re: I'm sick of people saying the middle class is worse off than 4 decades ago.

Here's one for ya.

68% of Americans in 2016 owned a smartphone. Up from 35% in 2012.

45% own some form of tablet(that shite ain't NECESSARY).

So, tell me again about how put upon the middle class in America is again?

People in 1970 were fricking hanging their clothes on a clothes line rather than buying a washing machine but you want me to believe that they were better off than us folks in 2017 where about half of us own a damned tablet, a third of us have bought smart phones in the last 4 years and 2/3rds of us have SMARTphones!

This is why the whole "declining middle class" thing is so much bull shite. All you need to do to figure out it's bull shite is walk outside.