> Inequality has risen, but that does not mean that things are getting worse for those at the bottom ends of the wealth distribution.
Wages are flat while Cost of Living and/or inflation is skyrocketing (Real world inflation, not the CPI index).
This, generally, is the strongest evidence that the bottom end of the wealth distribution is getting worse.
> By most metrics (ignoring housing and healthcare)
Wait, you can't just ignore housing and healthcare, that's like the biggest chunk of every American's budget.
The four things America has regressed on the most (in quality and/or cost), is housing, healthcare, education/child-care, and transportation. Those four things combined are roughly 75-99% of a typical American families spending.
Yeah, you can still buy a cheap hamburgers and cheap gas and cheap flat screen TVs. That's useful. But that's not useful enough to counteract all the losses elsewhere.
> both of which are primarily causes by an undersupply of housing and a growing cohort of old people, rather then inequality
That's a popular misconception. Housing problems are primarily caused by private equity and deregulation -- undersupply is a tiny portion of the problem in a few key metros (especially SF), but is not the widespread cause of it. In Michigan, for example, we have a rampant urban housing crisis too -- and zero percent of that is caused by any undersupply of housing.
Similarly, Healthcare costs rising is largely because of private equity and price fixing / fraud between health insurers and hospitals. "People growing old" is only a tiny portion of that problem, as evidenced by the many other nations who also have large aging populations putting strains on their healthcare systems, but not having the same astronomically high healthcare costs.
> Objective metrics like infant mortality, access to infrastructure like electricity and plumbing, educational attainment, all indicate positive trends
Suicide is rising sharply. Opiate abuse is rising, and so are the deaths from it. Access to infrastructure is falling (see Flint Water Crisis, or deferred infrastructure maintenance in NYC, or the routine underinvestment in roads and schools). The US personal savings rate is declining rapidly -- people who have "good incomes" (by your metrics) don't have any money left over to save, and so are on-paper good but actually financially insecure.
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I think seeing the problem is a "perception-only" issue is Ivory Tower thinking. People don't just "feel" that things have gotten worse, things have objectively gotten worse, and pretending otherwise will only make the situation harder to fix.