Both my grandparents raised 3 kids on a single salary and owned their own homes by thirty. One of them did this in a communist country!

They never had laptops so the work finished at 5 and that was it. Ditto for weekends. I work longer hours and could never dream of doing what they did with two salaries.

The book Capital in the 21st Century shows that the phenomenon you're talking about with your grandparents is a historical aberration caused by World War 2 and is unlikely to be repeated again unless there's another destructive war.

World War 2 destroyed wealth, it did not create it. These are policy choices.

Once you hit rock bottom the only way to go is up, hence creation of wealth for many Americans and destruction of it for many Europeans. Policy choices don't exist in a vacuum and are instead beholden to the conditions of the world, one of which being, it's very easy to build up when everything around you is flattened.

The grandparent who lived in the communist country that war flattened when he was a teen had 3 kids and a house on a single income 10 years later.

Me who lived in a country where war hadn’t touched its shores for centuries was unable to achieve that.

It isn’t about building up. The wealth is already here, in far greater quantities than existed in a recently war torn communist country.

And before that? As I said, your grandparents are an anomaly. You are regressing to the historical mean. Policy can control some of it but black swan events like world wars do occur.