Really? So that’s why some unskilled nebbish was still able to buy a home, a new car, and put a kid through college, often without his wife having to go to work? Just because we have better gadgets now than 50 years ago does NOT mean living standards are better.
First of all, there were many, many workers in the ‘50s who couldn’t afford to support a family, buy a home, and put kids through college on an unskilled laborer’s salary.
Sure, there were some union jobs paying above and beyond, but where did that wacky system get us?
If someone wanted to go back to the gadget-free, 1000 sq ft home without air conditioning and with one car, etc., he or she could probably do that now fairly easily. And junior can work his own way through community college on up.
But middle America couldn’t afford vacations to Europe and elsewhere, as are common now, or many, many other consumer items that people apparently value.
You were talking pure economics, and the pure economics of today versus three generations ago is that we’ve got a lot more now, with people living far better, on the whole, than they did 60 years ago. You want to go back to the medicine of the ‘50s too? People have it far better now, and a good chunk of that is due to globalization.