The increased price of steem increases the value of the daily reward pool. But it also draws more people to Steemit. So I think more people will be able to earn a little money but the actual amount earned over a given amount of time, per person, might actually stay about the same, all things being equal.

I manually curate every day. But I am finding more and more people I like and follow here. The math only allows a certain number of votes a day because each vote decreases voting power a little. So I am voting more each day, because I find more good posts to vote, but my power has gone from the 80s % to the 70s to the 60s and now to the 50s because I find more than 40 posts and comments a day to up vote. If I were voting with 100% power I would see each vote have more effect now on each post I vote for. But since I vote more, I actually see about the same amount of effect even though my power is less, because the amount of the reward pool my SP allows me to allocate is worth more now due to the higher steem price. Or something like that! :-)

To summarize, the reward pool is worth more, but the number of people it is divided among is higher. So maybe each person will still see about the same payouts, except for the very popular people. They will continue to get higher payouts because people know their vote for them will get a curation reward. Further, newbies with low SP can only get any curation reward at all if they vote on high paying posts, so the minnows tend to vote the trending articles too, just to have an effect here.

OK, I am done! Sorry for the ramble :-)