In 1971, my parents bought a new 4-bedroom, 3 bath home in CA for $28,000. A new 4-door dodge sedan was ~ $5000. The price of gas was around a quarter and $100 worth of groceries would fill its cavernous trunk.
I believe he paid his employees around $6/hr—significantly over the median at the time. The lady who ran the office probably made less than 5 and was still considered paid well. They were good workers and were paid well and punctually. Many a month my folks weren’t able to draw anything from the business. Almost killed my mom, trying to juggle books and feed a family of six. Every time I’d hear how easy I had it growing up because my parents were “rich” business owners, I’d just laugh.
Many people made a decent living with wages we’d consider obscene today. The purchasing power and wages have gone down every year that I’ve been an adult. That doesn’t even consider the fact that the majority of homes at that point only had one breadwinner—generally that sexist bastard working his ass off for his family.
I decided to compare old versus new wages using the inflation calculator, link below. Regarding the person earning $4.75 in 1971, it would now be $29.42. Not quite over $40, but not bad either. I also was working as a supermarket checker in 1956. First as a union employee they paid me $1.40 per hour or $12.60 today, then they discovered I was leaving for college after the summer and cut me to $1.05 or $9.45 today. Somewhere between 1956 and 1971, it appears that workers started to be paid better.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=4.75&year1=197101&year2=201712
Most of the wage deflation and lowered standards of living are the fault of Republicans and not Democrats. Democrats just chewed the carcass. The Republicans bought off on the global agenda, made fortunes for the upper 5%, and threw the rest of the USA under the bus.