That's a good article beginning with an OG age of enlightenment thinker and throwing in contemporary (Canadian) Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now which is itself an outline of how good we have it as a result of enlightenment type thinking but I'm biased,--- I liked the book a lot (liberal capitalist that I am :-).

Those sound like the concerns young Americans have  add health care and racial tensions that may still be awhile in healing. Housing has been an issue here as well, especially in California "tent cities" exist on many off-ramps. As for Las Vegas running out of water...it was built in the middle of the desert: that's more of an "Oh us silly humans" and resource allocation issue. We've had water wars in California as far back as I can remember, we grow more agriculture than rain or runoff can support and it has always been disheartening to see big Ag win over small farms---again we allow those with the best attorneys and most money to influence the rules.


We could be encouraged that our youth are factoring the quality of life of their fellow humans as something to value. The paradigm has been shifting away from glamorising excessive wealth and that in itself is an improvement but the climate crisis continues to precipitate* ( yeah lol ) resistance to science in some of my country and it is from a side that one would have been expected to preserve our environment.
Inequality is not the "natural" out come of capitalism, it is what we are currently allowing.