> Did things always feel like this? My perception is that people always felt like car dealers were scamming them. BUT people saw opportunity in the big things

> Did things always feel like this? My perception is that people always felt like car dealers were scamming them. BUT people saw opportunity in the big things: education, housing, reward for good work. This is the part that has unraveled. Even public universities are out of reach for much of the middle class (this was not the case as recently as the '70s). We have systematically under built housing for 2 generations, so our job centers are ridiculously expensive. And our business culture has largely de-linked performance and job stability so that well-performing people routinely get laid off for even when their firms are doing well. It's worth noting here that all of these are enabled by deliberate policy changes that have been enacted since the 1980s.