[lucasRW]

It's fascinating to see to what lengths people will go to maintain their denial.

As someone who has been in and out, the poverty increase in Western Europe is astonishing. Whatever metrics I will show you, will meet something like "oh yeah but metrics X doesn't mean anything", but still, 20y ago buying a car was fairly standard. Going on holidays same. Let's not talk about buying a house. Nowadays, any of the above is considered as a sign of being "privileged", while it used to be middle-class before.

[inigyou]

The same in the USA. The other day I saw someone claim that people have it better now because they have more phones and TVs, and that somehow outweighs not being able to afford cars and houses.