They only talk about it in that way because they sort of remember it personally.
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I wonder when the peak was in terms of living standards. Obviously there's no objective way of measuring that, but it's always an interesting way of looking at things. It was obviously at some point between the early '50's and the late '70's (the same as in other Western countries) though I wonder whether the peak might have been a little earlier.
Can only speak of the US, but here it was definitely earlier. By the late 1960s in the US, inflation was getting pretty bad and wages stopped keeping up with price growth sometime, like, I want to say 1969-1971. Even though both wages and prices rose during the 70s here, wages never kept up with prices, so living standards technically were never as good. That difference was covered up with debt, btw, like it was in this decade.
The position that the US found itself in after the expected post-war recession of 1946-47 has scarcely been equalled in history. Basically, we could do whatever we wanted, when we wanted.
Besides after WWII, Western Europe was essentially a somewhat insignificant province of the US because we did hold all the wealth, industry, etc.
Most put the peak at about 1973. Basically we experienced very rapid growith in standard of living from 1945-1973, then stasis to mild growth from 73-80, than rapid deterioration ever since (with a mild respite in the 90s). Of course here I'm speaking of working class standards of living - the only figure we should pay attention to when judging policy.
