Do you think it's due to changes in technology? political beliefs? or overpopulation?
Today homes are out of reach for middle class because we have a population of 3.9 million in los angeles, but have a zoning capacity of only 4.2 million. It's not exactly rocket science how to fix this mess. Legalize building housing and housing will appear to satiate demand.
https://la.curbed.com/2015/4/8/9972362/everything-wrong-with...
I am not sure that the average is the appropriate measure to use when looking at societies and well-being.
Can the poorest live respectably and participate meaningfully in their local communities? How are we doing on that?
Cars are safer and last longer (and cost 2x as much). Some forms of medical care are better (surgery). TVs have more resolution and increasing sources of media leads to more mouth agape consumption at home.
Other than that, I can't see any advantage to now over then.
To continue your analogy it's like the world's supply chains stopped colocating their own servers, shedding unused capacity, in favor of AWS. Sure, there will be a hiccup under unexpected load, but new instances will spin up soon enough and meanwhile you've saved a ton of money, resources, and energy when demand was low.