I fail to see how larger TV sets equates to huge increase in living standards.
Maybe we could measure living standards by looking at mental health statistics? Percent of population on prescription mind-altering drugs?
Do bigger houses, leading to greater social isolation, actually represent an increase in living standards? I get that bigger house == bigger house, but maybe the metric is flawed.
Even if the standards improved, it came not from the financial industry and probably despite of it. When banking is 25% of economy, it is a heavy tax on everyone. The industry produces nothing and beyond few percents of economy as it was historically it brings just burden if not the outright harm.
People in the 1950s used to buy much smaller houses. Owning a small (13 inch) black and white TV used to be a big deal. A computer costs millions of dollars (not accounting for inflation!) and filled large buildings. Women often didn't get a drivers licenses at all, and even they did there was only one family car so they needed to drive their husband into work if they wanted to use the car. Cars needed a lot of maintenance for things like the points, and they didn't really last long unless you rebuilt the engine which most people did. You had one phone in your house and it was a party line shared with your neighbors.
In the 1970s houses were already getting larger, but not to today's. Nearly everyone had one 19 inch color TV, but few two. Only a few weird people had a computer in the house, and it connected to the TV for a monitor, for the rest a computer took up large buildings but many people had a terminal to use it via some time sharing system. Most women had a drivers license, but families only had one car unless the woman worked outside the house (which was most by this time). Cars with advances like electronic ignition cars need much less maintenance, but if your car was about to reach 100,000 miles you gathered your best friends to go for a drive to see it at all zeros: you had to add oil before you left (in a cloud a blue smoke), rebuilding engines was still common, but not something most people did. You had a private phone in your house.
Today most new houses are the size of what would have been considered upper middle class in the 1950s. Today people consider it normal to have a TV in every room. Today everybody has a computer in their home. Most families have a car per driver, and those cars often last 300,000 miles (though many people don't keep them that long). Everybody has a phone/computer in their pocket, few have them in the house at all.
There are a lot more things I could point out that have advanced. If you were willing to live like 1950 or 1970 you could get by on a lot less money.
That family with one salary probably also only had one car. That car needed a tune-up regularly, and was lucky to make it to 100,000 miles.
They had a house, but it was a small house by current standards - maybe 1000 square feet.
They had one landline phone - no cell phones, and certainly no computers.
The breadwinner could retire at 65, but the median age of death was 68. They could afford medical care, but the medical care that was available didn't lengthen their lives to what we expect today.
So that's where it went - bigger houses, more cars, computers and cell phones, and better medical care. But if you're willing to live in a 1000 square foot house, only have one car, no computers or cell phones, and inadequate (by current standards) medical care, you can probably raise a family on one income still today.
> They had one landline phone - no cell phones, and certainly no computers.
I have no idea why those are mentioned. Do we somehow pay for development and manufacturing of those with exorbitant rents and mortgages?
When people talk about standard of living they talk about living, not various forms of entertainment brought on by sheer technological progress.
If you want to mention technology mention things like washing machines, dryers, dishwashers and fridges. Those contribute to standard of living. Not whether people figured out how to do astral projections or whatnot cheaply.
