No they don't. Only because a person has more disposible income does not mean they /have/ to consume more. The poster has actually a point. In a "consumerist" culture however, "instant satisfaction" is much more important and constantly promoted as important.
Since mom didn't work, she had time to stay home and cook
Mothers working? Why that would be child abuse. A mother should stay in the home and look after her children. Also, we can't have them taking jobs away from men!
Not from a "keeping up with the Joneses" basis. Or from a "you spent less because you had to spend less" basis.
The first assumes that a large amount of spending is done in order to signal or gain social advantage. Signaling would be ostentatious consumption to express a higher social status. Gaining would be, say, buying a house in a good school district in order to gain social advantage for your children. A perverse logic of a constrained-resource economy may be that such socially-driven spending may increase, not decrease.
The second assumes that one didn't need to go out to eat, because one spousal partner (OK, the wife) stayed home and incorporated the roles of cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc., which are now frequently treated as external expenses. Likewise shorter commutes with cheaper gasoline.
On a "keeping up with the joneses" basis, we are exactly as rich now as we always were. In 1950, 1960, and today, there were 50% of people above the median. If your dad had more "keeping up with the joneses" buying power, it's only because someone else's dad had less.
Incidentally, when you compare people to their parents, you find that income went up vastly more than you think. It's only when you compare people today (Americans and immigrants) to the parents of Americans that incomes appear to have stagnated.
If we're talking aspirational spending, no, we're not.
It's not the median, but the marginal cost to advance to the next level.
In 1947, to go from the top of the first quintile by income to bottom of the top 5%, required increasing your income 501%. In 2001, the differential was 685%. Wealth disparities tend to exceed income (your marginal savings and/or investment growth increases with marginal income).
Another relationship is to consider ranking determined by mean (not median) income. If half the wealth and spending power is in the top 5% rather than top 20% of households, then the relative wealth of the lower 95% has decreased -- they're not keeping up with the Jonses.
It's not the median, but the marginal cost to advance to the next level.
Again, the marginal cost to advance to the "next level" can only increase if more people are able to achieve it. "Keeping up with the joneses" is a zero sum game.
Also, if we are talking about "keeping up with the joneses", then it's irrelevant to focus on income or wealth. We should focus on consumption - interestingly, consumption inequalities are lower than both income and wealth inequalities.
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Dad had FAR more buyIng power on his $4-6000 per year salary than we do today.
He didn't have to commute as far and the price of gas and food was far lower than today.
Further, people simply went out and ate out far less and just lived on less.
This is about the evil of marketing to convince generations to consume.
This is about greed.