So there's a pretty concerted effort to make "the economy is actually getting better" stories sound untrue with some particular talking points - it's actually really effective. Here are some of the big ones. You can see why they work.
Replying to "the economy is getting better" with "how DARE you say the economy is good and all the problems are fixed, clearly that's not the case" as a way of reframing away from the conversation of whether things are getting better, or worse, and why that is. Basically interfering with the effort to understand the policies that help or hurt by simply asserting that everything's bad, so nothing being talked about can possibly be a good thing.
Saying "well I'm not doing okay, how dare you say I'm not struggling" and getting all fucked up and angry about it, so that anyone that tells you that millions of low-income workers are making more now than they were a few years ago, like way more, and that's a good thing, looks like an asshole
Bringing up that the CPI excludes some categories, and implying that if it did include them, it would show more inflation than what it does (including the pretty significant spike in 2022). This one is actually a really clever subterfuge, because of how complicated it gets to explain why it is wrong (whereas if you just say "CPI doesn't include housing costs" or whatever, people can grasp that instantly and make the connection and assume that housing costs would change the value if they were included).
Saying "well who cares about the stock market, I just know I'm struggling" when no one said anything about the stock market or the rich-person economy metrics, and everyone's talking about inflation-adjusted wages and nothing about the stock market
They're all tricks. There are more but those are some of the main ones
And you see the same 4 or 5 of them, over and over again, if you start looking
You'll see some of them in comments nearby to this one, I guarantee it
Edit: More
Insisting that when cumulative inflation is 20%, and 10th percentile wages have gone up 32%, wages aren't keeping up with inflation, simply because you insist that they aren't. If anyone tries to say numbers, just say they don't count.
Focus on the 20% inflation, because it feels real. People can see it in grocery prices, it's tangible. It rings true. The wage growth is mostly at the low end (truck drivers, housekeepers, manufacturing) where most Lemmy users can't see it, and even when someone's wage has gone up, it's easy to decide it happened because of some other factor, whereas $7 for a carton of eggs is right there in your face and memorable. And universal.