Think about most hostile places, in the midst of civil war- do they produce the greatest people?

In all times, the great philosophers, engineers, generals, scientists, etc. Were never made up of peoppe that suffered greaters hardship, that starved in the childhood. They were always elites, people with best education or at least middle class.

We've run this experiment, there is zero evidence for it.

People born in 1930: Clint Eastwood, Sandra Day O’Connor, Warren Buffett, Sean Connery, George Soros, Ray Charles.

That's not a particularly impressive list, Steven Hawking was born in the 40's, Bill Gates was born in the 50,s, Bezos in the 60's. I am not seeing how 30's was a particularly 'strong' decade.

This is super obvious but I'll say it anyway. We have been living in the good times phase for many decennia now, so it's no surprise that you don't see emotional damage from the bad times phase.

We've had perpetual war for the last 20 years. We've had increasing inequality. The temperature is rising, wages are stagnating, riots in major urban areas are becoming more common.

These are not the good times. We have plenty to eat and too much technology but these are not what make the good times.

Perpetual war in a far off land that has pretty much zero impact on people at home.

Inequality sure, but the economy has been on a tear in the US since the 90’s, contrast that with the decade of the Great Depression.

And the riots now are nothing compared to the 60’s riots worldwide.

The last 20-30 years have definitely been easy times for the developed world. Not without challenges (2008 crash) but relatively speaking easy times.

I am not sure that is true. As an outside observer of the US I see a lot of highly trained, potentially dangerous veterans who came home to a pile of broken promises with broken psyches and sometimes broken bodies. There are now decades worth of these guys milling around in a society awash with firearms and blitzed with misinformation. It's a powderkeg that might just go off unexpectedly. Of course there are side effects to those middle east adventures.

Genx parents were born in 1925-45. Those were not good times.

I guess I think of myself as genx when I'm actually geny.