For the lower and lower middle classes the standard of living has been about the same since the 70s. But what you expect to see is life get easier for some segm

For the lower and lower middle classes the standard of living has been about the same since the 70s. But what you expect to see is life get easier for some segments of the population, and harder for others. You might be stuck in a population where life got harder. In particular, I remember seeing a paper (wish I could find the link) that claimed, specifically, white lower class individuals are worse off, whereas most population cohorts are better off today than decades ago. Avoid Marxist conspiracy theorizing: though it might be useful and easy to think about the capitalist class as a class, trying to reify them as a coordinated conspiracy of exploiters creates a lot of conflict but offers little in the way of explanatory power and little in the way of working solutions. Aside from the philosophical argument, you can see this is also historically true.