I still feel as free as I did 30 years back. I'm not sure what I've lost.
Perhaps it hasn't affected you specifically in your day-to-day life, but I'd recommend taking a look at the powers the federal government has assumed in your lifetime contrary to Amendment 10 (I think?)
which loosely translated says the feds can't just assume powers not specifically granted to it by the Constitution. Granted, these powers were reserved a government--the states--but there are a number of reasons I won't get into here why this is different--and better--than the federal government taking on expanded roles (and yeah, the states taking on more than they should is also a problem). This has been rampantly trampled on in my lifetime. The judicial branch creates law from the bench. Neaux. Every presidential administration in my adult life has "ruled" more akin to a king than a US President, creating fiat law by executive orders. Again, neaux. (Yes, I know EO's are a thing. The scope of them that we've gotten to is
not supposed to be a thing.) This is the tip of the iceberg. The more power the government has, by definition the less freedom you have. And the government is much, much more powerful and pervasive than when you were a young man. Think about something as mundane as the AFA.....the Federal government mandated that every citizen was compelled to purchase insurance on pain of financial penalty. That was unthinkable even when I was in college. That limited freedom, it was noticeable, and it was distressingly run-of-the-mill. Ask Badger about owning a business. You think he'd tell you his freedom as a business owner is more or less than it was 30 years ago?
Free speech is not so technically different, but in practice it is, particularly as pertains to religion and politics. Yet in several instances, it has in fact been legally curtailed.
Censorship, information flow-control, and gaslighting has reached levels I wouldn't have dreamed of 20 years ago. This has as much to do with tech companies as governmental issues, but the effects are the same, and I'm so aware of them to the point it stuns me when someone else isn't. Maybe you don't see this as a freedom issue. I think it absolutely is.
My taxes are not better/lower. Don't know how you've managed it. For me and my wife, things are not better than they were in our early 20's. Even if they were, government spending is way up, and though government spending may not be something you think of as "freedom," it is related. The more recklessly the government spends money it doesn't have, the more our future selves are indebted to the future government. That's moving in the other direction from "freedom."
The Patriot Act was/is a cluster (thanks, W.) even if you don't feel it in your everyday life. Few citizens have directly felt the adverse effects--that I know of--but the fact that three-letter agencies have so much more leeway when they do decide to mess with somebody concerns me. The mere potential is what should be concerning, and why I feel less "free" than before Bush's administration pushed it through.
I can't presume to tell you how you feel, but I submit that if you don't feel any less free than you did 30 years ago, you aren't trying to step in many of the places many other citizens are trying to. Try having my political and religions opinions and see how it flies when applying to or working for a Fortune 500 company. The response and consequences are patently NOT like they were 30 years ago.