Real wages were down ~15-20% from 1970 to 1979... so, not a good year to anchor on.

Where are you sourcing that data from? The graph I linked using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't go back that far, so comparing to 1970 would not be possible.

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BobbyJo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

US Census tracks income, its just harder to pull out since they don't provide nice charts like the fed.

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Ajedi32 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Well there's this which goes back to 1967: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2025/demo/p60-... I'm having trouble finding the raw data though. In any case I'm not seeing any big drop in the 1970s.

	▲	BobbyJo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's household income. You need to adjust for the change in households with multiple earners. That's why I said the census data is dirty and conflates things. The number of households with both parents working increased from 46% to 52%, so median household income staying flat means median income for individuals went down pretty significantly.