The '90s weren't that great

The optimism of the 90s was definitely a thing in the west, even if those particular metrics were worse. It was the perceived end of the cold war, and no other state could seemingly challenge the west. It really did seem like the end of war and every generation would have it better than the previous one. That optimism was pervasive and colored culture, mood, everything.

Now you've got a lot of millennials / gen-zers who grew up in homes their parents owned, unable to buy a home (in a place that would have jobs for them) saddled with college debt and few friends outside their computer screens. I think that's at the root, and all of those metrics mean nothing to them. Housing + debt, everything else is noise.

Other than for homosexuals, transsexuals, and maybe career focused females it's not outrageous to claim the 90s were a better time to be starting your life/adulthood.

> Their childhoods were spent with memories of a backyard pool and frequent vacations—because they were ten and their parents were forty-five. These kids might have grown up considering themselves “middle class” when they were actually safely upper middle class. Their parents, not wanting to be unseemly, probably told them they were middle class. Twenty-somethings who grew up kinda rich probably don’t yet have the money their parents did, and this can be confusing if they were led to believe they had a modest upbringing.

My parents could not afford the house they own if they had to buy today, even with their now-end-of-career salaries, at current market prices—never mind with their starting salaries (and my mom was only working part-time when they bought it).

Quality of life has improved in many ways over the last 20-30 years (tech, medicine, etc), but wage increases have not kept up with cost of living in many sectors.

> We are hardly living in a golden age of safety for kids—during the pandemic, there was a spike in crime, especially gun violence. But a big part of why gun violence became the biggest cause of deaths of people under 18 is partially because they were a lot less likely to die from other causes, notably motor vehicle accidents:

Well, that’s an excellent point. Our cars have become so good at crumpling to protect us that the old crash test videos that leaked to tv news in the 90s seem archaic by comparison. I remember many of them showed the dummies falling out of the cars when they slammed into a wall and shocked everyone.

My father took me to a junkyard to see all the windshields that people had smashed into to emphasize why I should wear a seatbelt. Now the car will basically sacrifice itself to absorb the shock as much as possible. Plus airbags are everywhere and rearview cameras are in all new cars.

I frequently think about how these days you can get shot anywhere in the USA. It was nice being reminded that I have very little fear of dying in an auto crash. And though many people drunk drive every day, societal tolerance for it is at an all time low.