How come that during the 1970s, most Americans could work a 40-hour week and own a house and car, support a family and put kids through college?

There are many expenses today that we feel are essential but didn’t used to exist. How much does a typical family now pay for cell phones, internet, streaming services, computers, etc? Total cost for that in the 1970s? One landline for a few bucks a month. We also love further from our jobs and families have two cars instead of one or zero and using public transportation. We want largest houses with more land instead of living close to each other in urban neighborhoods. We pay for child care instead of living close to family.

So yes, things like college have become crippling expensive (albeit with financial aid available). But it’s also heavily driven by societal change as well.

Because the middle class did not have to carry the full load of paying our national debt with taxes back then. The corporate tax rate was 70%. That meant to make a profit and pay shareholders a good return corporations had to have huge tax write-offs. So new factories were always being built.....new products launched.........wages raised.......LOTS of new good paying jobs created.......no problem paying good benefits.......bonuses.............because all of those were "business expenses" and fully deductible. So the tax rate for workers was very low...........that meant more money in workers pockets to spend and the economy was always good.

Reaguns ruined that by dropping corporate tax rates.........so there was much less incentive by companies to create more good paying jobs to still get a great tax rate after expenses. And he raised taxes on workers..........and started to tax Social Security to make up for the taxes that the rich was NOT paying........for the first time ever. That was the beginning of the end of a prosperous middle class.

I was just in my old neighborhood and remembered all the families that lived there that could never afford owning now. Regular middle class families.

The boomers hadn't yet overtaken their parents in power. Once they did they started manipulating the government legislation to garner more profit in slow scorched earth policies that would allow them to remain prosperous at the sake of their kid's own livelihood.

thats alie, id say 40% of people did that everybody else rented, took the bus,and their kids didnt go to higher education,it only in tv shows that peopel did allthose things

Capital wealth was more widely dispersed and the idea of paying a fair wage for a fair day's work was not so outlandish as it seems to some business leaders today.

Wages have not increased commensurable with the cost of living. In other words- corporate greed.

That was before avocado toast became mainstream

Because you're thinking of middle-class white Americans as the only representatives of the nation back then?

The rich boomers really boogered things up