Any prior golden age you might care to look at was unevenly distributed. That was the case before the internet took hold in the 90's, during the rapid economic growth of the 50's, in the Renaissance, the heights of the Roman Empire...

Yes, that does not mean we shouldn't look back on the things in the past that were good & now are not. But if a wholesale reversion to a past time was possible, we would still find the golden parts of that earlier age to be apportioned to some, but not others.

Another consideration is that while I don't like life inside a panopticon, its absence in the 90's meant those of us fortunate to be "golden" simply had less awareness of those who weren't, hence the false impression that perhaps there was a lot more gold everywhere.