I didn't back up my statements with numbers because I'm old enough to have lived through the times I'm talking about and it's as obvious how much things have changed in my lifetime, but here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-inco... shows houses have gone from 3.5x median income to 6x median income since 1985.

Or here's a source that makes the comparisons via number of hours worked, showing that people today need to work thousands of hours more than Boomers did to afford the same things: https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-ho...

Or here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b... showing that college tuition has gone from 8% of household income in 1968 to 20% in 2020.

The 90s wasn't a utopia, but also, look at the media landscape of the time as a reflection on society - Fight Club, Office Space and American Beauty were reflections on the unfulfilling banality of life being too easy to find purpose. Married with Children (1987) and The Simpsons (1989) center on men who are supposed to be relatable-losers in low status, low paid dead end jobs (shoe salesman and power plant worker) and yet both have two story houses and are supporting multiple kids, because that was just normal and relatable to the blue collar average Americans watching the show at the time. Rocky (1976) has a protagonist who owns a house in Philadelphia despite being "poor", if it were filmed today they'd have to make him sleeping in his car for the character to represent the same level of desperation that audiences understood him to be in at the time.