There are high norms and low norms. (My terminology.) Low norms range from basic corruption to which sexual orientation is in vogue. High norms subvert how power is wielded. Equating these two is page one of populism. (You have a broad point in that crossing the Rubicon was a generational affair by Caesar’s point. But nobody was happy about it when Sulla did it either.)
> until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation
This cannot be a serious reading of the data. Wages rose precipitously for a decade [1]. Even during the pandemic, while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. When inflation started rising, rates remained low because the Fed thought it transitory. It’s only when it surged that the FOMC stepped in. The Fed was not only fine but thrilled with rising real wages.
Investors have been walking away with more and more of the productivity since about 1970 or so. Young people are less likely to own a home due to insane asset price increases during that time and the fed kept lowering rates in spite of this. They raised interest rates specifically to prevent a "wage price spiral" but had no problem with the price spiral around housing because wages weren't going up as well.
If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. The modern young professional class lives in overpriced apartment blocks, a lot of them don't even own a car. The iPhone doesn't make the mandatory two income household with no assets lifestyle equivalent to what we had previously.
CPI speaks to price levels. It says nothing about standards of living, just cost. Nobody argues that if you were on the winning team, life in the 50s wasn’t great. Naturally, if you poll folks from different backgrounds, that rose tint fades a bit. Unfortunately, we don’t have fine-grained economic statistics from the 50s to today.
Living standards are not down over ten years. Statistically and, for me, anecdotally. I’m making no comparison over lifetimes because we haven’t been collecting e.g. real median household income over that stretch.
Fortunately, it’s beside the point. You alleged “wages start[ed] to tick up then all of the sudden” rates were raised. That’s demonstrably untrue. Wages were rising for a decade, including precipitously through the pandemic, before we did anything about it.
Go around at talk to some of the young people you know, are they willing to trade a few years at the end of their life and their iPhone to get out of student debt and own a home?
This is incorrect.
> talk to some of the young people you know
We’re paying down our debt and buying homes. We’re more stretched than our grandparents were at our age, but our objective quality of life is far superior. I wouldn’t give up modern telecommunications for a bigger house.
I own assets and am happy. (The home owning is often a source of stress that competes with my happiness.) The last ten years saw my prospects increase materially. I’ve also noticed as much in my friends with more blue-collar jobs. Statistics show a similar trend: broad gains with pockets of instability.