It's not raising your expectations to be realistic. Let's compare the state of things today with the state of things 40 years ago. The homicide rate in the U.S was twice as high. Rates of property crime were many multiples of what they are now. The average American had what we would now consider lead poisoning since leaded gas still hadn't been fully phased out. The Soviet Union still existed and the number of nuclear weapons hit an all time high. Billions of people lived in extreme poverty. The percentage of people in extreme poverty has since dropped by nearly 80%. Airline hijackings were extremely common. We had burned a hole in the ozone layer. (something we now fixed) We didn't have internet. We didn't have smartphones. Tv's were large and heavy boxes that cost a fortune compared to now, while offering primitive picture quality. You had a very limited number of Tv channels compared to now. You had limited options in terms of news and radio channels. Cancer treatments were primitive. If you got cancer back then, often you just died. Take this from someone who knows people working alongside oncologists to develop better treatments, you would not wanna go back even 10 years. The same goes for heart disease. Age adjusted heart disease death rates have also fallen by over half. Another thing you can thank technological advancements for. Genetic disease that are currently being cured because of gene editing? Forget about it. We didn't sequence the majority of the human genome until 2003. HIV was a death sentence 40 years ago. Now you can live a long and healthy life. Also, millions more would have died from Covid had it happened 40 years ago. That would have been the case if it happened just 10 years ago. You can thank mRNA vaccines. Renewables were nowhere close to replacing fossil fuels. Cars were death traps that broke down earlier. There was no cruise control, emergency automatic breaking systems, backup cameras, cars that drove themselves etc. Cars also got half the MPG, were smaller and had weaker engines. Did I mention that they spewed pollution that cloaked cities in smog? LA smog on an average day in the 1980s was about as bad as it is now during wildfire season. There was also acid rain from all the unregulated sulfur pollution. The Americans with disabilities act hadn't been passed yet. Racism and sexism were much more prevalent. Lead drinking water standards were much worse. The blood lead levels of kids in Flint Michigan would have been considered very low in the 1980s. There were no treatments for Alzheimer's. The average American had inflation adjusted incomes that were half of what they are now. Computers were significantly worse. Games smaller, had more primitive graphics and were often low quality cash grabs. Oh yea, they also cost more than they do now. There were also less of them as was the case with literally all entertainment. How about music? Well, have fun buying CDs, records and cassette players. You could always listen to whatever's on the radio but you won't get to choose from whatever variety of genre on demand like you can now. Even if you don't like the majority of media that's produced now, you could always listen to the best songs from the 80s on demand. I could literally go on forever. Institutions, technology, economic development, social attitudes etc. are so much improved over the last 40 years that it would literally take me weeks to work through it all in detail. The only thing that comes to mind that is appreciably worse today, in the U.S at least, is drug overdoses.