See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor... , and this quote: "In fact, in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today."

it's also easy to argue that the typical metrics used in this comparison are misleading.

A "typical middle class worker" in the early 1970s lived in a house that was built in the 1950s or earlier, around 1200 square feet, 1 bathroom, 2-3 bedrooms, without air conditioning or a washer/dryer, and had one vehicle available to the household [0]. Nowadays, we consider that "the projects", undesirable housing for poor people, while the "middle class" live in considerably larger dwellings with more amenities.

The reason I mention this is that real wage / purchasing power comparisons almost universally use "average housing costs" as a significant part of the metric, and "average housing costs" are in no way measuring the same thing. ( It so happens that I live in my childhood home, which my parents purchased in 1975 for $32,500 -- about 3.1 times the national median household income. I purchased it from them in 2012 for $135,000, a mere 2.7 times the median income.)

If you actually compare the goods a median-wage worker can purchase today to the goods a median-wage worker could purchase in the 1970s, there are definitely some things we have a harder time affording (like routine health care), but with the majority of material goods, you can get much bigger/better/faster/higher quality stuff for the same portion of the budget [1]. A modern middle class income gets you much better than 40-years-ago middle class living conditions.

[0] dig through the reports at http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data.All.html for details

[1] http://nonprofitupdate.info/2011/07/27/i-can%E2%80%99t-think...

So please, name them.

Real hourly compensation has risen: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB

Anyone pushing wage numbers is playing a game of hide the salami, and ignoring the trend towards a larger portion of income being given in forms other than money.

More importantly, though, the Fed graph you show is an average (the real hourly compensation one). With growing inequality, using the average hides the fact the improvement for the median worker is much lower.

If you feel consumers are overconsuming medicine and driving up the price, there are lots of great ways to fix that. The most effective is high deductibles (currently illegal).

I know you are aware that life expectancy is minimally related to health care consumption, so why do you bring it up?

If you have data showing that median real compensation per hour is lower, show it.

And again, since household income has not moved much (according to figures I cited), you still need to provide an explanation for why we don't seem to consume less. (Hint: the basket of goods in CPI changes and $1 of chained-CPI adjusted wages today buys more than $1 of chained CPI adjusted wages 30 years ago. I.e., CPI != inflation in the long run.)

No, it isn't "demonstrably false". It's true by almost every metric.

>For the average middle class worker in the US, however"

Well, if the US middle class were somehow more important than workers elsewhere around the world, this would matter. They aren't, so it doesn't.

If you considered the entire globe, then yes, there are growing middle classes in certain Asian and Latin American countries.

To say that we shouldn't care about the growing wealth gap because the world has smart phones is disingenuous.

2. Since 1950, food prices seem to have grown at the overall rate of inflation, so food is cheaper relative to the median income. (https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CPIUFDSL/)

3. Healthcare is usually considered essential, and its cost has increased as a fraction of median income, but I would bet 1950's medicine would be dirt cheap today if it weren't illegal to practice it: no MRIs, no patented medicines, no chemotherapy, etc. What we get in exchange for the higher cost is a decade of life expectancy.

4. Here is an interesting article I found on this topic: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-amer...

It's not quite clear that the extra decade of life expectancy comes from the more expensive medicine.

(I agree with the rest of your arguments for what it's worth.)

a house cost $22,000 (ie, 5.3x an annual income)

a loaf of bread cost $0.18 (ie, 0.004% of annual income)

Today, a median household income is $51,939 and

a median house costs $188,900 (ie, 3.63x an annual income)

a loaf of bread costs $2.26 (ie, 0.004% of annual income)

Current median income and house prices from Google, loaf of bread cost from http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?coun....

All dollars nominal.

EDIT: Here's a fancy chart I just found, thought it might be useful to make the point:

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2000/feb/wk3/art03.htm

Also I'm not sure if it's a typo, but your comparison between "average income" in 1955 and "median household income" today seems to hurt, not help your point.

As for real human needs , like healthcare - it seems to be that with technology ,at some point in time, they will be fully solved, so no need for further growth.