Electricity and housing were dealt with in the prior issues, but a third necessity is food. When wages earned in manufacturing are compared with food prices, workers had been progressively able to afford more food over time:
Workers in the late 1960s could afford to buy 3.5 times as much food as workers in 1915. But this increase in “food purchasing power” stopped growing after government began to intervene more and interfered with free market capitalism:
By some measures, there is even some loss of “food purchasing power” among blue collar workers in the private sector:
And the data on median household income — the shortest data set — shows that households in the year 2000 could afford to buy more food than they can today:
While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for food isn’t perfect, the top two graphs show a clear and unmistakable rise in “food purchasing power” up into the 1960s, and the bottom 3 graphs show either stagnation or a reduced level from what had been true of the 1960s — when the USA had more economic freedom (less government).
Reference
National Bureau of Economic Research, Average Weekly Earnings, Manufacturing, Total for United States [M08261USM052NNBR], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M08261USM052NNBR
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Weekly Earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, Manufacturing [CES3000000030], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000030
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food in U.S. City Average [CPIUFDNS], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDNS
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Weekly Earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, Total Private [CES0500000030], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000030
U.S. Census Bureau, Median Household Income in the United States [MEHOINUSA646N], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N