I'm not convinced that there's been a dramatic drop in living standards in the US over the last several decades (or that, where there has been, it's not mainly a matter of individual choice).
Think about life in the USA 70 years ago:
Do we think that much fewer than 34% of 20-to-30-year-olds lived in multigenerational households? The average square-footage of new homes more than doubled between 1970 and 2015.
Certainly people spend far more on healthcare, education, and transportation now than then. But aren't those goods and services that were simply not available at all to a large fraction of the populace? 10% rather than 30% of people went to college. Most conditions for which people seek medical treatment now probably went untreated.
So many people in 1950 eked out their existences living in a multigenerational house with a single bathroom and no car. Never traveling out of state or experiencing middle-class city culture. Walking a mile to work or performing farm labor more than 8 hours a day. The world is very different today, but it's not at all clear to me that living a comparable lifestyle is not an option for most people today.
Think about life in the USA 70 years ago:
Do we think that much fewer than 34% of 20-to-30-year-olds lived in multigenerational households? The average square-footage of new homes more than doubled between 1970 and 2015.
Certainly people spend far more on healthcare, education, and transportation now than then. But aren't those goods and services that were simply not available at all to a large fraction of the populace? 10% rather than 30% of people went to college. Most conditions for which people seek medical treatment now probably went untreated.
So many people in 1950 eked out their existences living in a multigenerational house with a single bathroom and no car. Never traveling out of state or experiencing middle-class city culture. Walking a mile to work or performing farm labor more than 8 hours a day. The world is very different today, but it's not at all clear to me that living a comparable lifestyle is not an option for most people today.