I think that's mostly myth, and a very very deeply ingrained myth. That's why probably hundreds of people already feel the rage boiling up inside of them right now after reading my first sentence.

But it is myth. It has always been in the interest of the rulers and the old to try to imprint on the serfs and on the young how much better they have it.

Many of us, maybe even most of us, would be able to have fulfilling lives in a different age. Of course, it depends on what you value in life. But the proof is in the pudding, humanity is rapidly being extinguished in industrial society right now all over the world.

"Technology increases" have not made my life better than my boomer parents' and they will probably not make the next generation's lives better than ours. Big things like housing costs, education costs, healthcare costs are not being driven down by technology, quite the opposite.

Yes, the lives of "people selling stuff" will likely get better and better in the future, through technology, but the wellbeing of normal people seems to have peaked at around the year 2000 or so.