Clearly we can distinguish a general trend (a rising tide lifting all boats over a period of decades) from a short term blip (a bubble bursting and causing a recession).

If you put it that way: the average salary for most Americans, when inflation adjusted, has been largely unchanged for the past 40 years. We know this.

Bubble or no, most people are not seeing a general trend of more personal wealth.

No, the average salary has been largely unchanged when adjusted for chained CPI. Chained CPI != inflation since the basket of goods changes with time. To measure inflation, you need to measure the cost of the 1970's basket of goods in 2010 dollars. Modern medicine, cell phones, computers, HDTVs, etc must all be excluded. CPI doesn't do this.

Further, even taking chained CPI as a measure of inflation, it's known to overestimate inflation by about 1.3% at least until 1996 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission). Taking Boskin-corrected CPI as a measure of inflation, wages have increased 40% over 40 years.