Repeatedly telling us we are doing well when homelessness has hit a record high, credit usage is through the roof, housing is unaffordable to a majority of the population, and income inequality is the largest ever seen is a sure fire way to sow further distrust in government.

We are not doing well.

Being ignorant of your surroundings and financial status does not mean everything is ok. This is literally the head in sand approach. A toddler should understand this.

Imagine my surprise that silence7 and their perpetual positivity posts something full of bullshit.

Things are better for the rich, but they've never been bad. The poor are increasing their debt to try and find happiness through purchase. Once again, silence7 can't see the forest for their trees.

There are four big things that are making life shitty for those who find themselves in the lower class.

1: High housing costs. This could be resolved with zoning reform and more public investments in housing. Liberals would work to resolve these issues while conservatives will be their NIMBY selves and refuse to support public housing

2: High price of goods. Compounded by an internal labor shortage that could be alleviated by not demonizing immigrants and a series of wars that have put a strain on global trade, as well as the massive supply chain disruptions brought about by the pandemic, inflation was a given. It will take time to resolve itself, but it could be resolved more quickly if Congress could investigate corporations making record profits. That won’t happen when Republicans have as much sway as they do.

3. Minimum wage being stagnant. The only places have raised minimum wage have been in blue parts of the country. Republicans will always refuse to raise minimum wage. They will always support businesses paying the least amount of money possible.

4. Old-fashioned racism and sexism. Guess which party is working to revoke and has already revoked protections that prevent biased hiring and equal opportunity?

Things won’t get better unless Republicans have zero say in how the country is governed. A 20 seat lead in the house and a 2 seat lead in the Senate is not enough when Congress is full of Manchins and Sinemas. An overwhelming blue wave could and would produce real change in the country, but it won’t happen unless we mobilize early and fight for our rights.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In the short run, of course, the pandemic had severe economic and social effects, in many ways wider and deeper than almost anyone expected.

The psychological toll is hard to measure, but the weakening of social ties contributed to a range of negative trends, including a surge in violent crime.

It was easy to imagine that the pandemic experience would leave long-term scars — that long Covid and early retirements would leave us with a permanently reduced labor force, that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment, that the crime surge heralded a sustained breakdown in public order.

By now, anyone who writes about the economic situation has become accustomed to mail and social media posts (which often begin, “You moron”) insisting that the official statistics on low unemployment and inflation are misleading if not outright lies.

This is an area in which public perceptions have long been notoriously at odds with reality, with people telling pollsters that crime is rising even when it’s falling rapidly.

As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.

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