Only about 50% finished HS - now it's 95%.
Doctors were not very affordable by anyone - now it's >90%.
Most people didn't have running water and electricity yet now it's almost 100%.
The only thing that's not as nice as 'real estate' - housing was cheap, but the houses were crap, and often you were isolated.
If you want to go out of major US urban area, and build a small home to 1925 standards, then it's affordable.
But if you are young, then I am actually sympathetic to you: education and housing costs are 'worse' now than in then 1990's. Those are the two things I will say Gen Z 'has it hard' with. That, and having to grow up where everyone has social media, which is not a social benefit, it's dystopian if you ask me.
Higher education is far more necessary for even a middle class existence than it was in 1922, and the middle class is getting less and less affordable. One of my grandfathers worked a family farm. My dad was able to grind his way out of the lower classes by working at Friendly's and other odd jobs to pay for college (up to and including his PhD). My father in law's uncle was a high school dropout who started showing people around at the local hardware store and was such a good salesperson the owner hired him after a few weeks. None of those are possible for most Americans these days (good luck pulling the leave-it-to-beaver "prove my value to the local store owner" at Home Depot or Walmart).
US citizens are now regularly advised to take Uber to the hospital if they can survive the trip, as it avoids the cost of an ambulance, which is often over a thousand dollars in a country where most can't afford a $500 emergency. I'm not sure how that qualifies as "affordable", and certainly not affordable to 90%+. Granted this is primarily an American issue.
More important to me than the quality of the house is the quality of the school district that it's in (see previous remarks about the modern necessity of education). I can fix/improve a house, I can't fix/improve schooling short of private school, which would probably be more expensive than fixing a house over the long term. Good look finding an affordable house in a good school district near any major metropolitan area with jobs.
Upward mobility is still available and just as rare. The health, intelligence, and drive that allowed someone in 1922 to better themselves are the same things that still allow someone to better themselves in 2022. It’s not easy, but it was never easy. Just look at how many people in 1922 where held back by the color of their skin.
As to getting a job at Walmart, have you ever actually applied? Their standards are incredibly lax.
I'm not arguing things are equivalent to 1922 on an absolute scale, but on a relative scale they're closer than they were in the recent past. The prosperity of the previous century has shifted the goal posts for what defines upper, middle and lower class. But after a long period of shifting the goal posts in a positive direction, we've had three or four decades of things shifting in the opposite direction, and that trend appears to be accelerating for the moment.
As for upward mobility, that largely only exists for people with college degrees these days. And even then only a few select degrees are really worth anything. And college costs are insanely inflated compared to where they were in 1980, let alone 1922. Is it possible to better oneself in 2022? Sure, but I'd argue there were much more opportunities for middle class people just 40 years ago. A Unionized coal miner with experience could make an upper middle class salary without the burden of higher education that costs as much as a house. Ditto for many factory jobs.
A job at Walmart making minimum wage that hasn't been adjusted for inflation for decades does not have anything resembling the same purchasing power as a minimum wage job 60 years ago. Walmart jobs are notorious for requiring food stamps despite working full time hours.
It’s similar to how new cars in 2020 are both substantially more expensive on average but also of vastly higher quality. In both cases the cheapest options represent a tiny slice of the overall market suggesting cost is generally less an imposition by outside forces than a choice.
That said, this stood out to me:
> A job at Walmart making minimum wage [...]
According to Glassdoor[1], a retail cashier at Walmart with no experience earns an average of $22,049 / year. Assuming 50 weeks @ 40 hours per week, that's $11.05 / hour.
That does not include cash bonuses or profit sharing, which Glassdoor says adds another ~$1k.
Indeed.com[2] shows the average wage for a Walmart cashier is $10.56 - so we're at least in the right ballpark above.
My own experience at Walmart was unloading trucks from 4pm-1am the summer after I graduated high school (2002). I made $7.25 / hour then, when the minimum wage was $5.15.
Trying to build a life on that kind of money isn't easy, and I'm not trying to say that it is; I do want to point out that even Walmart doesn't pay minimum wage as a rule.
That's not to say there aren't other "tricks" that employers use, like limiting hours to prevent employees from qualifying from full-time benefits and such. There are.
The minimum wage in 1982 was $3.25. Today it's $7.25. The purchasing power of the minimum wage has certainly decreased, but I strongly suspect that many more businesses paid minimum wage in 1982 than 2022.
McDonald's in my town of <15k people pays $13/hr with no experience, with a $500 signing bonus and a guaranteed $1/hr raise at six and twelve months. The largest manufacturing employer here produce stamped sheet metal parts, and they have a large sign and banners lining the road claiming $18/hr, a $1,500 signing bonus, and fully paid family benefits. My California-based "healthtech" company employer doesn't even have health insurance as good as theirs.
1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Guest-Service-Team-...
The size of the group that benefits from modernization is indeed growing, as your numbers point out, but if you're not in that group you're just as stuck as you've ever been.
Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.