I disagree to a point. We see millenials/Gen-Z expecting promotions and large salaries for little to no work history and at most normal productivity. There is definitely a connection missed between effort and reward.
If the current economy persists, people will have to adopt new expectations, eventually. Many people already have, as they experience a much tougher time finding new jobs.
Any time I see this I always wonder "what does the speaker consider a large salary?". Do you mean a living wage where one doesn't have to live with three other people in a rat/roach infested slumlord apartment?
I think, to some extent, there’s been a broadening of the set of people clued in that the connection between hard work and money isn’t just weak, but often nonexistent.
You don’t get real money doing farm work 7 days a week, after all. Real work, but not real money.
The whole "kids should work harder and enjoy it" take is entirely Western. Kids are working very hard in other parts of the world, for pennies, no health care, and have next to zero economic mobility. Kids should be willing to work for their own benefit, to enrich their own life, but that is not what we see in practice. Kids work to survive.
If it was previously common for children to be exploited and lose their childhoods, then I can certainly see how that led the older generations to be such seemingly spineless adults with no self esteem. Abuse does that to people.
Fortunately, it sounds like they (well...most of them...) recognized the damage done by their upbringing and sought to raise their own children better than their parents raised them. Breaking out of the cycle of abuse is a hard thing to do; good on them.