Likewise, the number of countries/populations calling themselves democratic has grown, but the global democratic index has declined and mature democracies are substantially threatened.
That’s not a paradox. Inequality is a completely separate measurement that emerges anywhere there are extremely wealthy people despite the average population doing really well.
A high density of tech billionaires in California doesn’t prevent a regular family in Tennessee from putting food on their table. Poverty rates would.
I put this in the case of 'eh, maybe'. Not a definite yes or no. The particular place where this breaks is asset ownership and other forms of VC fuckery that start raising the costs for everything around the country.
They do this by a number of mechanisms, including lobbying to reduce or end programs like SNAP, gutting labor protections, and various other political means; and more generally by making money in zero-sum ways (financialization of the economy means that people are getting rich by skimming off money from other people, rather than by creating value themselves).