> It's cheaper/easier now to survive than any other time in history.

Just "survive" is too low a point to be interesting. You need way more than just surviving to have spare time and capacity to learn and innovate. And that level, at least in the western world, now comes with absurdly high costs of living (driven by the insanity of the real estate market), so even the "middle class" is mostly stuck running in a hamster wheel.