This isn’t about a time with no worries in their respective present, this is about the future. A couple decades ago there still was genuine hope for the future, an almost certain expectation that the future will be better.

A look at science fiction will confirm that: You get none of the space utopias from the sixties that honestly believed in the goodness of people today. There is only bleak techno dystopia from the nineties onwards, where everybody fends for themselves and no hope for long lasting peace is in sight.