I think people forget you can't live inside an index fund. It's hard to value a higher predicted YoY return when you have to spend a month out of every year moving because rent went up again.
How many people can actually pay $2000/month just from their index fund returns without drawing on the principal?
Even if you assume 4% real return (beating inflation), you'd need to have at least 600k worth of index funds, and you won't be growing it. Even for HN users, that's a lot of money.
This strategy will never work for more than 1-2% of the population.