> It does seem like young people these days have an incredibly distorted sense of what they "deserve" or what they can afford or what's "normal".

I, being fairly young, think that fulltime jobs paying a living wage ought to be normal. Many don't - https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2020/home.htm

Some people are going to overspend and be careless with their money, but that's not the core problem in the US. The core problem is unfairly low wages for many workers.