Unless socialization activities like bars or athletics are major outliers, it seems likely that in income-relative terms, the average American has much cheaper access to social activities.
(Unrelated, but if you squint at that chart you can see why Trump got elected, almost & then actually reelected.)
That graph starts 70 years after the aforementioned coal miner scenario...
And yes, in the 1800s housing was comparatively cheap because land was close to free and you built your own home. Same goes for booze and venues to drink it because you made your own and there was zero regulation.
Today everyone is being choked by the relatively high cost of real estate (inflation looks ok because we have cheap durable goods like electronics). The death of 3rd spaces is well documented.
Oh, I missed that you didn't use a number divided by expenses because I just assumed you'd use a relevant number. And "real" income isn't great because again, tons of durable goods are incredibly cheap these days, but real estate/food and drink isn't.
Absolute numbers are completely worthless because of the price level of the goods we're talking about in the first place. They could make a dollar a week and it's fine if a drink costs a penny and housing is free, for the purposes of this discussion.
Price level aka inflation of real estate and drinks/food is literally the most relevant number here.
Edit - I did some napkin maths. A beer in 1890 was about 3 times cheaper than today relative to income, assuming Google's numbers are somewhat accurate.
Also, anecdotally, food and drink in North America are expensive. We have a second home in Czech Republic, and beer is about 4-5x cheaper there than in Canada, while incomes are only about 30% less, and for young people the gap is even less.
