Take a look at the way people in a large part of the US are living. Paycheck to paycheck not because they're idiots that likes to consume, but because shit is expensive and wages haven't kept up with productivity for like 50 years.
People are suffering, agree with the rest of what I say or not, but I can't let you slide on that.
Take a look at how the median American lives compared to the median resident of nearly every country on earth. If that's suffering, I'm not sure what to call life elsewhere.
And to this specific comment, wages outpaced inflation since the 1970s for everyone but the poorest households (I believe the bottom 10% are the exception, who I would probably agree are suffering in some sense). Working class real wage growth actually outpaced white collar real wage growth for a couple years post-COVID, for the first time in a long time. Also, wage measurements don't normally measure total compensation, notably health insurance which has been increasing much faster than wages or overall inflation for decades.
Also, there's no reason to expect wage growth to match productivity growth. Productivity gains are largely due to company investment, not increased effort from workers, and household expenses are not positively correlated with productivity metrics.
Few people in the US are living "paycheck to paycheck" out of economic necessity. We have extensive data on this separately from BLS and the Federal Reserve. The percentage of US households that are living paycheck to paycheck out of economic necessity is 10-15% last I checked. That isn't nothing but it is a small fraction of the population. Retirees comprise a significant portion of that for obvious reasons.
There is an additional ~30% that is notionally living paycheck to paycheck as a lifestyle choice rather than an economic necessity.
The median US household has a substantial income surplus after all ordinary expenses. There may be people suffering economically but it is a small minority by any reasonable definition of the term.
Is my life as easy as my parents. Probably not. But the idea that life is bad is a wild take. But if I spent all my time on social media/reddit/watching the news. I'd be pretty depressed too and think the sky is falling. I feel like the USA could turn it round pretty quick with the slightest of social policy to support the lower income earners?
People are suffering, agree with the rest of what I say or not, but I can't let you slide on that.