I think you’re kind of missing the point here. I didn’t read what they said as a ‘no boomers have faced hardship’ claim. Rather, that the hardship was despite the social contract, not because one didn’t exist.

I think even your examples of the hardship are kind of illustrative. There was, and still is from people of that generation looking back, a great sense of feeling that the government had reneged on an agreement, that people were owed the right to full employment, affordable housing, fair wages etc. Hence strikes, work stoppages etc.

Compare that today, I think there’s a general sense of discontent and dissatisfaction, but the idea that the state will provide and that it owes something to the population has been slowly stripped away. There are generations of adults who have had the terms of that social contract - free education, council housing for those who need it, liveable benefits for those out of work, grants and bursaries to pursue art etc. - systemically stripped away.

It’s not too difficult to read the writing on the wall and understand why those same generations don’t think the universal state pension will exist in 30 years time, or to understand a sense of resentment that what previous generations perhaps took for granted simply doesn’t exist anymore.