Personal experience of the baby boomer generation, admittedly limited, through my and DH's parents, is that they are way more irresponsible than our generation. Mistakes they have made would have them paying for it for the rest of their lives.
University access was perfectly possible for children from ordinary backgrounds who were clever - DH's parents both got in, got grants and tuition fees paid - and still managed to drop out without getting degrees. Nonetheless, both strolled into well paid professional level jobs which you now need a degree and work experience to get into. As a first time buy, they bought a terraced stone built house in a popular part of the city, recently up for sale again for £375k. DIL took early generous retirement at some ridiculous age, 53 I think, and never worked again. MIL has generous final salary scheme. They now have multiple homes, boats, cars, etc.. There is no way that university dropouts in well paid but middling jobs would be able to achieve that now, never mind all the money they have wasted in selling and buying said houses, cars, boats, etc. at a loss because they constantly change their minds!
My parents were even worse - chopping and changing jobs and mother never worked much at all. Somehow they managed to fail to buy their own council house (which is quite an achievement in itself) but my uncle gave them a house, which eventually they re-mortgaged to give themselves a pension. The council house in question that they failed to buy "wasn't good enough" for them, although the state gave them, a young employed couple with one child, a 3 bedroom semi detached new build in a lovely location, now selling for around £170k.
The thing is, none of them ever suffered from their various mistakes, which would have led to lifelong financial detriment in the current generation. None of them can literally do anything for themselves - they always have to pay someone to do stuff we have learned to manage with DIY, whether that be decorating or repairing our homes, cars, computers, whatever. They think we are mean or not hard working enough because we do stuff ourselves to save money or don't buy a new car every 3 years, or have cheap holidays abroad!
As for all this outside toilet stuff, none of them has ever experienced, neither had their parents. I remember my grandfather, who never went to university, always had a decent car and grandparents and their friends all went on package holidays to Spain every year! In fact, grandparents probably had a similar standard of living to what someone in the same work (skilled manual labour) would have today; it is my parent's generation who did spectacularly well and ended up in the 1/2 million pound plus properties and final salary pension schemes, with no special effort.
The employment market too is way more competitive than in former generations - the fact that women now work means there are more employees to compete against for that job. Obviously this is a good thing, but we also have way more workplace assessment, review, etc. than my parents did, who were basically in a job for life unless they spectacularly messed up.