My great grandfather supported a family of 7 making brooms. He didn’t own the broom factory. He was an employee, and was paid by the broom. My great grandmother stayed at home to raise 5 children. There was even enough to lend to the local grocery store, apparently. This was at the turn of the 20th century in Canada.

And that support was a family of 4-6 in a 1200 sq ft house, eating out <6x a year, vacations were picnics at the local beach, one car that you did your own maintenance on, one tv, only one set of good clothes (your Sunday outfit), et cetera. Most places in the US can still support a family at that same level of expenditure on an average income.

More household work was done in this era, before grocery stores sold prepared food, before washing machines. And more people lived in less square footage, with grandparents living in the home, less privacy and autonomy. I don't know if we've made the right trade, but it's not the case that a single worker's income was paying for the kind of lifestyle a family of four now has.

You still can if you want to live like you're in the 60s. My parents grew up eating bread with dripping for most meals, meat since they were farmers, some inexpensive vegetables, not much variety. Houses were half the size and had twice as many people in them, my grandparents did any building or expansions themselves. Public schools with free tuition. No overseas holidays, eating out once a month max. The urban poor had it much worse.

You just can't live an upper-middle class on a single income unless you have a good job, but you couldn't back then either.

You could still do that if you are ok living at 1950 standard of living. Average income back then was $26k in today’s dollars. Even low paying jobs today are better than that.

I’m sure you will say something about housing costing more, which it does. But also many things cost less, such as food and clothing.

Shareholders = society. The rest of us are just the help

You can thank neoliberalism