The great depression? My man we had 5% GDP growth last quarter after just seeing 15% unemployment 3 years ago. What the actual fuck are you talking about?
I think you're both talking past each other. We have it better now in many ways than our parents and grandparents did. But they had it better in other ways.
The necessities were more affordable then, as were the simplest pleasures. My mother's father was a milk man, and her mother was a gas station clerk. They had 3 kids, a house and 2 horses. But, calling the next town over was exorbitantly expensive, their siblings were drafted, their uncles and aunts had had polio, they couldn't get kiwi fruit or sushi.
My siblings can talk to anyone anywhere in the world real time for free, eat any food they can conceive of for relatively cheap, were never drafted, have an endless stream of stimulating entertainment, can read any book they like at a whim, diseases like measles are a fairy tale. But with 17 years of education and two salaries they can barely afford a house, a basket of groceries for a week costs them a day's labor, they're constantly bombarded with bad news, real or not.
Things are better for us, but the basics were easier for them. Something's not quite right, and we can all feel it, even though the measures all tell us it's better than ever. I think the real problem is that we mostly agree that things will not be better for our grandkids. Increased international tensions and drug resistant disease mean that the two main ways we are better off won't last, and on top of that, the basics are unaffordable.
I'm not even convinced the basics were cheaper or easier then, food spending as a percentage of the median income is near the lowest ever. People just had very few options and didn't know what they didn't have.
You can live the 1960's middle class lifestyle today, it's just considered lower middle to lower class. I think that's great, it means our country is becoming wealthier every year!
