Real Median Income per Household Member is up over 60%

in the last 4 decades, from $11,000 to $19,000. Add in the Wal-Mart savings effect, and people can basically buy double what they could in the Sixties. There was probably 1 phone per household back then, and that number may have tripled, while phone bills on an inflation adjusted basis may have decreased as a percentage of household expenditures. And that doesn't even measure the increased utility of digital cellphones.