Our boomer parents saw their economic lives improve, often dramatically, both in comparison to their parents and also within their own lifetimes. Their mistake was to assume that this would continue indefinitely, if not actually get better, with their children having richer lives yet (in all meanings of the word), and they raised us with this mindset.
The reality is that the post-war boom was a blip, and now the old class-bound, economically straightened world of our grandparents is back. I've kept telling myself during the madness of the past 20 years that we've bottomed out and the good times will be back - through the start of the house price insanity under Blair, the 2008 crash, the austerity years, then the (utterly needless and self-destructive) Covid lockdowns, the political chaos in the UK and elsewhere, followed by the current inflationary/economic tailspin clusterf* which has no end in sight. I've now accepted that this is the new normal, and the country is in irreversible decline and economic stagnation (hence why I am seriously considering not having kids).
People in their 30s now have lived through two of the worst recessions in history, a severe hacking away at public services, have often racked up £10,000s of debt getting useless degrees we were told would be a golden ticket to social mobility, pay anything from 1/3 - 1/2 of our income on rent for typically poor quality accomodation (also making it even harder to save for a deposit, as house prices rise and rise), have to work longer and harder in often poorly paying jobs, competing against the world and his wife who've all been invited to live here, whilst been told by patronising boomers (who got their degree for free and bought when houses were sensibly priced) that we just need to buckle down and stop wasting money on avocado toast.
The old safety valve of emigration is also no longer a realistic option for most. Obviously Brexit (though the EU was frankly of little use anyone to anyone not speaking a foreign language, and they are in just as bad, if not worse, economic straits then we are). All the obvious contenders - NZ, Oz, USA, Canada etc. are now extremely exacting as to who they'll let in, and all face similar issues (if not as far gone as the UK).
I could go on about the increase in crime, coarsening of manners, rise in homelessness on our city street and general signs of social decay all around. Face facts. The UK is in decline. People living in the dying days of the Roman Empire felt the same way. We've had our time in the sun and future belongs to other countries now, most obviously China, a totalitarian dictatorship which is using the technological advances of the modern world to create ever greater and more intrusive forms of surveillance, most obviously with their grotesque 'social credit' system. Sadly western governments seems to be rather jealous, and the lite version trialled here during the height of the vaccine hysteria shows that most Brits are very comfortable with the idea. Which means I can't really see our freedom-based, democratic system surviving out this century tbh.
But, as the those patronising boomers love to say, be glad you don't live in South Sudan/Bangladesh/Haiti where things are even worse.