How long has the economy been bad?

[Andrew]

people all the time say that the economy sucks, but when did it get that way?

[simplicitus]

It depends on which "bad" you mean and which economy you are referring to.

1. In the short term, there was the Great Recession which started in December 2007 and became a global phenomenon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession

2. If the U.S., in the medium term there has been the growth of income inequality since about 1970:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...ph/261503/
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2908
http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/01/31/the-...ecoupling/
This has not been a problem in most other developed countries. Many have kept their income inequality down and have seen living standards improve.
http://streetlightblog.blogspot.com/2011...r-two.html
http://www.prosperity.com/Ranking.aspx
http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...fare-state
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index
etc.

Then you have the people who complain about "losing jobs" when they mean losing manufacturing jobs. That isn't necessarily bad, but it has been going on for over 60 years
http://www.minnpost.com/macro-micro-minn...ufacturing
long before we started trading with China. That only happened in the 1970s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Nixon_visit_to_China