I would say what we have now in 2023 is worse than 2008. I didn't live through the great depression so can't comment there. The older I get, the worse things become in both an economic and social sense. My comment indeed was a bit hyperbolic but the point stands. In 2008 we had large movements clearly pushing against the 1%. Nowadays such a thing really doesn't exist. Similarly there were far more mom&pops back in 2008 than today.

I think one thing is that people talking about "recessions" or "gdp" and other such nonsense are really only looking at the rich. Which for them? yeah things are probably better than ever. But for regular people? No.