Are you better off than you were four years ago? It can be a murky picture for many

I don't think most people feel their buying power has caught up with the greedflation we saw over the last few years.

I think you are right about the perception (what most people feel) part of it. 20% cumulative inflation is going to hurt when you go to the grocery store however you slice it. On the other hand, the country's most vulnerable people are making 32% more (un inflation adjusted), i.e. beating inflation by quite a bit. So I think you are right about the feeling (particularly for someone who's closer to the top end, where wages have kept pace or fallen behind inflation.)

There's actually an important caveat even to the perception side of it -- if you poll people about how the country's economy is doing, they say it is terrible. But if you poll them about how their state is doing, they say it's beating the average by quite a bit, doing not too bad.

This, combined with any which way you measure the economy in terms of actual dollars showing that things are actually moving in the right direction, makes me lay the blame at the feet of the media more than anything. I don't think the media gives a shit about autoworkers' unions or manufacturing jobs; like I say high-end wages actually haven't kept up with inflation, which I think is most of where media people and the people important to them sit.

Statistics can be made to say anything.

So can anecdotes

I am constantly seeing news about the crunch that the lower economic classes are feeling

I believe you on the news part yes

We are inundated with evidence that younger generations can't afford housing, can't afford groceries, etc.

Yeah, it's still bad. Me saying things have ticked up by 12% isn't anywhere near enough to say that things are okay yet.

The economy may be booming per statistics, but who is it benefiting, people who need the benefit, or no?

The answer is low wage workers, i.e. exactly the people who most badly need the benefit, who unfortunately aren't in charge of the news networks that shape most people's perceptions

That's the real question and I think the dissatisfaction a lot of people feel is a marker that it's not as simple as what the numbers might show.

John Stewart did I think a fairly compelling illustration, pertaining to crime statistics, of why this type of argument isn't a good reason for rejecting quantitative analysis of what's going on. I mean the statistics can always be misleading in any one of a number of ways but I don't really agree with the idea "we can't ever look at the numbers to see what's working, because I want to stick with just asserting that everything's bad without doing any big attempt to see beyond a vague impression based on what I see in the media."

Not saying you're doing that (or by any means that things are "done" and in good shape for the average working person) -- I'm just saying that the impression you may have gotten from the media about how things are changing for the really vulnerable people in society may not be a fully accurate view of it. Of course things are still bad. My thing is just that it's important to be honest about what is and isn't working, to identify the stuff that works and be able to do more of it, instead of just going with feelings and the media presentation.