Two people earn a lot more than one person used to by any material metric. People don’t feel any richer because any surplus gets eaten up by positional goods. It’s not enough to have a perfectly reasonable 1950s house. You must have one twice as big, like your friends. It’s not enough to go on a camping holiday, or road trip. You have to have a trip to the Caribbean twice a year. Most of all, the ultimate positional good, the real prestige markers, an Ivy League degree for your children and a house in a good school district, i.e. one with no poor people.