My response to a post on Facebook about “the good old days” when a single breadwinner (the man, mostly) could support a family, buy a home and a car, and send his kids to college on one salary.
The basic core of this is certainly true. From 1945 to 1980, the working classes did very well in our economies. Then the ownership class realized that working stiffs were getting a big share of the wealth and set out to take it back, and largely succeeded, thanks to marginal tax cuts and government subsidies, and diminishing unions. But I will point out that the “average” family in that era did not have a cell phone, big screen tv with cable, electronic games, advanced appliances including dishwashers and driers, air conditioning, travel, the surfeit of clothing and accessories we all have now, a lot of our pharmaceuticals and health care options, and so on. You sometimes see documentaries about a family doing the pioneer life, living in a log cabin, raising and eating animals and vegetables, and so on. When will someone do one with a family going back to the 1960’s, with landlines, unreliable cars, primitive color tv’s with antennae, and so on. It would be fun. Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital” is a good, detailed analysis of the general economic trends, but, yeah, it’s a slog to read.