Rice, beans, block American cheese, stew meat, whichever fruits and veggies are on sale, make your own baked goods. People found ways even when prices were much, much higher relative to incomes. Eat-whatever-you-like-whenever-you-like is not the historic norm for the working class.
Not saying this is a positive development, mind you, but there are whole cuisines designed around these kinds of needs, for good reason. Stretching out meats over multiple dishes, finding ways to use worse cuts, re-using fats, using all those parts most Americans won't eat anymore, but used to. Making stock from veggie scraps so they're not wasted (then using what's left for the garden, if you don't have chickens and/or pigs to recycle it into eggs and meat for you). Food waste should drop as prices go up, as it's largely a convenience thing. Assuming we remember how to really cook....
Europeans have half the ecological footprint of Americans, yet our quality of life is dramatically higher. It might have some correlation, but at a certain point that correlation stops and it just gets gratuitous.
According to numbeo local purchasing power in my city is the same or better than most US cities despite the fact that my wages are much lower over here in Germany.
Tax policy has massively dragged the absolute price level downwards while having almost no effect on the relative price level.
Correlation does not imply causation. Just purely saying “consume more and you will have a higher quality of life” seems off. Consuming the right things is important imo.
In my opinion governments should really pay attention to what the nation needs over the long term and spend money on that rather than count beans and get tricked by fiscal rules. That means no to boondoggles, yes to healthcare.
Well, that is exactly why there is growth dependence. Some people have extra things they don't really want, so others will have to repeat the same work just to get the same things that already exist.
It's like group homework. If one person does everything, others won't get to do it themselves. So they have to redo the homework on their own to learn instead of learning together.
It's also why the wage inflation spiral exists. Full employment may require busy work, as we do our work more efficiently we need an exponentially growing amount of busy work. If people simply worked less, without leaving individuals unemployed, you wouldn't have the damn spiral.
At the current rate America consumes food, I'd bet that there's a _negative_ correlation between amount of food consumed and health.