via wreg:
Inflation is easing, unemployment is relatively low, and the stock market looks strong, economics experts say. So why does it still feel so bad?
A host of TikTokers have coined a name for it: “silent depression.”
They say the economy is bad – just as bad as it was during the Great Depression – but no one is acknowledging it.
One viral video compares 1930 prices with today’s, claiming the average home back then cost $3,900, a car was $600 and rent was $18 a month. Meanwhile, the average salary was $1,300, the TikToker says.
Today, those prices are all obviously much, much higher: $436,000 for a house, $48,000 for a new car, and about $2,000 a month for rent. Meanwhile, the average person is making $56,000, he says. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts that figure slightly higher at about $58,000 for someone working full time. The U.S. Census Bureau put the median household income last year at around $75,000).
In any case, the TikTok aims to point out that in 2023, those big ticket items cost a much larger percent of your annual take-home income than they did in 1930, when home prices were three times the annual salary and rent was a small fraction.
“We are in a silent depression,” the video concludes.