Yeah, my former boss made less than I did and supported his family of 5, mortgage in a not-cheap suburb, and two cars as well. But you have to be willing to make the sacrifices that allow it to work.
Labor in general. Look at all the fancy gingerbread on old Victorian buildings. All the old architectural details on older buildings – carved cornices and suchlike. You used to be able to affordably hire trained artisans and masons to do that kind of work and handymen to maintain it. I don’t know the exact costs, but even middleclass households could afford maids and handymen.
Now labor is extraordinarily expensive. Get someone in to do some work on your house and look at the cost of material vs the cost of labor. Not a lot of people are going to be throwing up scroll sawn fretwork onto their new McMansions.
Water.
This can be an interesting discussion. I’ll open another thread in IMHO so as to avoid further hijacking.
Breakfast cereal. Hey, it’s just grain and sugar.
Hookers, usta pay less than $10/throw! Now they want all getout!
Manners. Being polite and courteous to others was dirt cheap growing up.
These days it’s so expensive that someone saying “please” and “thank you” costs them an arm and a leg so they don’t bother.
Also, some other foodstuffs besides lobster. I think oysters used to be given away in the San Francisco of the ninteenth century. And I thought I read that truffles used to be a lot cheaper than they are now.
College education? OK, maybe it was never * cheap * , but I’m pretty sure the institution never would have got off the ground if each year’s tuition/board had been equal to a family’s average income.
No kidding! As a young boy my family lived for a few years on Tybee Island near Savannah GA. My mom was a school teacher and my father was a gas station attendent. Today a home on Tybee would be worth at least ten times what it was worth forty years ago.
HD-DVD players. You’d think used ones would be dirt cheap, now that Blu-ray is the obvious winner. But no; it’s actually quite the opposite
But your mom probably did a lot more planning and scrimping with the food budget (“tuna casserole AGAIN?”), you didn’t have computers, mp3 players, more than one TV (or any TV at all), multiple cars, get new furniture because you’re tired of the style and not because it’s actually broken, clothing was mended (and socks were darned) instead of thrown out, you didn’t have cable, cell phones, netflix, internet, etc etc.
You should also take into account house sizes these days. In general, houses are much bigger than they used to be. Lots tend to be smaller, but what we tend to consider “starter” homes are quite a bit larger than what I grew up in (2 parents, 3 kids).
That goes under the category of skilled labor, no?
Comic Books.
What caused the change?
Some genius realized he could dupe rich folks into eating giant red bugs by calling them a ‘delicacy’ and charging 10x the price.
Seriously, you people do realize you’re basically eating a giant cockroach, right?
How about movies?
King Kong (1933) cost $670,000 to make and you could watch it for a nickel.
King Kong (2005) cost $200,000,000 to make and $10 or so to watch.
Availability. When giant lobsters swarm beaches it’s only fit for the poor.
But once it becomes rarer and lobster fishing is hard work, suddenly it becomes a tasty delicacy. 
First-Class postage. When I was a kid in the '50s, it was 3 cents.
A ride in a NYC subway. Used to be a nickel; how many bucks is it now?
White Castle hamburgers. I think they were something like 12 cents apiece.