Thank you for your thoughtful response. This is the kind of response I can truly respect.
You make some very good points and I won't dispute them without examining the actual data.
It's a pleasure to encounter someone who can actually make me examine my own position from another point of view.

You are correct that the value of the dollar is a moving target and should be viewed in relation to income. I believe that the phenomena of inflation is far more complex than wages chasing prices or vice versa. I have read books on the federal reserve and monetary policy and still don't really understand the interplay.

I'm not calling for a return to the "good old days" There were plenty of problems then too.

As to safety, I make that comment from the perspective of my personal life experience. I grew up in a residential neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota. As a young child I could and did walk the streets alone at any time of day or night without fear of bad guys. Crime was nearly unheard of.
I no longer live there but I do visit the area sometimes. It has become a dangerous place and I would not walk those streets at night without fear of being robbed or worse. To use a tired cliche', your mileage may vary.

I don't like labels because they are always misleading. If pressed, I would describe myself as an independent thinker.

@dumasarok On your specific example, St. Paul MN, like so many other cities, presents a paradox. The last year was obviously exceptional for every large city, and particularly for Minneapolis/St Paul, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the protests/counterprotests which followed. This was only compounded by the pandemic and the stressors on normal life which it caused; I won't even attempt to detail these in this brief reply.

And yet, in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, even though murders in St Paul were up 25% and property crime rose 12%, with an overall increase of 8% in "serious crime", the overall violent crime rate was lower than at any time since 1995. See this article for the breakdown. [twincities.com]

The article sums it up better than I could:

There’s often a gap between crime statistics and people’s perceptions of safety, so if “you took the headline and said, ‘Violent crime is down,’ and surveyed the community, many would say, ‘It doesn’t feel like it,’ ” said James Densley, a Metropolitan State University criminal justice professor. “It’s partly based on consumption of media and social media, but it’s also based on lived experience, and we know that homicides have a massive impact on a community.”

I will also argue that the 24-hour news cycle and the relentless drumbeat of "murders, robberies, crime" in our collective and individual awareness has deeply effected our perceptions as well. The reality we perceive is not the reality that exists. I am a CCW holder and carry concealed almost everywhere I go, and where it's not lawful to carry I still have a backup folding knife "just in case". I survey my surroundings. I'm a corrections officer, so it's partly habitual for me, but it's also partly the result of the cultural acclimitization I'm talking about. I myself have come within a hair's breadth of being shot by my local police who responded to a report of some "incident" in my apartment but failed to clearly identify themselves while pounding on my door at 1 a.m., and so I had a pistol in my off hand when I answered the door (shades of Breonna Taylor!). All of which is to say that the closest I have come to needing or using any of my firearms was a near-shootout with my own PD. Reality is not as dangerous as we imagine- although I could not sleep anywhere but the couch, fully clothed, for weeks after that incident.

None of us see "reality"; we see the constructs our minds build. I try to gather as much empirical data as I can to make my reality as close to objective as possible. Objectively, you're safer now than you were 25 years ago.

@Paul4747 Regarding my comment about safety, it was based on my experiences in the far East side of St. Paul. The increase in street crime there began many years before the George Floyd incident.

Your comment regarding subjective reality is very perceptive and I agree with it completely.

I too have a carry permit. In MN the weapon does not have to be concealed. That said, I believe open carry is foolish and I would not do it. Actually I very rarely carry on my person at all.
I do have a weapon in my vehicle within easy reach when I travel to the metro area.

@dumasarok Open carry is legal in MI as well, but those who do it (except while hunting or target shooting) in my view are just trying to "assert a right" that doesn't need asserting. When far right fights far left, the middle loses.

This has been a pleasant conversation, thank you!