It's crazy how we make 10x more money for our companies than our grandparents or parents did but are unable to afford basic lives (wife, house, kids). My dad did it delivering pepsi products.
Software is the best place to see this. Develop something niche and profitable. Without growth, you're just a feature and you will be ripped off by another party or a bigger player. Slack, Clubhouse, any Mac/iOS feature, etc. etc. Hundreds of examples here.
There's also the broader economic theory. If you can only invest time and money in one place, then you have opportunity costs and need to weigh the future outcomes of your investment choices. Life is finite, and you should use it in the best way you know how. For most people, money correlates strongly with value creation and reward. The amount of revenue you drive is also indicative of the broader value you've materialized for other people.
Post-war US had close to zero economical competition for a few decades. Which is exactly the time where your grandparents and parents spent most of their adult lives in. Middle class on easy mode, a simple job supports an entire family.
What changed is that the rest of the world caught up. Middle class on easy mode was a blip, not a permanent standard. What the west lost, the developing countries gained.
There's of course secondary factors too: different demographics (more workers, less elderly), women were not in the work force making labor more scarce, work was more stable and not constantly technically disrupted, etc.
It's complicated, but the idea that uneducated labor can support a middle class family is not coming back, ever.
Housing can either be a good investment or affordable, but not both.
The percent of Americans living in urban areas has also grown over time.
Together we have more American competing for limited urban real estate.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-US-Population...
Most of the wage growth in big cities goes straight into landlords' pockets. It's no way to run a civilization.
And at any rate, you can't even live the 60s life if you wanted to. It's either impossible or illegal.
If you want to stuff 4 people into two bedrooms with no A/C and never take vacations you can do it today in most cities in the US for the wage you'd earn at 1 corporate job. It won't be comfortable, but that isn't new.
If you want the boomer city experience, you need to go pick a city today that compares to a NYC, LA, Miami or SF in the 1960s and 1970s. Nothing like 2022 NYC, LA, Miami or SF existed in the 1960s and 1970s.
As someone who lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I'd argue that the well-paid jobs part is our biggest struggle. We might be somewhat unique compared to some other small towns, but we have a lot going on - theater, live music, civic groups, outdoor recreation, surprisingly good restaurants - there's plenty to do here, but there's also no question that our largest growing demographic group is people who made their money elsewhere. As both you and the poster below you comment though - neither the big city nor small towns offer much of a refuge for people these days; our system is squeezing every bit of "value" out of workers, to our detriment