The stereotype is that it was relatively easy for someone in the 1950s or 60s to get a job that sustained a living. As the US is I think getting out of the "great recession", how comparatively hard is it for an average adult now to get a job that gives them comparable wages? I feel like perhaps perceptions of that time period are colored by nostalgia, feelings about the great recession, and perhaps, a failure to account for women, minorities, and certain other groups of that time. But I also feel like broadly the premise is right.
Comparing just the spending, as u/luckymee888 does, is misleading. People aren't buying the same goods that they used to buy, they're buying many more goods. And even when you try to look for things that are constant, like housing, they don't stay the same. the average house today has 33% more square footage as the average house in the 70s, and has fewer people living in it, so the square footage per person is almost double. And that new house today has air conditioning, washers, driers, and microwaves, things people in the 60s either didn't have at all, or had only in very small numbers.
If you want to live the way middle class people did in the 60s, it's relatively easy, but to modern eyes, it looks like poverty.
