During the '50's
 

...one average lower class worker...without having the wife work...could buy a new home...furnish it with new furniture...buy a new car...pay for a hobby...take vacations...afford insurance...meet family obligations...etc. Those days have been long gone and will never return and I think the future holds even worse times than the current times.

People worked longer hours then, I think.

Sad but true though, it pretty much takes two working parents to provide for a family now.

Most worked forty hours per week...which is still the normal work week.

moral of the story is don't have kids ;)

It seems logical that wives working would actually contribute to a rise in prices. If you just doubled the income of every household in America tomorrow, house prices (and everything else) would then have to double too, since it's all relative. Putting an extra zero at the end of everybody's paycheck wouldn't actually make anyone richer. Similar effect. Incredibly simplistic, and discounts the benefits of more labor, but so many manhours are wasted on unnecessary shit that I'm not sure how much worse off we'd really be if we switched back to half the population staying home... but this time it should be the guys turn.