Why charge $5 for paper towels when clearly people can afford to spend $6? Repeat ad nauseum for just about everything a consumer might purchase until we go from the 1950s where an unskilled manufacturing job can pay for a home and two cars and a nonworking spouse and kids in college, to where you need to be a physician to afford the same today. Sure people aren't all impoverished and starving, but there's plenty of sources out there that highlight how wages have stagnated despite productivity gains and cost of living increases.