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Host, Baraka..... I think the two of you have fallen prey to the recency/proximity fallacy, which is that the events closest to you in time and space get used to define baselines for comparison of ongoing events to "normal." Hitting an economic rough patch is a sign of a healthy, correcting economy that is purging toxins from its system. It's roughly the same as your kid running a fever that has to run its course so that the virus can be killed off: it looks pretty worrying while it's happening, but it does pass and then the kid goes on to grow.
If you step back and look at the main indicators of material well-being, which to my mind include things like life expectancy and nutrition, we are better off now than we ever have been. Not to beat a dead horse here, but we have the richest poor people in history - our poor people are obese rather than starving. The standard of living of a middle class person in the US at the turn of the 20th century was lower than the standard of a poor person at the turn of the 21st.
This does NOT mean we live in Utopia, nor does it mean we have no economic problems, nor does it mean things can't be improved. But this notion that there is impending economic doom is simply not supported. I suspect some of it is due to the obsessive focus on income inequality and the insistence that unless everyone has the same amount of stuff, that means the people who have a bit less than others are ipso facto deemed to be miserable - which is manifestly not true, unless you think envy is a good thing.
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