This isn't a new phenomenon, and, as the author mentions, is not peculiar to the UK. When I was a 13-year-old in 1992 an eccentric science teacher would remind

This isn't a new phenomenon, and, as the author mentions, is not peculiar to the UK. When I was a 13-year-old in 1992 an eccentric science teacher would remind my class nearly every week that ours was the first American generation that was expected to enjoy a worse standard of living than our parents had. (Going back even farther you could point to popular expressions like the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen;" people have been talking like this for a long time.) I remember reading for the first time about the loss of the future as a frame of reference in this article, which I thought was very interesting but it now unfortunately seems to be only available behind a paywall: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 . Anyway, I think this sort of thing happens independently of the specific vagaries of politics and economics in any country: change is taking place quickly, on a grand scale, in societies where ordinary people are enjoined to think about the course of events over which they, individually, have little control.