Previous generations lived through world wars, famines, and other devastation. Those born in the wrong place also face unimaginable hardship today, but most of us have not been that unlucky. Still, youth unemployment in the south of Europe has been 20%-40% for the past two decades. You can’t blame people for feeling their prospects are grim when they see all their friends struggling in young adulthood, even when objectively speaking previous generations had to deal with far worse problems. The paradox is that when everybody has a lot of opportunity then competition becomes proportionally more fierce. That gives rise to the impression that things are getting worse when people should conclude the opposite: more people getting more opportunities means more competition. You can’t have upward mobility without commensurate downward mobility.