between 2011 and 2016 I went on a bunch of motorcycle trips around the western states. It was really depressing and heartbreaking to see so many closed businesses and obviously economically depressed towns when we were supposedly having a economic recovery. You could see that the situation outside the coastal bubbles was pretty bad.

Over time the more tourist-serving towns seemed to recover.

I am pessimistic that we're heading for the same situation again. The companies that the stock market cares about will recover, we will all go on pretending that things are back to normal. Meanwhile there will again be large swaths of the population in dire straits.