The problem is they are not the big expenses that improve someone's quality of life. Decent housing, health insurance/healthcare, education and transportation are the big spending items for most people, not toys or even phones. Most of the things you mentioned are affordable to almost everyone in the developed world, maybe in an inferior form (like a huawei instead of an apple, h&m instead of gap) but still available.
For an average joe who has two kids and has to be at work because most people can't and don't work remotely even today, "hacking" inexpensive living isn't so much about giving up on their huawei phone or h&m clothes. It's more about giving up on having a decent place to live, giving up on their children's education, not being able to commute to work, etc. And that's not quite doable at all.
Because you need a backup plan for when you lose that job. Or your employer does not increase your wages and you need other employers to sell to to earn income that keeps up with your expenses.
It would be possible to substantially reduce costs, but only by living among people who are objectively poor by current standards. Without passing any judgement, this brings disadvantages of its own. Where could we live on the reduced income without also forgoing society with educated, liberal, cosmopolitan people? To me that’s the harder part to give up than an iPhone each year or cable tv.
Sure, go back to the post war era where countries right after the point we started building massive amounts of infrastructure debt to say 'look how good things are' with absolutely no understanding the situation was untenable. Houses leaked energy like mad, and we were already full bore pulling coal out of the ground to fuel that growth. And, jeesh, the chemicals we were releasing at the time were not pleasant at all.
You are looking for a golden past that didn't exist.
With remote work, I’m not sure you really need transportation. If you do, a bicycle is $50. But again I’m not sure why you’d be commuting to a job daily in a car if the presumed objective is to have less expenses so you can work less.
We could quibble about the exact numbers, but my general point is just that quality of life expectations have increased so much, that if one can somehow "hack" this, living very inexpensively is quite doable – and comparable to how everyone lived not so long ago.