(Addressing the US because I live there) Even people with "middle class" incomes are living paycheck to paycheck these days. How can you contribute to a 401k when you can't even maintain a balance in your savings account? Let alone other investments, etc, even if you do know what you're doing with the various financial instruments.

The cost of living is beyond the pale right now anywhere in the US where you actually stand a chance at making decent money, so your choices are to A: suffer now under severe self-imposed austerity, saving a pittance for retirement knowing that you'll still almost certainly wind up destitute in old age, or B: enjoy your youth to the extremely limited degree that you're able to, have the odd nice coffee or dinner with friends, and then also still become destitute in old age.

Frankly, a huge percentage of the US population are simply fucked, and given the political landscape where you are given a choice between the "do nothing" party on the center right and the "eat the poor: serfdom now" party on the far right, you can't blame people for having absolutely zero hope. As for me, I'm extremely privileged to be a dual citizen of the UK/US so I'm going to be running back to Scotland as soon as humanly possible. Come what may, at least Scotland's position on poor people isn't to let them die on the streets like it is here.

I've long maintained that if every US citizen got to experience the basic social safety nets that even the UK provides, politicians would find themselves strung up by their intestines in short order. I think people here just really lack context as to how truly distopian this country is.