You're just not seeing it. I remember the days of manual typewriters. Make a mistake, type it over again. Put in an envelope, mail, wait weeks for a reply. Write the letter by hand, even worse.
Today, shoot off a text or email with automatic spellchecking.
Cars need far less maintenance.
TVs are practically free.
My microwave greatly reduces meal prep time.
I could go on and on.
Expected lifespan is quite a bit higher.
You can't expect it to increase at the same rate as productivity, because it asymptotically approaches a limit.
Whether you're happy or not is up to you, not society. People, regardless of their status, tend to be at about the same level of happiness.
> all
I wish people would stop adding such qualifiers to construct strawmen.
p.s. also didn’t expect you to nit pick examples I gave that I thought would better serve your original point: big life changing stuff has improved. I expected us to move on to discuss what is of major value that we should expect from productivity.
Today, just do the edits, hit [print].
Hours, hours, hours saved.
Ironically, my dad told me in the 70s that the two greatest inventions would be a TV you could hang on the wall and a typewriter where you could edit without retyping the whole thing. To think some people think we don't live in a wonderland!
(He missed the calculator. What a marvelous time saver that was!)