The price tag of a comfortable life

It took a lot of internal debating about whether to comment on this, but I decided to anyway. Apparently, the amount of annual income needed for a couple and two kids to live a comfortable enough life in America was estimated to be around $140k, and economists had a problem with it. Instead, they put on their older generation hat on, and made the comparison that families are richer today compared to the 1960s. Erm, what?

First off, we know that just the sticker price/ magnitude doesn't mean much in terms of the economic implications and outcomes. Second, why are we comparing life in 2025 to life in the 1960s? This is where generational frictions and gaps really stick out like a sore thumb. No, it isn't that the younger working age population are greedy. Or are you delusional about how expensive things really are? Like healthcare, education, housing, transportation and other things considered basic needs compatible with modernity? Why are the complaining economists refusing to acknowledge dynamics?

Why do you think people have hopped on the affordability crisis train en mass?

Let's not forget that Trump's comment about 37 dolls vs 2 dolls comes off as ration-y. Like after the Great Depression, or during and post WWI and WWII. Or worse, that dreaded communist/ soviet reality, which America is vehemently opposed to, such that they literally put people on a suspicious persons list, if they even have a whiff of anything considered un-American or anti-capitalist.