I just don’t think that’s supported by the data though. On virtually every measure, living conditions have improved across the globe over the last century. You can pick out specific metrics where things are worse in specific countries (housing is the most obvious example where affordability has declined), but taken as a whole I just don’t see how you can draw any other conclusion.

My grandparents worked 16+ hour days toiling away on a farm doing hard labour for like 60 years. They ate meat and potatoes for nearly every meal because grocery chains weren’t a thing for them (and they didn’t get a fridge until the 60s anyway). A bunch of their family members died of the Spanish Flu and other illnesses that we’ve since cured. That includes both my grandma’s parents when she was maybe 10. The highest-tech thing they owned until they were in probably their 50s was a 13-inch black and white TV that got like 2 channels with its bunny ears.

If you’re saying my biggest issue is that the house I bought cost double or triple than they would have paid in inflation-adjusted terms, I’d say I came out ahead.

I dunno man, my quality of life is like 10x better than my grandparents’ and 1000x better than maybe 8 generations ago, and I’d argue that’s mostly attributable to liberalised free markets.

Edit: on a slightly related topic, Lemmy appears to suffer from the same thing that often prevented Reddit from being a good place to discuss things – it hardly facilitates good faith discussion and ends up mostly an echo chamber in the long run when people downvote things simply because they disagree.