Are you really talking about the couple thousand dollars that people received during the pandemic? In most of the country that might have paid your rent for a month or a few weeks of groceries or if you're fortunate maybe one luxury good.
IMO one nice (un?)intended consequence of the liquids restriction is limiting liquid spills on the floor of the plane i.e. somebody can't spill a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew or IDK, a gallon of laundry detergent on the plane (Sure there's the beverages on the plane or whatever you can buy post-security but they're usually not that large either) -- there's enough mess without having to deal with people porting around whatever amount of liquid they please.
The point isn't really whether its a net benefit or not, the point it's a "luxury" of tens to several hundred dollars per month that is almost universal at this point that is not really comparable to any other discretionary purchase historically.
How are these bills now worthless? I can't go to Zimbabwe today and get 100 trillion dollars (2.6 billion USD) from the currency that they printed that is supposed to be worth that amount?
Somebody from 1930 might posit the average American today is rich (if not famous) based on the average household with private bedrooms, air conditioning and central heat, multiple vehicles, multiple TVs, computers and electronic gadgets, kitchens stocked with food and gadgets, closets full of clothing, etc. Sure people have problems and poverty still exists but at baseline its a pretty comfortable lifestyle.
Mostly bemoaning about not being rich and famous comes down to desiring better (or perceived to be better) versions of items listed above -- or the ability to have "fuck you" money and the fantasy that buying people off will isolate you or solve all your interpersonal problems.
$1 per student in a 25-student classroom for 30 hrs/week for 36 weeks is like 27k, the base salary isn't much higher than that. So that's assuming a worthless teacher with 0 added value. The added value is probably at least 3x even for a subpar teacher up to 10-20x for a top performer and the actual time variables are all probably higher than listed above.
I would imagine the 10-20x value-adders aren't incentivized and are probably actively de-incentivized in the faculty senate/union dynamic unless they literally love the job that much which is debunked in the OP post.
you can cancel a flight or a truck shipment (not great but feasible) -- you can't quite just cancel patients that are in the hospital.