I meant: "Most people had a stressful, shitty time of it."
As measured by lives lived in quiet fear and desparation over a long time.
As measured by how we treat the worst off in society.
As measured by the quality of safety nets, and whether it's applied to people by dint of inalienable fundamental rights and dignity, or if safety is kept only for a subset of people we approve of / we decide are lucky.
As hinted at by life expectancies reducing in some developed countries.
As hinted at by increasing poverty and child poverty in some developed countries.
As hinted at by the housing crises, and increasing numbers of precarious economic situations of huge numbers of people in many developed countries.
As hinted at by an enormous class of people with second-class status in many developed countries.
I'm not going to say it is worse than 20, 50, 100, 200 years prior.
It appears to be better; it looks better than ever on many metrics.
And the economy has obviously produced a great deal of wealth and benefit. Shared unevenly (see especially USA healthcare right now, and healthcare for irregular immigrants everwhere), but benefits are there. We certainly should not stop doing the good things we've been doing.
But I still think the economy we have (or had, perhaps) has been "shit" for most people compared to what it could and should be.
(I don't mean it in the more mundane way people say "shit economy" to mean "worse than usual", "in a downturn" etc.)
As measured by lives lived in quiet fear and desparation over a long time.
As measured by how we treat the worst off in society.
As measured by the quality of safety nets, and whether it's applied to people by dint of inalienable fundamental rights and dignity, or if safety is kept only for a subset of people we approve of / we decide are lucky.
As hinted at by life expectancies reducing in some developed countries.
As hinted at by increasing poverty and child poverty in some developed countries.
As hinted at by the housing crises, and increasing numbers of precarious economic situations of huge numbers of people in many developed countries.
As hinted at by an enormous class of people with second-class status in many developed countries.
I'm not going to say it is worse than 20, 50, 100, 200 years prior.
It appears to be better; it looks better than ever on many metrics.
And the economy has obviously produced a great deal of wealth and benefit. Shared unevenly (see especially USA healthcare right now, and healthcare for irregular immigrants everwhere), but benefits are there. We certainly should not stop doing the good things we've been doing.
But I still think the economy we have (or had, perhaps) has been "shit" for most people compared to what it could and should be.
(I don't mean it in the more mundane way people say "shit economy" to mean "worse than usual", "in a downturn" etc.)