you're exactly right. The counter-culture upheaval, drug craze and hippie movement probably wouldn't have occurred in the 60's if we hadn't reached a level of wealth where young irresponsible spoiled people could easily support themselves, do drugs and protest against da man all at the same time. Now they have to work like slaves.
Back in 1970 you could get a VW bug and travel across the country happy and free and whereever you ran out of money you could just ask somebody where you could go to get a temporary job and you could get one just like that, then work for a week and go on. The employers would accept that back then. We were a much more prosperous nation by many measurements back then.
In the early 80's conservatives noticed this and would blame these trends on liberals and rightly so because liberals did change the policies that started us down this road. But the conflict between liberals and conservatives is yesterday's paradigm. Today's paradigm is a conflict between pro-New World ORder and anti-New World Order. The pro-New World ORder people don't care about our population's welfare. So today Republicans don't want to look at this stuff. But 20 years ago they did.
Is that what Brian Adams was singing about?