Nah, it's really just that economic life was so much better for a wagie in the '50s than any kind of fukking paradox of choice.

Imagine that you dropped out of high school in the 1950s. You could catch on with FoMoCo as a janitor and make $2700/yr (equal to $30,000 today. An average house back then was $7500 (no chit! equal to $80K today), which is affordable at less than 3x your income. Congradulations, you're now a home owner on a single high school dropout's salary. You find some 50s sloot who will marry you just for your job/house, splooge all in her, make some Boomers, and keep her home taking care of your kids. They could even have a TV to watch. It'd sting at $200 (about a month of your income), but it's not out of reach.

Now imagine that you drop out of high school in 2021. You will have a hard time catching on as a janitor because of illegals. If you can, you make $12/hr ($24k/yr, 20% less than what your grandpa got paid for the same work). I'll be generous and say that a house is $250K where you live, which at 10x your income will never be possible to own. Rent at ~$1000/mo, food and internet will pretty much eliminate your take-home and you'll be living a hand to mouth existence. A wife is out of the question with your level of financial insecurity, so now you just smash trashy randoms whenever you can. A home is out of the question, so you just rent bedrooms for life. Kids are out of the question unless govt assistance is involved. But miscers will tell you how lucky you are to be able to afford a better TV now than '50s brah had.

To get the same quality of life in 2021 as a high school dropout in the 1950s used to have - suburban house, SAHM, kids and car - you would probably need to be a doctor earning $150K after student loans. And we wonder why life seemed better back then lmao. It wasn't cause they had less fukking brands of cereal.

Not possible.

For example, I am required by my job to have a smartphone with Slack and several other "productivity" apps on it.

Many good jobs require a college degree which is a whole new level of complexity.

Online dating is pretty much the only way to find a spouse these days.

Good pensions are pretty much nonexistent unless you're in the military.

There is almost certainly a lot of truth to this. The issue is most people are ignorant and have no self control, but for those of us that do all of the extra choices are amazing.

Remember the 90's when everything was calm and nobody had smart devices or social media and you could just enjoy every little second of your life without a care in the world?