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.
Yes, there was a middle class and it started its ascendancy after WWII as a new consumer economy base. Its decline started in the late seventies/early eighties to its current state.
I'd disagree and say it was before that when the middle class began. Even in like 1800 there was a massive middle class of land owning commoners.
From this graph you can track the "middle class" to a single male earner of the family. After WWII it shifted towards a "dual income" majority.
Nixon broke the gold peg in 1971. Since then, it's been a vicious cycle of cost-cutting and money-printing.
What Nixon did had no bearing on your life at all. He removed the ability for foreign held debt to be remunerated in gold bullion.
The "gold peg" was broken in 1913, when the "federal" reserve started printing "money".