I’m about to make a very bold and controversial claim: Baby boomers have had it easier than any generation that's come before or after them.....
The author has a point.
The Baby Boomers were born in a time of unprecedented prosperity: America had far and away the world's most industrial capacity, and the world had been decimated by the war. This, and a flood of new consumer goods, meant that factory jobs were abundant. The parents of a large chunk of the boomer generation were World War II veterans who received loads of benefits from the GI Bill.
They proceeded to take all of that for granted. Now, we have entitled Baby Boomers, who instilled that same entitlement mentality in Generation X, all the while the world was slowly catching up, and communication changes (reliable long-distance and then toll-free phone service, television, the Internet) made it easy for a few mega-corporations to corner the market early and make oodles of money without having to employ lots of people the way they had to during the mid-20th century. Gen X could at least keep up for a while; they were a generation that could advance if they got an education and moved up to a middle-class, white collar position. (This isn't unique to America: in Japan, they had a similar phenomenon known as the salaryman.) This had another effect: these white-collar positions were also a lighter workload than the factory work their parents had to do, which meant that they expected their children to have the same opportunity if they did the same and that factory work was unappealing.
Well, then we get to the millennials: the economy bursts, the cost of a college education goes through the roof, and social mobility grinds to a halt as the careers Gen X could access are now only available to those with extremely specific qualifications. (Take a look at how much of the Class of 2007 is in a solid career path, then look at 2009. It's a world of difference.) Because men are hurt worse than women, this upends the social status, and as fewer men meet the traditional breadwinner mold, and increasingly both partners in a marriage have to have good jobs, which might not be in the same location, to make ends meet, this drives down marriage rates. Just about everything our parents and grandparents experienced turned out not to be true for them.
It's really a massive chain reaction of high expectations and declining realities. Make no mistake, America's in decline right now.