Oh, I missed that you didn't use a number divided by expenses because I just assumed you'd use a relevant number. And "real" income isn't great because again, tons of durable goods are incredibly cheap these days, but real estate/food and drink isn't.

Absolute numbers are completely worthless because of the price level of the goods we're talking about in the first place. They could make a dollar a week and it's fine if a drink costs a penny and housing is free, for the purposes of this discussion.

Price level aka inflation of real estate and drinks/food is literally the most relevant number here.

Edit - I did some napkin maths. A beer in 1890 was about 3 times cheaper than today relative to income, assuming Google's numbers are somewhat accurate.

Also, anecdotally, food and drink in North America are expensive. We have a second home in Czech Republic, and beer is about 4-5x cheaper there than in Canada, while incomes are only about 30% less, and for young people the gap is even less.