what pay? we get paid?
Millennial households headed by college graduates have an income over $100,000: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-yo.... For the silent generation in 1968, that was under $70,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars).
There are two aspects to that trend:
1) People are buying bigger houses. That is consistent with the fact that they’re making more money. Instead of just having extra money, they’re buying bigger houses.
2) People are buying new houses in the south, where they’re cheap. That makes sense too. A house in Palo Alto is a lot more than it was in 1970. But Palo Alto wasn’t Palo Alto in 1970. Today it’s East Egg. Your $2.5 million is buying you into a haven for the elite. But back then, it was Round Rock. You were buying into a nice, but otherwise ordinary suburb. You can still buy a nice family house in a good school district for $250,000 in Round Rock.
From my point of view, tech-job market seems to be rigged. There seems to be a huge demand for talent, yet companies willing to pay meaningfully more to attract it are few in between.