The average salary in CA is ~62k a year. To support a family of 4 (wife + 3 kids) you would need WAY more than $62k.
Even if you lived in the poorest neighborhood, and never bought frivolous things, you could still never support a family on that salary, and forget about buying a house.
In the 1950s you could support a family, buy a house, pay for healthcare, etc. It seems far more plausible to me that the purchasing power domestically of the dollar was effectively halved at some point in history.
I maintain that both of these things were (generally) more accessible in the 1950s.
Nope! It happened almost instantly after Bretton Woods system collapsed. And that wasn't because our living standards changed much, it's cause practically unbounded monetary inflation was embraced as the new standard.
Instead of benefitting from the price deflation afforded by technological progress, governments decided to debase their currencies to finance their centrally planned schemes. Combined with the relatively high transaction cost of finding a new job gave us a world where wages have stagnated.
Women entering the workforce effectively doubled the available pool of workers.
When there are more workers available for a position, the cost of said labor decreases.
I'm not sure why this is such a controversial statement, but this is where we are. This is obviously an oversimplification, but doubling the available workforce effectively halves the cost.
As a result, we have families that need two incomes instead of just one.