You gotta take into account all the stupid programs that make it so much more expensive to support a family today. For example, wrecking cities and forcing people out to the suburbs (car, lawn tools, expensive utilities, etc). Offshoring jobs like crazy, so demand for labor plummets. Intemperant expansion of the money supply, resulting in inflation, which "destroys" savings. Gads of taxes on ordinary people, like property taxes and excise taxes on gasoline and ciggarrettes. Ubelieveably high costs for healthcare. What's a dental cleaning and exam cost for a dad with a wife and 5 kids? Too much! Where does the government spend its money? A trillion for wars we don't need to fight every year, plus half a trillion in interest payments we don't need to make every year. Seven hundred billion to bail out banks, when it could have gone to good jobs reparing roads and making it easier and safer to get around. So, what's a realistic wage for a family man, with a wife and six kids? 100k per year, sounds a lot more realistic to me, than 40k. And that doesn't include eating steak!