>Because it is not at all obvious that that is, in fact, reality. It doesn't help to complain about easily-disprovable things like the affordability of cars.
Well you can just search "why are cars so expensive" and then you will find dozens of articles like the one below. I'm not American but I have the impression that cars were a kind of milestone in the life of young people in the past and this disappeared due to affordability. How much does it cost to live in a van nowadays? Can a part time fast food worker afford it?
I don't like this hedonistic argument that you used, it sounds like cheating, you risk sounding like the GP saying that houses today that nobody can afford are in fact cheaper because they are less likely to catch fire.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/buying/why-owning-a-car-is-g...
The American media writes articles about what gets clicks not what is true.
If you don't believe the enormous amount of freely available data on the internet. I am American, I had grandparents who were American. Poverty was a whole different beast in the 1930's compared to today.