Even 10-15 years ago, $5/meal was more than reasonable to eat well. For a just a 2 adult household, that is $15/day and $450/mo. What I was paying eating cheap fastfood and making ~10/hr pre-2015 was twice that. Just last year, trying to live strictly off of delivery apps like doordash and ubereats as a single person I could barely crack 1200/mo.
1k/mo is 12000/yr. 2k/mo rent for a 3 bedroom is 24k/yr. Being able to pay groceries and rent on $36k/yr only for that isn't so bad.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to ruin anyone's plans to live a better life, but when someone says "the economy is great", that's relative to post-covid and two multi-decade wars the US fought and a global recession not even two decades old.
I almost want to beg and plead people to realize the amazingly prosperous times they live in. The great depression and grear famines were not so long ago. The dust bowl can still come back. Multiple wars at the same time at a global scale is still a very much impending realistic possibility. Another war in th middle east is brewing. A dictator wanna be is being nominated in the US for president. Appreciate what you have so you can fight to keep it!
Things can get much better but also much worse. We must be sober minded in fighting for a better future without forgetting what we have. There has never been a more prosperous time and place to be alive in the history of mankind than now in America, especially when you consider the marvels of medicine and technology available today.
Again, things could be much better on many fronts, but what good is that fight if what little you enjoy now is gone?
Things like being most prosperous and powerful country and the center of tech and medicine don't tend to come back once they are gone for a country if you look at history.
Maybe we need to celebrate thanksgiving more than once a year?