You must have missed the part where you own a house and/or a car, a cell phone, a big screen TV, a state-of-the-art game system, a PC or laptop, and so on. You don't count yourself as having a richer life than people did 40 years ago? Wealth is not money. Capitalism is responsible for these developments.
What the hell are you even talking about here? Your first sentence talks about a bunch of material crap, and your second sentence talks about a "richer life". Those are pretty much orthogonal. Lets break it down your list:
House - Yep I have a small condo, shelter does improve my life. They had houses 40 years ago though, so I'm not sure what we are comparing here.
Car - Sort of - I drive my company car, about 90% of my use of the thing is work related. I hate driving but there are times it is useful. Cars existed 40 years ago.
Big Screen TV - I own an old CRT I inherited from an old roommate that left, I never use it (I have no or satellite service, nor even an antenna to plug into it). Obviously I don't think much of TV making life "richer".
State-of-the-art game system - I do own a Wii, its been broken for the last several months. I haven't bothered to fix it because I honestly don't miss it. Apparently it didn't really contribute much to having a richer life.
PC or Laptop - Computers and specifically the Internet are the one thing I'll give you that made a huge difference in quality of life.
Anything else? Cell phones did eliminate a lot of old frustrations. Looking around my home I don't see much of anything else noteworthy, certainly nothing that didn't exist 40 years ago.
The main problem in life is that we work too much and thus can't enjoy any of the stuff we have (whether 40 year old tech or new). That is why we are miserable all the damn time and hate our lives. But the way society is set up, its either work yourself to death and be constantly miserable, or be out of work and eventually starve to death in the streets. Why isn't the march of technology moving our work week towards 20 hours (or less)?
The answer is that it is more efficient to work one person for 40 hours than to work two people 20 hours each.
And why is efficiency so important? Because that's what sends maximized profits to the rich shareholders at the top.
So instead of having better and better lives, we are forced to fight ever harder to have a job or else starve.So that the rich can get richer without doing any work themselves.