I don't really understand the relevance of what you've said except that you think I'm off the mark.

You really don't think the US has had a steep decline over the last 2 decades in quality of life for most people? I'm not talking about people with six figure tech jobs in big cities.

ah I guess I should have been clearer: I am friends with a lot of people - sure it's pretty bad in some states, but america is huge and nothing really changed for them within the decade.

I can't really speak for decades, none of us have been alive that long to live that difference - people generally live wealthier lives than 2 decades ago, at the cost of losing the ability to repair your own shit, being locked into buying new things when old ones work fine. but that's the failure of capitalism and legislation to subdue these issues.

What I am really trying to say is that I believe in time everything will be okay as long as we manage to survive the hardest challenge we have right now: AI causing major distruption in every single business causing further imbalance between people and coorperations.