Quote:
Originally Posted by miketoronto
I read it a while ago, however we are actually worse off today than people 30-40years ago.
30-40 years ago a family could get by with one income, and have a house, car, go on a vacation once in a while, etc.
Today a family is very lucky if they can get by with one income. We need to have two income households to cover the expenses that 30 years ago were covered by one income. And not all of it has to do with house size, etc.
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If your phone and TV used 1970s technology, your car conformed to 1970s safety standards, your vacations were mostly road trips, and you were generally not likely to go to college, then I suspect your outlook on how much money is necessary to "get by" would be quite different.
Perhaps it's simply that median income, while increasing significantly since the 1970s, hasn't increased at the same rate as our median expected standard of living, and for many years we bridged that gap with ever-increasing debt loads, and the bill has finally come due? That would still represent a major sociological issue to confront; but it also means it's nonetheless
objectively false to say that on average people have actually gotten poorer since the 1970s.