Oren Cass - an economic advisor to Mitt Romney, and someone whose research at the Manhattan Institute has informed rightwing politicians and initiatives for a few years now
https://www.orencass.com
- recently published his latest attempt at a quantified index of "thriving":
what a middle class life's yearly basics cost in terms of median paid working weeks.
He found that in 1985 it (the basic middle class life) cost 30 weeks of median paid work for a man, 45 for a woman.
In 2018, that basic life cost 53 weeks for the man, 66 for the woman.
A quote from scholar Cass, conservative advisor to Republican politicians for many years:
{the growing difference} between what American life costs and what American jobs pay is a central fact of American political economy that the public appears to have understood long before economists, - -
Now that is obviously not quite true. There are some economists, lefties especially, who had this trend spotted before 1985 even - it was always part of the analysis of Reaganomics found among leftwing analysts, when the public was still innocent of the effects to come. But the overt and public recognition of this fact now is worth noticing - the possibility that Trump would clear the vision of some Republicans by presenting the standard Republican views too loudly and clearly and enthusiastically,
the exaggerated agreement verified by researchers as among the most effective techniques of persuasion (to the opposite view) available in ordinary social circumstances,
may not be completely wishful thinking.