Or have lower class families been buying plastic to increase the appearance of their quality of life for 6+ generations?
I get that we're going through mega-inflation since covid. Even before that, if you bought whole foods and clothes that aren't plastic (nylon), the ol' paycheck only stretched so far.
I'd really like to pick the brain of a self-aware Boomer and find out how long it's been like this.
Not a Boomer. But you aren't going back far enough. The concept of a middle class was a delineation between upper and lower classes in the age of serfdom. Free men, not serfs, but not titled nobles either.
It's a much older concept than just what it came to mean in the twentieth century.
I was employing a little hyperbole.
While purchasing power is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what it was 150 years ago, I'm wondering if nascent consumerism played a significant role is the lifestyle maintenance of the middle class.
Everything else being equal, I wonder what kind of budgetary difference it would make if a family in 1950 (or 1850) only used 'traditional' foods and materials in their lives.