If you're the age I think you are (mid-30s), then during your grandfather's time most women didn't work and many racial minorities were barred from many jobs and forms of housing. If you cut the labor supply in half or more, then wages naturally go up because demand doesn't change that much per capita.

That said I completely agree with you about everything else. I think the US needs to firm up its social safety net (hopefully through UBI, though I'm not hopeful) ASAP. I don't think AI will take over the world or even remove all jobs, but it will remove enough in our lifetime that we'll have a crisis of low-skilled employees out of work who just won't be able to transition into a job that pays well enough to pay four healthcare, housing, and transportation. Housing itself is a really hard problem too for various other complicated reasons.