Here's the thing: People rarely have any objective view on how good or bad they're actually off.
Tell a person long enough that it was better two months ago and they will believe it. Give that person a reason why and they will parrot it.
In Germany, an entire nation started to believe their life sucked when the jews were around and it improved when they were gone and they were in a state of war for years.
Today, despite crime rates being almost non-existent compared to 20 years ago, people still feel less safe and as if crime was as rampart as in the 50's.
In the US, people blatantly ignored how much Obama had saved their ass from Bush's final fuckup, to quickly noticing how much better things were about a month after Trump was in office, praising the graphs and ignoring the time axis entirely.
My guess, people are overall worse off than before. A few are objectively better off, any maybe even a handful of those had no perspective 5 years ago, but can waste away their body in a mine today, so they don't have the strength to think about that nonsense. But dozens times more people are worse of for any one of those.
Then, right this second, people might see a slightly higher number somewhere in their financials due to some cuts or deductions. Yet, with the slashing of gov. services that will follow to balance that budget, they will quickly come to a point where they suddenly have to spend more than before and more than they initially saved. Yet, they might not even notice that and actually feel better, with less.
All that still isn't taking into account the short and longterm fallout that will come out of the US alienating most of the world, having literal mental retards leading the department of education and people who couldn't spell science with a dictionary leading whatever department is meant to keep the environment from dying.
tl;dr: Humans suck at evaluating anything.
Tell a person long enough that it was better two months ago and they will believe it. Give that person a reason why and they will parrot it.
In Germany, an entire nation started to believe their life sucked when the jews were around and it improved when they were gone and they were in a state of war for years.
Today, despite crime rates being almost non-existent compared to 20 years ago, people still feel less safe and as if crime was as rampart as in the 50's.
In the US, people blatantly ignored how much Obama had saved their ass from Bush's final fuckup, to quickly noticing how much better things were about a month after Trump was in office, praising the graphs and ignoring the time axis entirely.
My guess, people are overall worse off than before. A few are objectively better off, any maybe even a handful of those had no perspective 5 years ago, but can waste away their body in a mine today, so they don't have the strength to think about that nonsense. But dozens times more people are worse of for any one of those.
Then, right this second, people might see a slightly higher number somewhere in their financials due to some cuts or deductions. Yet, with the slashing of gov. services that will follow to balance that budget, they will quickly come to a point where they suddenly have to spend more than before and more than they initially saved. Yet, they might not even notice that and actually feel better, with less.
All that still isn't taking into account the short and longterm fallout that will come out of the US alienating most of the world, having literal mental retards leading the department of education and people who couldn't spell science with a dictionary leading whatever department is meant to keep the environment from dying.
tl;dr: Humans suck at evaluating anything.
