It is not irrelevant if you want to use an expression such as "nasty, brutish and short", coined by Hobbes to refer to the condition of man living by himself, without a social structure to support him. It implies that people in the first world - specifically, the US - are living in conditions somehow comparable in their uncertainty to people living in a pre-civilized state. If anyone is minimally realistic about the first world, they will know that it is an absurd statement.

This kind of overly dramatic phrase is not accurate nor conducive to productive debate. Its only reason for existing is to make people indignant and unaware of their own privilege in order to make them support your cause of choice - or, more frequently, in order to make them fight the people who you designate as the "cause" of their "suffering".

There's also a personal aspect to my comment, in that I live in a country where, even if the USA's living standard keeps falling for the next 50 years, it will probably be just about comparable to here. Watching the most privileged people in the world be all "woe is me, I might not be as rich as my dad!" is not something I'm very able to take seriously.