Ya, more like 50’s - 70’s. A huge amount of factory work in the US had already been offshored or started offshoring in the 80’s
Even back then, the average laborer wasn’t living in a 2,500 sqft house with two cars in the garage
I don’t think anyone promised 2500 square feet and 2 cars in the garage?
That said my parents were both government employees their entire career. Made it up into the gs 11-13 area which isn’t too hard to do. 2,500 square foot house, 2 cars, 2 kids playing travel sports, and a deck that was probably another 200 square feet. That was the early 90’s in Maryland, where all the civil servants live. Not some remote area of Montana. They’ve also said there’s no way they could buy that house with the gs pay charts and housing prices from about 2005 on.
So even your exaggerated example was not out of reach.
