Figures I found for 2017 say US median household rent is about 1 kUSD and median income about 3.6 kUSD. That doesn't sound too bad to me (seen from Norway where 1 kUSD gets you a one bedroom flat or less) so I presume that there must be important details not revealed in the averages. I got the figures from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

and

https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/

Is it that the median figures hide a lot of people earning less and paying more rent? That is, inequality is the problem rather than the averages.

> Can't do much about wages because they are subject to global pressure,

Surely a lot of the low paid workers are in service industries; how are they subject to global pressure? It's not as if a restaurant can employ cheap Vietnamese labour.