Yes, we live in insane times.
Incidentally, the highest marginal tax rate during WWII was 94%!!! Granted, this was on the extremely high-income earners, but you can probably track lower tax brackets as being just as relatively high. Even in that time, people were not as despondent as they are now.
During WWII jobs were plentiful; restaurants and theaters in Detroit stayed open overnight to accommodate workers in defense plants that never closed (there were 3 8-hour shifts always going on). Today a lot of people simply can’t maintain a decent standard of living with the jobs available to them. We have some high-paying jobs, but far too many McJobs - and too many people lack the skills for the former. In fifty years it won’t be so depressing, as there will be few around who remember the “before-times”, but for now many people look at the standard of living just a couple of decades ago and realize they’ll never attain it.
I’ve posted on other threads that anyone earning $50K or more is dealing with forces scrambling furiously behind the scenes to either move that work elsewhere or bring foreigners here to do it; here in the NYC metro area Asians are being imported as white-collar replacements for Americans in the financial sector in the same manner as they were for the tech sector - and in many cases each new Asian means another American losing his home.
THAT is why Trump was elected - and why his numbers are improving despite 24/7 attacks from the enemedia. He speaks to those Americans who are one foreigner away from taking a walk in front of a train.