / or possess requisite skills. Consequently, such section of society garners a more-than-proportionate share of resultant wealth creation in a capitalist society. What about the society at large...often asks the left. Indicators as avg GDP growth etc. are usually thrown as a reply. However, there is always a genuine case to be made that these metrics fail to explain if such wealth creation has been concentrated in only a small section of the society or has flown through to the masses at large. Not to suggest that income distribution be exactly equal (that would be the theoretical leftist argument, which in practice means no income improvement), rather that most sections of society should benefit to a respectable extent, of which some would be above average, others would be lower but not significantly and should score a healthy improvement.

Long story short, we would have to gauge the improvement in standard of living for various states by looking at several metrics at a disaggregated level, and not as an average.