What happened was that purchasing value separated from currency numbers. That was enabled by the moving away from the gold standard, but was not the abandonment

What happened was that purchasing value separated from currency numbers. That was enabled by the moving away from the gold standard, but was not the abandonment of the gold standard per se. It allowed the wage numbers to increase, but not sufficiently to keep up with inflation. In other words, where before there was one rate of change, there were now two different rates of change. A concrete example: before 1970 a blue-collar worker had a big enough wage that enabled him to buy a house, car, and good standard of living while his wife was able to stay home and look after the house. Today his wage needs to be supplemented by his wife's wage, and they do not have sufficient to have a house, car and good standard of living. In fact they struggle to make ends meet. If wages had kept in line with cost of living rises, that blue-collar worker would be making over $2000 per week.