I Love Economics

What factors do you believe explain why in the 50s there were factory workewrs who could support a wife and kids on a single paycheck when you have to make bank to do that now? As far as I can tell, some of the factors involved:
1)Population growth; since the baby boomers, there are more people, which means more resources are taken up.
2)House bills are more expensive due to multiple tv's, phones, video games, air condition etc that we have.
3)This one I am not too sure of and may be interpreted as sexist, but women in the workforce. More women in the workforce means more more division of labor, which means smaller pay checks.

What about you? What do you think are the factors?

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whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

All of those factors were present.. There was also a global trade boom , into Asia and Europe as a result of the Marshall plan in Germany and Japan and the military was still active globally (notably Korea) with the UN cooperative to the US.. These were in fact the US Golden days that were going to last just into the 70s. Economies of scale in manufacturing, Pre the Japan push to export really gained traction and before the financial markets took to piracy through abandoning the Gold Standard and deregulation. Sadly that cat is way out of the bag now.