Comment by underlipton

>Even a 50th percentile US household is very wealthy by global standards.

Not by purchasing power. We're also in a weird position compared to our "peers" in that most of them have relatively easy access to much less wealthy neighbors via over-land transit or a cheap plane ride, whereas we have to travel quite a distance or pay for extremely expensive plane tickets. Which means that we're stuck here with what a USD buys in the US, instead of being able to hop over to someplace else where a dollar goes further. We also work more than our peers, so our per-hour earnings take a hit compared to theirs.

I could go on. The trick is trying to gaslight Americans into second-guessing the economic pain they've increasingly felt over the past few decades. The 50th percentile American household lives worse than the 50th percentile household of quite a few less-wealthy countries.