And this is where the stats become reality.
There's arguments above of "real adjusted dollars" and all that shit. That's noise. Let's talk about what reality is. Reality is 1) what your income has to go to, and 2) what money you have left over and what you can buy with it. In other words, because dollars are fungible with what they can be exchanged for, we can and should couch income in terms of fungible items -- e.g., people used to get monthly pay equal to 3X their monthly housing cost. Now, they only get paid 2.4X their monthly housing cost.
Certain large-ticket costs have gone up dramatically (outpacing any wage growth): housing, health care, and higher education. Once the average family pays for those items, they have LESS buying power left over than they did 40 years ago (the buying power to acquire a car, take a vacation, etc.).
We spend a shitload of time ranting against socialism, or capitalism, or globalism, or automation, or the death of unions, or whatever your pet rant is. But the whole point of this thread is that all of us should pause, take a deep breath, and look at the rising flood of inequality that threatens to swamp us all. History tells us in simple terms that a huge disparity is not sustainable, and ends in collapse/violence/etc. The water is rising, and right fast. Telling the folks who have been taking it in the shorts for the last few decades to keep bailing, while the folks living in the fancy housing on the high ground sip cocktails and talk about how people just need to work harder, does jack shit to fend off the flood. And when the folks in the low land get flooded out, they are coming for your high ground, and they'll take it however they need to.
Solving this problem is in EVERYONE'S best interest. It would be smart if we could start looking at solutions unencumbered by our pre-existing biases (meaning that some of the solutions are likely to be more "socialist" than those on the right like, and some of the solutions will be more "capitalist" than those on the left would prefer, and we need to have the spine to just go with those solutions).
But we won't. We're too wedded to team and talking points. We'll accuse each other and argue about this shit as the last bit of the ship bubbles and sinks beneath the water.