All very simple. Best explained perhaps by a recent evening in which I watched the movie Marny on Netflix. Very first scene was in his butcher shop. Sign for chicken on the wall, .53/lb.
Recently was in Publix. Chicken was 1.49/lb.
Median income in 1955 was around $5000. Today it’s around $50,000. So income has gone up 10x, while price of chicken has gone up less than 3x. This means chicken, in real terms, costs less than 1/3 what it did 60 years ago.
Tasty chicken could still be produced and sold, using the old methods, but it would cost a multiple of what it did back then. Most people think of chicken as a commodity and won’t pay more.
Same exact scenario as airplane flights. People complain about the service but always take the lowest price. What do they think will happen to quality in such a scenario? Someone providing higher quality, by definition, has higher costs and can’t compete with somebody willing to cut quality.
It’s odd, we have a whole range of qualities at different prices for cars, liquor, restaurants, housing and a lot of other things, but not for meats, airplane flights and many other things. The entire difference being whether the market is willing to pay more for higher quality.
Actually I think median means the balance point of 50% By that measure half of Americans now make less than 30K. Per household it is just over 50K, which is really not the same as the better sounder and higher figure.