Well, since you’re not OP.

Most stuff in the West, including businesses, is owned by kinda rich but mostly ordinary people - the 9% after the 1%. Furthermore, people have always tried to make money, and while big businesses are a lot more efficient at it today margins are much lower to compensate. There’s no self-contained club getting a free lunch here at the public’s expense, which is what OP was implying.

A few things have gotten more expensive relative to wages. Some things are actually less expensive (clothes are a minor expense post-globalisation, a basic TV costs less than a really nice meal), other things are kinda the same. The real trend has been the split between well paying jobs (like most of Lemmy has) and poorly paying jobs widening; the rest is “everything used to be better”, which people are recorded saying all the way back through Socratese.