This is correct if you consider "better standard of living" to mean "better standard of living relative to rest of the world". In terms of actual consumption and productivity, young people in America will have far richer lives then their parents, because the exponential increase in technology we see every day is creating wealth at a ridiculous pace. Our parents did not have iPods, cell phones, e-mail or social networks (facebook, hacker news). Try living without any of these for a day to see how "rich" your parents were at your age; who knows what will be around 20 years from now?
We take these things for granted and don't consider them "making us richer" because they are widely accessible, and people have a tendency to consider themselves rich only when they are richer then their neighbors.
Your point might be correct for the majority of the world's population but certainly not for the US...You don't think technology equals wealth, really? I'm surprised to find people who think that at HN. Think about how much would you pay for a sony walkman today vs. 20 yrs ago.
In that same vein, how can you calculate the cost of healthcare for technologies that did not exist 20 years ago? How do you compare the cost of a McMansion to the kinds of houses (tiny) that were being built 20 years ago? You can't. So instead people look at numbers they can calculate, and draw limited conclusions. It's a sort of selection bias based on what kinds of data we know how to work with.
Even if technology isn't equal to wealth, technology certainly drives down the costs of food, makes modern housing more comfortable and safe, and expands the number of ailments that are treatable by health care.
Read Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" for a more nuanced look at the relationship between "technology" and food. One of the reasons "food" is becoming cheaper is due to eliminating much of the nutrition and through ignoring the externalities of environmental costs.
The improvements in health care seem to be offset more and more by our poor food, sedentary lifestyles, and fractured relationships.
Maybe technology has made it cheaper to build a house, but that seems a wash as the dominant cost of housing is the property on which it is built.
In general, yes, technology improves our lives. But can not solve every problem in and of itself, and can exacerbate underlying problems if misused.
We take these things for granted and don't consider them "making us richer" because they are widely accessible, and people have a tendency to consider themselves rich only when they are richer then their neighbors.