Progress is cool if you're on the side of the wheel that's going up. It's the worst fucking thing in the world if you're on the side that's going down and are about to get smashed into the mud.
The poor are economically better off than at almost any point in history; actual food poverty is almost unknown, objectively people are living in better houses than ever before, and so on. It just doesn't seem like any of that makes poor people any happier or poverty any less wretched, somehow.
For people caught in that kind of situation, progress sucks.