[dingfeng_quek]

Consumer goods are, however, much cheaper now as compared to 50 years ago (at least in urban Asia where I live). It makes a huge difference between spending 10% of my income on daily necessities, as opposed to 50% like my ancestors did.

Arguably, this matters mostly to those below a certain threshold income (difference of 2% and 10% not as big as 10% and 50%), i.e. matters more to the poor than to the rich. I think American citizens tend to be richer than the rest of the world.

[zanny]

The cost of a loaf of bread in that decade was 5 cents, the average wages per hour in the US was 35 cents. Today, a loaf of bread is $2.50 and the average wages is $12 an hour. A house would be $10k to build (my grandparents built their house in '72 for $15k, it is now worth $250k) where a person was making $6k a year. Today a house averages $250k and you make $60k. In actuality, the costs of necessities have gone up, but the costs of almost everything else dropped due to globalization. But you can't outsource growing food, buying land, or building houses really well.