Income inequality is up and disposable income is down, but neither of these are measures of living standard. Access to information, quality of life, expected lifetime, food security, leisure time and spending, etc are all improved.
Can I get some further reading or a citation on that? That really runs counter to every thing I've been hearing. Insofar as I can tell, my prospects as a "millennial" are shit. I've definitely heard that expected lifetime is going down. I'm also not sure how "spending" is going up if "disposable income" is down. Especially when there was something posted the other day about how folks are earning less than their parents.
As an anecdote: when my father was my age, he was married, worked three jobs, had to build his own house, didn't have A/C, did his own car repairs, didn't have consistent heat, didn't have a TV. Maybe he made more money on paper, but I feel I definitely have it easier.
For whom exactly? Insofar as I'm aware, the current situation seems to be the exact opposite. Things are trending downward.