[barry-cotter]

Forty four percent of the workforce earns less than two thirds of the median male wage is devastating? There are hundreds of millions of people who live on less than $2 a day. The US has the highest average household consumption in the world by a very large margin. If you think US living standards are inadequate the rest of the world is much, much worse.

[Tarsul]

if the US starts to orient itself after third world countries, then you're correct: It's really going good. It's all relative. I thought the US would rather compare itself to Europe, Japan, etc. but okay.

[finiteseries]

To be clear, when using something like household consumption expenditure, Japan and the subset of European countries that match up end up looking quite “poor” and have been for some time, with the gap IIRC increasing.

That e.g. personal health costs are included in there obviously, uh, muddies things.