I have seen a few of these with similar story lines and realized we are living it right now. They have the best healthcare, the best food, the best everything and most of us are a few dollars from disaster. That scares some of us to death literally from all the stress it causes.
Good sci fi usually isn’t about the future, aliens, etc. It’s about the present, but portrayed in a strange way so as to bypass your existing preconceptions about the situation, so you can look at it with fresh eyes.
It also makes it ‘safe’ to discuss controversial topics, because it’s ‘only scifi’ (or horror/fantasy).
Allows creators and authors to fly under the radar with stuff that could potentially get you arrested, censored, cause controversy or end your career. Prime example, Tarkovski movies like Solaris or Stalker, which are full of religious metaphors, despite being released in the USSR.
