rebut, or even a framework upon which to base a comparison.

My dad, for example, made around 50k as a fairly highly placed chemical engineer, 22 years after his degree, in 1971; I snuck a peak at a tax return. A pittance, right? But a new F100 was around $2500 then, i.e. 5% of his salary. Skilled construction labor was around $7.50 an hour (I was unskilled @ $4.25) which worked out to $15,000 a year and a good backhoe man was making at least $12 or pretty close to $25,000 a year, when a brand new truck cost 10 % of that.

My college tuition IIRC was $1500 for the entire year.

I think real wages have been in decline for over 40 years and we just think we're better off than we were, but again my pick-up-and-college-tuition metric is probably woefully inaccurate.