> You're ignoring inflation. Real (inflation adjusted) median earnings are up 12%, in total, over the past 45 years. [1] That also understates the problem because many things (education, healthcare, debt costs, etc) are understated or not even considered in inflation measurements. There's also been a substantial increase in baseline necessities for the average person (internet, computing device, etc). Factor these in and it's fairly safe to say that real incomes have declined for the majority of people.

So what your saying even though peoples baseline expectations are higher they got, cellphones, Netflix, and are taking home more money?

No, for the average person the cost of a basic computing device and the rent attached to operate it, is probably eating up the extremely modest gain in income. And in modern times that's not really a luxury so much as a necessity, meaning people today are in effect earning less, significantly less for many, than they did 45 years ago.

I intentionally avoided entertainment, which is of course also greatly increasing costs even further - though that's probably at least partially balanced by the internet which provides an immense amount of entertainment for just the already accounted for baseline cost.