... I know for a fact that I am better off than my parents ...
I believe for me this is only true because of my job. Because I am a freelance software developer. If I'd have the same occupation as my father or mother, I am sure I would be much worse of today than they were. In The Netherlands taxation has definitely increased over the last decennia and wages haven't kept up with taxation and inflation for most jobs.
That's because over here once you reach retirement age (which has gone up from 65 to 67 or 68), you get a free pension from the government which is enough to last you the rest of your life - nowadays 20-30 years if you're lucky.
I mean think about it. If you're anything like me, you've spent the first 24 or so years of your life in school (paid for in a large part by the government), and the last 30 years in retirement. That gives you about 54 years of not working and 44 years of working - and that's about 5 days a week, with an extra 21-24 holidays + national holidays.
What I'm saying is, you work relatively little yet with the taxes you pay for that you live a very comfortable life. And the work isn't too bad either most of the time.
People often say the government pay for something without breaking that down and realising it's tax-payers/society who pay. That's always worth remembering IMO.
I agree it's worth remembering that "the government doesn't have its own money", but it's as much - if not more, these days - important to remember that paying taxes and every citizen having their tax money in their pocket are not equivalent scenarios. At the very least, governments use tax money to smooth things out on the wealth spectrum. Whether you're rich or poor, you get the same baseline of education, health, security and convenience.
Even working class people are (much) better off than the generation before us, because the standard of living has risen so much. Exotic holidays are within reach of most people (the lady who cleans my house goes on yearly holidays that were extravagant just 25 years ago), we have clothes and food and transport and entertainment that is vastly better than a generation ago, and unimaginable to 95% of all Dutch people the generation before that. We spend on average something like 6-8 percent of our incomes on food; that was 20-30 % 50 years ago, and 50+ percent 50 years before that! I'm typing this in a shopping mall in a poor part of the Netherlands, and look at what people ate buying around me - and they're certainly not 'upper class'!
