That's only because you're unaware of innovations that have happened in other sectors and their consequences.
In oil, there've been huge breakthroughs in fracking, horizontal drilling, and oil shale and tar sands mining. As a result, U.S. oil imports have fallen by a third since 2008 [1], and domestic crude oil production is up nearly 50%. We've pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan because the Middle East is no longer strategically important to us, saving thousands of lives in those wars. Oil is expensive now, but the price is relatively stable, meaning that we can plan ahead for the future (like buying a fuel-efficient car instead of an SUV) instead of being at the whims of global politics.
In finance, it's now possible to get funding for an idea without being a grizzled 30-year veteran of an industry. If you have a creative project or even something plain-old crazy, you can go on Kickstarter and crowd-fund it with pre-orders. Microfinance is commonplace enough that it's driving down returns, and it's lifted millions of people out of poverty in the developing world. You can accept credit card payments with just an iPad.
In education, you can take courses online with world-leading professors at elite universities, all without leaving your living room or paying tuition.
In travel, you can take virtual tours of places you might want to visit on your computer, map out on itinerary, read reviews, and book flights, hotel rooms, and activities within minutes, again all without leaving your living room. I'm just old enough to remember travel agents. Remember when you had to drive to meet one, have only a vague idea of what country you wanted to see, take the options they give you because you don't know what else is available, and pay through the nose for all of it? The first Google-assisted trip I took, back in 2004, was a revelation, and that was before Maps or StreetView or smartphones or Kayak or Yelp or the universal ability to book things online.
Most of the time when I hear folks say "Things have gotten worse than they used to be", they don't mean "things have gotten worse", they mean "Argh, things have changed and I don't know how anything works anymore and what's my place in the world and how will I support myself and everybody else seems to be doing better than me!" Much of which is an illusion, because everybody else is equally insecure about their prospects and place in the world. But the opportunities are out there, and objectively speaking, we are so much, much better off than we were when I was a kid in the 80s.
[1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_...
[2] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_a.htm