Earlier quoted context omitted.
That, to me, is what really seals it all as ridiculous. My parents had the standard of living they had with only my father working and in a fairly normal government job. That as enough to support my mom and 2 children while also saving for retirement. That standard of living now would require both parents working and being rather successful in their white collar careers. Even as a reasonably successful person in an a…
That needs a citation. If you cut out everything we have they didn't - cable TV, Netflix, computers, internet, cafes, restaurants, Kindle, better choices in grocery food and alcohol - and ate the sort of cheap food people lived on, things like meatloaf and crappy ingredient dishes, I reckon it would be entirely possible. The only thing that is prohibitively expensive today vs 1980 is housing. The reasons for that are…
However, it's housing - in the bay area in particular - that makes it look very impossible. For a relatively modest 1 BR apartment in SF, I'm paying close to half my after tax, after-401(k) take home, as a senior engineer doing relatively well.
If I'd need to pay 50% more to have a 2BR (at a minimum) for a wife and a child or two, that leaves a very small amount (for what's now twice as many people) to live on; roughly 10% of my base salary. It looks nearly impossible.
If you are extremely frugal (no restaurants, no vacations), if you get really lucky in finding housing, and most of all if there are no big surprise expenses (e.g. medical ones), MAYBE.
But none of those caveats applied in the case of my father; his standard of living was higher than mine is now.
Of course, if I were to move to another market, it's quite possible. I might take a 20% pay cut but if real estate is a third the cost than suddenly it doesn't seem like an impossible scaling issue that it currently is. I might even be able to afford a car.