That's more like the top decile than the average. The top decile in any era has it pretty good.
Most of the "life is too expensive today" complaints are some flavor of: Grandpa was a 90th percentile income earner and I am a 50th percentile income earner, so even though my life is objectively much better than Grandpa's in many ways (childhood vaccination, clean air, seatbelts, etc) the loss of status is much more salient than the gains in material well-being.
Most of the "life is too expensive today" complaints are some flavor of: Grandpa was a 90th percentile income earner and I am a 50th percentile income earner, so even though my life is objectively much better than Grandpa's in many ways (childhood vaccination, clean air, seatbelts, etc) the loss of status is much more salient than the gains in material well-being.