[smithoc]

You've picked a handful of consumer goods which have become cheaper due to technology and used them to construct a narrative entirely opposite of reality.

It would be more accurate to say the baby boomers could "work as a grunt and get what their children only dreampt of"

Single-income households, lifelong employment at the same company, people buying houses at 23 and having kids at 25, pensions, affordable health insurance, inexpensive college, people working their way up from the mail room to the C-suite. All taken for granted as typical, middle-America norms a few decades ago, but utterly unrecognizable to Millenials and Gen-Z.

Yes, people today have big TVs and air fryers. And they can use them to self-medicate briefly against the anxiety of rent that takes 40% of their post-tax income, student loans they'll be paying for the next decade and the knowledge that the whims of executives they've never met could make them lose their job tomorrow and be faced with a loss of healthcare and housing in short order.

Most people would happily downgrade their TV and drive a lower horsepower car in exchange for stable employment, no debts, no retirement worries and a spouse who doesn't have to work a corporate job.