However, when a person is making a post saying "don't trust those dodgy manipulated numbers" and offering alternative numbers, their post is a lot less convincing if their numbers are also dodgy

For example, during the pandemic the UK government set itself a target for covid testing, then proudly announced that they'd hit their target - but it turned out they were not counting the number of tests processed in labs but instead the number of test kits sent out by mail regardless of whether they were received, returned, or processed - allowing them to declare success before increasing lab capacity. It's not outright fraudulent, but it's questionable and errs in a politically convenient direction - that's a dodgy number.

And as I understand it, the claim in this discussion is that the government changed the definition of inflation, in a way that made the number lower? And that it now doesn't accurately reflect what it purports to reflect?

Sounds like dodgy manipulated numbers to me.

What class has shown absolutely insane growth in wealth and income in the face of what looks like crippling inflation?

Your standard retiree on the other hand who holds a lot of bonds that got absolutely hammered by inflation and rising interest rates is not doing so well.

That's not necessarily true. Per FRED (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LRAC25FEUSM156S), in 1963 about 44% of women aged 25-55 were in the workforce. That's obviously much lower than the ≈96% rate for men, but it implies that the average couple had closer to 1.4 incomes. The comparable rate based on today's labour force participation rates would be about 1.66 incomes.

The single-income family may have been the norm, but it was far from a rule. I think that our popular perception of life in the 60s has been filtered through media portrayals, which all tend to reinforce ideals as commonplace norms.

We just dont know what % of those were single mothers, widows, divorcees or single women, etc.

Is a child with a paper route 'in the work force?'