And even then "keeping up with the Joneses" was a 1200 square foot house with 2+ kids per bedroom, eating out less than once a month, a single car and a single TV. Vacations were a drive to the beach; never out of state let alone out of country. You had a single set of "Sunday" clothes and the rest were hand mended.

They thought it was awesome because the 1930's were still in living memory and were way worse.

If you want that lifestyle today you can still have it on a single median income.

The biggest difference was health care. Back then a small majority had health insurance, but those who didn't weren't bankrupted by health emergencies -- you just died or suffered instead.

Now that women can work, ratcheting effects of dual-income households being able to spend more mean that generally two incomes are required to keep up the same standard of living, so now women must work. This does not seem like an improvement to me. Before, women who wanted to work could not, now women who want to stay at home with their kids can not.

You can even describe it with your own words.

I picked this at random from the middle of the page: "Notoriously, egg prices quadrupled over the past few years, after mass culls of hens to halt bird flu. But a typical basket of groceries has largely tracked overall inflation (see chart 2). That is no surprise: the inputs into grocery bills are a microcosm of the economy, encompassing goods costs (the food itself), wages (of cashiers and warehouse workers) and rent (paid by the supermarket)." Tell us with your own words what you see with your own eyes.

undefined