Sorry ya without context, I don't suppose my comment made sense.

I grew up in Idaho and went through a couple of recessions. Most of the TV/movies from that time like Family Ties and Ferris Bueller's Day Off portray it as prosperous, but it was really more like South Park.

My dad practiced dentistry for many years but due to some house fires and other setbacks, we didn't have money until I was about 15. So I grew up eating a lot of lamb, deer, elk, farm fresh eggs, etc that he got when he traded out dental work because nobody had much money.

So what I was trying to say is, real prosperity to me would look more like if the 80s and 90s had continued so the US still had its manufacturing base today. A bit more like how Germany has prospered.

Instead we have the appearance for prosperity for most, but the bottom income half of the US is really struggling right now with multiple jobs, high debts, and not nearly as strong of a social safety net as we had then. So I question why that is necessary when some people are doing so phenomenally well. To me, America lost its way after the dot bomb around 2000 and never really recovered. Maybe I'm reaching though, if I'm seeing conspiracies just because we can't find a discontinued connector, which I fully admit haha.

In that timeframe I had a heart condition. The local cardiologist I saw was really into hunting. He even had some trophy bucks and bass mounted on the waiting room wall. His wife, a nurse at the hospital I was in for a week, described him as "a good ol' boy". It wouldn't surprise me if he at some point took some hunting related payment instead of cash. Medical insurance, while common, was less of a thing back then and barter was quite common in the community. Mostly people trading boats, trucks, rifles, and appliances with each other but services happened too. It was the type of informal arrangements that work in areas with high social cohesion.

Where I grew up about 2 hours north of NYC, that sort of thing was not uncommon in the 80s.