As a fellow Gen X, a lot of these things paid into our future via taxes and pensions and an economy of industry that guaranteed future, employment, stability, etc.

That’s not the world we live in today because it has been stripped by profiteering, short term investment, capitalism strip of any regulation and oversight that no longer sees any value in investing in the people who produce, and only sees value in short-term gains at the cost of everything else, especially destroying everything in its path to achieve that goal.