Wage gains have more than mitigated that impact of inflation for a lot of people - kind of hard to have precise measures, but broadly speaking, we’ve hit that point where wage growth outpaced inflation. It shows up in similar ways - in most polls, large chunks of respondents report they themselves are doing fine, but boy, the economy overall is in the dumper!

So, I think that “reality” is less true than you indicate, but I do agree that there’s no point in arguing that they shouldn’t feel that way. People feel the way they feel.