What I've been trying to formulate . . .

 Morgan Housel, interviewed here by Barry Ritholtz, says it just right: 

It has . . . always been the case that people look back and say, look, it’s not as good as it, as it used to be. . . . I think . . . that people’s incomes grow, but their expectations grow by even more. The average middle-class American today is living a life that John D. Rockefeller could not fathom. They have technologies and medicines that Rockefeller, the richest man in the world in his day, could not fathom. But you cannot say that the average American should feel richer than Rockefeller because that’s not how people’s brains work.

All wealth is just relative to what other people have around you. You measure your life relative to your neighbors and your coworkers and everybody else. And in that situation, you can have a world where people’s incomes grow, their assets grow, and they live a longer life; but if everyone else is doing the same, you don’t feel any better off. . . .

When you realize that all wealth and happiness is just comparison to other people, you realize that the gap between your expectations and reality is really what you want to go for. . . . It used to be that you compared yourself to your neighbors and your coworkers. Now you compare yourself to a curated highlight reel of a bunch of strangers, fake performative lives. And so no matter how well you’re doing, you can open up Instagram and be bombarded with hundreds of people who appear to be doing better and look better and are look happier than you are, even if it’s all BS.

 

When I studied political science in college, a billion years ago, the sages would refer to "the revolution of rising expectations."  We got very frustrated during the recent political campaign by polling and interviewing and focus groups telling us that people thought the U.S. economy was disastrous, even though in reality is was and is the envy of the world. People are feeling oppressed by the price of groceries even though in fact as a percentage of income food in the U.S. is cheaper than it's ever been and the cheapest in the world. But that doesn't matter. 

What does matter is inequality. And that's what progressive politicians need to talk about. 

For those of you who are stressing right now, I'll have another important commentary from Barry next time.