> Practically everyone agrees the economy is worsening for average people during many decades of nearly universal control by "mainstream" economists, advisors and bureaucrats.

Look at the chart that this story is about: when things go negative, what do you think happened to people's employment opportunities? What do you think happened to their debts (deflation makes it worse)?

Do you want to perhaps look at the economic historical record of the ~80 years before 1945:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1910–1911

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1901

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1896

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1896

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873

There have not been as near as many widespread economic collapses post-WW2 as there were pre-WW2. 2008 is probably the only one that came even close.

The main contributor to the working class getting a raw deal since the ~1970s is (IMHO) the idea of shareholder value (primacy):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

the dominance of equities is something precisely caused by the shift in the monetary system in the 1970s, which ushered in devaluation of money and forced ordinary people to seek yields from investments in businesses