FWIW: My impression is that cycle touring is more accessible than it ever has been in my lifetime (I am 63). I also suspect that it is about as popular as it has been with the possible exception of a surge in the bicentennial year.

I think that in general more folks are likely to be able to get time off from work and tour as long as they live even moderately frugal lifestyles. I say this because we now have a workplace environment where a lot of workers either change jobs every few years or work as contract workers sometimes staying only a few months on any given job. During much of my life a lot of the workforce was likely to work for the same employer 20, 30, or more years so leaving a job would be traumatic and life changing. That no longer seems to be the case for a large segment of the work force. Taking a month or whatever between jobs is much more doable for folks who are changing jobs frequently any way.

There is a large segment of the population that chooses to live well beyond their means to the extent that it kills their chances to do a lot of things. At least some of them made choices that limited their ability to tour. Things like new cars, homes well beyond their means, and a host of other luxuries treated as necessities are the problem for that segment of the population.

Yes there are people who are just scraping by in poorly paying jobs, but there always have been, and they generally aren't going to be going on a bike tour regardless of whether people let them camp in their yards or not.

I have crossed the US a couple times, done the pacific coast, and done some other longish tours. I found that it was possible to do so quite cheaply and did not have an especially hard time finding places to camp despite the fact that I choose to very seldom use stealth and have never asked anyone if I could camp in their yard (I have been invited to do so quite often though). On the Trans America and probably on the Southern Tier I camped for free more often than I paid. I did get rooms more often on the ST, but that was because I chose to, not because I needed to.

I have actually found that I sometimes spend less while on tour than I would at home. Most of the folks I met on tour were folks of modest means, living on a modest budget, and doing fine.

All of that reinforces my impression that your proposal is an attempt to solve a problem that doesn't really exist in most places that folks tend to tour in a way that would be unlikely to work even where/if the problem did exist.