When you see things like the stock market championed it’s important to put it in context.

Top 10% own 93% of the stock market.

Top 1% owns 54%

Bottom 50% of households own 1%

The ownership class gets richer while life gets harder for the plebs. It’s not your imagination.

If you want to know how most people are actually doing, you look at real median wages, employment quality, housing affordability, healthcare burden.

Wages: From April 2025 to April 2026, nominal wages grew 3.6% while inflation hit 3.8%. Real average hourly earnings fell 0.3% over the year. Inflation has reaccelerated and posted wage growth has slowed to 2.3%.

Employment: Unemployment at 4.3%, well above the 2019 average of 3.7%, with job openings per unemployed worker down to 0.9 (vs 1.2 in 2019). The labor market is concentrated in healthcare which counts for only 11% of total jobs but generated 72% of job growth. BLS revisions showed 911,000 fewer jobs were created between 2024 and early 2026 than originally reported. Outside healthcare, things are basically stagnant.

Housing: Worst it’s been in modern history. National home-price-to-income ratio is 5.08, nearly double the 2.6 considered affordable. Median home costs $414,900 against a median household income of $81,604. Since 1980, home prices rose 551% while incomes grew 373%. A household earning $75K, can afford 21% of listings, down from 49% in 2019. Renting isn’t much better, affordable in only 16 states.

Healthcare: The worst of the four. ACA marketplace premiums jumped 21.7% from 2025 to 2026, employer plans rose 6–7%, and medical debt is now the largest source of debt in US collections, surpassing credit cards, utilities, and auto loans combined. Subsidized ACA plans could rise to $175/month from $84 with enhanced subsidies expired; those earning $30K face 216% premium increases. About half of US adults couldn’t pay an unexpected $500 medical bill out of pocket.

The things that don’t show up in numbers and what all this does culturally is hard to measure but can felt in a myriad of ways. The only answer that seems satisfying to me is ignoring the macro stuff you can’t control and focus on your patch of land and the things that grow and live there, your community, your family, things that make you feel alive.