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The problem is it should be optional. A family of 4, a single parent, or a college grad working 60hrs a week shouldn't only be able to afford gruel.
If you watch old educational and industrial movies from the 1950s (yes, some of us here on Lemmy are, amazingly, weird), you find out that people living on a single income of a father working at a service station could afford a house and a decent dinner for their family.
That may not be 100% accurate, but the fact that they even show it as plausible would be seen as utter nonsense today.
Even going back to the 1980s- Both Roseanne and Dan in Roseanne have trouble holding down a job, but they can still afford a house for their large family and they don't go hungry. Even on Married With Children, they are poor, but they have a house for their four-person family and don't go hungry on a single shoe salesman's salary and no one thought, "how ridiculous! A shoe salesman? With a house?" at the time.
You do have to factor in race, that a lot of what you see on tv was idealised even at the time, and that we now also have unimaginable luxuries that we take for granted. Proper insulation, phones, computers, unlimited music, etc.
In 1950 you could buy a median US house for $20k. A fridge/freezer cost $400, a tv cost $300 and a washer and dryer would cost $500.
Now a median house costs $400k. If the cost of household appliances and electronics had risen as much as houses had, a freezer would cost $8000, a tv would cost $6000 and a washer + dryer would set you back $10000.
It's also worth noting the quality of the items you were receiving. Those washers and dryers never broke, and if they did, they were easily repairable.
You can still buy commercial grade fridges and washing machines for half the price.
I dont know a single person who wouldn't be happy to buy a 8k freezer, a 6k tv and a 10k washer+dryer if it meant they could buy a 20k house.
Obviously it was idealized, but no one looked at it and thought "this is absolutely ridiculous and unachievable." And definitely race is a factor, since all the families I mentioned were white, and in the 1950s also benefited from the whites only G.I. Bill, but the idea that it was achievable for anyone on a low income as plausible rather than so idealized as to be impossible shows that it wasn't as ridiculous as it is today.
I mean you also had poor families, both white and black, on TV- The Honeymooners and Good Times both come to mind. But even there, they did mostly okay. And Good Times took place in the projects.