The Simpsons' lifestyle is unattainable, confirming the American Dream is dead
When The Simpsons first hit televisions back in 1989, they were meant to embody most Americans’ notions of typical suburban family: the dad with a working class job, the homemaker wife, three kids, a cat, a dog—the usual. But 1989 was a long-ass time ago, and my, oh my, have things changed. Although the show’s cartoon characters aren’t subject to aging, the world around the Simpsons clan has kept up its societal reference points, leading some to ponder the question: Can a prototypical nuclear family à la Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie survive American’s modern economic horrors?
…C’mon. We all know the answer to that one.
And so does NPR’s Planet Money, which last month aired a story examining whether or not we could consider the Simpsons a “middle-class” family by 2021's standards. To do this, they spoke with Dani Alexis Ryskamp, author of the Atlantic essay “The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable.” Ryskamp went to super-fan lengths to determine the exact dollars and cents, such as pinpointing an exact shot of Homer’s paycheck in a 1996 episode and extrapolating that he would have made about $25,000 that year.
