People are looking at modern times as if they're worse, when they're almost strictly better than everything that came before us. Far less of the world lives in poverty. People in developed nations have more access to information, entertainment, lifestyle choices, etc.

Big media sells fear. Social media amplifies rage. They both create a miasma of doom that isn't reflective of the upward trajectory we've been on and continue to ride.

The Boomer era economics were not the norm and comparing ourselves to them is a great deception. Postwar America was growing and factory to the entire world. That was unsustainable and the differential between the US and the rest of the world (especially developing economies in Asia) has diminished. We can't compare Boomer McMansions and low cost of infrastructure and development to our modern state in any sort of fairness. Our wages grew too much, and that's a good thing! (Automation will bring us right back to this recipe anyway, and we're getting there.)

Compare America today against the broader world history and you'll see that we're wealthy, growing, and improving by almost all measures.