If by "back in the day" you mean the half-century following WWII, the USA had it uncommonly good: dirt-cheap post-secondary education, increasing upward mobilit

If by "back in the day" you mean the half-century following WWII, the USA had it uncommonly good: dirt-cheap post-secondary education, increasing upward mobility for everyone, low cost of living relative to income, and pensions. That's 3 of the 5 Social Determinants of Health, arguably better on average throughout the 1950s-1990s than post-2008. To the extent there is a wealth surplus now, it hasn't reached most people. Some of our current situation (including what you call diseases of affluence) feels linked to increasingly insecure prospects of housing, income, and retirement for the people who our increasingly labor-automated economy is leaving behind.