Probably the 90’s in the US. For context I’m an '80s kid.

The dust from deregulation had mostly settled, healthcare hadn’t skyrocketed, education and homes were still mostly affordable. Union busting and offshoring had settled down a little. Bankruptcies crushing retirements, too. You thought that the traditional paths of career, maybe getting married, and buying a house were still on the table. Politics were pretty stable and it was probably the last time you could make the argument that “both sides” were kinda the same. We were kinda coasting after the close of the Cold War…sure there were some skirmishes, but nothing huge. The were the “good old days” where shit was just going OK for the most part (please don’t pedantically point out what was wrong with society, no period is perfect, it’s just that the '90s had a few less bumps in the road). The internet was becoming a more widespread thing, technology was advancing rapidly. You could still save the Earth with a little recycling, Climate Change wasn’t obviously having effects as veiwed by the average person.

Followed by the '00s where we got hammered really fast with dot-com bust, 9/11, recession after recession, decades of war, politics shifting hard right, rapidly rising costs thanks to speculation and corporate mergers…it’s been pretty unsettled for quite a while and for those entering the workforce now it’s rough.

Yeah…the '90s. Things were still looking up until TSHTF in '00s and after.