There are many things where relative value is more important than absolute value. In questions of mating and evolutionary selection, for example - it doesn't ma

There are many things where relative value is more important than absolute value. In questions of mating and evolutionary selection, for example - it doesn't matter how much you have in absolute terms, it matters than you have more than your competitors. And questions of mating and reproduction are some of the most basic and fundamental (and important) to any animal/human, no matter how many abstractions we put on top of that. In a capitalistic society, money is power - if a generation has 3% of the wealth they necessarily have less power than a different generation that had 22% of the wealth in their time. The average house in America is not a very useful statistic today since a lot of those houses are in areas with no economic opportunity because of decisions taken to offshore labor - they used to have opportunity ~50 years ago, but that is now gone. You have to look at houses near urban areas (since those places retain the opportunity that was more spread out before). And then you'll see that costs have actually gone up. It's not nearly as simple of a comparison.