Homer

I mean, this is how far our standard of living has fallen in the US.
Like, back in the 80's and 90's it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of. It was so normal that even a brainless loser like Homer could do it.
Also because back then, kinda fat = automatic loser
- Frank Grimes pointed out the insanity/luck of his living situation and your last part is true today “bumbling oaf” is still an archetype
  
  Ah, good ol' Grimey (as he liked to be called).
- To be fair a nuclear operator can typically afford to support a family of 5 even today.
  
  This. The show routinely makes fun of the fact that Homer is completely unqualified for his job and seems to keep it because he amuses Burns. They had a whole episode recently about how Homer got a new job over a nuclear engineering PhD because he Cyrano'd the interview via Fink. Meaning his job title likely commands well over $200k, though it is implied that Burns pays him somewhat less than that.
- The show quit caring about money because it's not interesting. The early seasons have money as a constant issue. It's just not that interesting to she them constantly needing money, so they just stopped.
  
  Except that idea was completely undone by Malcolm in the Middle... The Simpsons just didn't do it right.
- That said, suburbia was built on borrowed money from the future , and the reason why most cities are broke.
  
  It has nothing to do with suburbia.
  It has everything to do with the politics of Thatcher and Reagan. Their policies of annihilating unions, human rights and creating tax cuts for the rich by passing on the taxes to the working and the poor created this dystopian reality we now have.
  If we cut out the rich and restore what we used to have for rights and protections, we can try to save ourselves from extinction.
- Like, back in the 80’s and 90’s it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of.
  I wonder what "pretty normal" is, according to actual numbers
  
  I remember growing up in the 90's, my classmates and I all thought that one of the other kids was a liar because he said he didn't have a yard (he lived in an apartment). It didn't make sense - everyone else in the class of 30+ kids lived in a house with a yard, so he must just be making stuff up. Obviously that's anecdotal evidence, but still. It was weird for a kid not to live in a single-family home back then.
  
  You'd have to look at the size of the middle class back then, as that's what the "American Dream" scenario is based on there, but as a kid born in 1990, I can say that when my dad was looking for apartments when he was around college age in the 60s, the rule was not to rent an apartment that cost more than 25% of your salary. By the time I was around that same age in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it was 50% of your salary. Now, it's closer to 120% of your salary for those same apartments.
- back in the '80s* and '90s*
  
  No, I meant 80-99 AD
  
  Many style manuals allow referring to decades with apostrophes before the s, and no apostrophes before the abbreviated year
- It wasn't normal
  
  Up until Reaganomics hit, 'Middle Class' was defined as one Union job supporting a family of four. In 1980, $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office, middle class was two jobs to keep the house going, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.

He's not? There's literally an episode about how Homer is so lucky in life that he drives a man insane.
- And the man's estranged bastard son!
  
  He happened to like hookers.
- In fairness, that entire episode was lampshade hanging
  
  What is lampshade hanging?
- He's like Candid but doesn't make you want to gauge your eyes out just to avoid reading the book, but it's due in you philosophy class and you can't afford to fail.
  
  What's the issue with reading Candid?
- Yeah, I don't think he's portrayed as a loser, just as dumb. You don't need to be smart to be successful in this world.

Uhhhh... Homer has three kids, surely?
- Why can't I have no kids and three money??
- According to the available tax information he has nine kids, one of which is a Vietnam veteran.
- C'mon, Marge, the dog doesn't count as a kid.
- Uhhhh… Homer has three kids, surely?
  Only two of them, along with his wife, love him.
  
  Maggie hates his guts.
- https://frinkiac.com/video/S11E06/XPKvAup_vpZ7yNRZ41NQZcEc2vw=.gif

Wait, 2 kids? Which one died?
- Three! We have THREE kids Homer.
  Three noisy kids. Fish heads, fish heads.
  
  Dohhh, I have three kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and three money?!
- Marge had a seventh trimester abortion this season.
  
  To be fair, Maggie has been a baby for years. There was probably something wrong
- One's doing time for shooting someone.
  
  He was acquitted. Turns out the guy was just buried under a bunch of old newspapers. Luckily he was able to free himself using a vacuum cleaner and a baking soda rocket.

My dudes.... He has three kids.
- Poor sod wishes he had three moneys instead
- The dog doesn't count as a kid!
- one is a baby so barely counts

OP lives above a bowling alley and bellow another bowling alley.
- Why would you think that? I need an explanation for this joke.
  
  It's a reference to the episode with Frank Grimes. He's a guy who does everything by the book and has little to show for it while Homer bumbles through life and gets everything. Frank is super envious of Homer. Excellent episode.
  https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Frank_Grimes
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHoy0hnQy8

Because he's a little overweight, and in 1989, that was reason enough to laugh at someone.
Plus, all of those were commonplace thirty years ago.
- Homer is like average North American weight now haha
  
  Please excuse the reddit image link
- He's also endearingly dumb, it's why everyone likes him in the first place.

loser? no. stupid? yes.
- Why do things that happen to stupid people keep happening to me?
- And when I say stupid I mean stupid fresh

I see your Homer Simpson and raise you Al Bundy, who works at a shoe store and raised a family of 4 on that salary
- He raised himself and his wife as well???
  
  They lost a kid along the way but no one minded.

I live in a single room above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley

Isn't Homer meant to be an illustration of privilege? Like, he's pretty useless, but still gets essentially everything he wants.
- Nah, it's supposed to be funny and relatable. Times changed, not the cartoon.
  
  I watched an interview and they were talking about some song that gets sang where Bart can be anything he wants to be.
  I think the gist was they listed this litany of jobs that he could have when he grew up and twenty years later none of them were really viable anymore, kind of emphasizing how long the show has been on.
  Things have changed.
- If he wasn't, he is now. They made a musical episode about it called "Goodbye Middle Class" where they illustrate this with him.
- Is that the point behind Frank Grimes aka Grimey?
  "It doesn't matter because I'm Homer Simpson"
- Grimes is that you?
- Yep, and that's still true even when he's made to face the consequences of his actions. We expect so very little of him that we let him get away with pretty much anything as long as he loves his family.
  Hot damn if that's not the picture of straight-white-male-between-18-and-50-years-old privilege.

You missed how he is dumb as fuck and how all he have is by luck . As another person commented there is an episode in which a real hard working man gets mad how homer has everything even tho he does'nt deserve it and i agree he almost causes nuclear melt down atleast twice a day, abuses his son, ignores his daughter etc.etc.
- Frank Grimes: If you lived in any other country in the world, you'd have starved to death long ago.
  Bart: He's got you there, Dad.
  Grimes: You're a fraud, a total fraud. (To Marge and the kids) Was nice meeting you.

He is not, see the Frank Grimes episode
- Or Grimey, as he liked to be called.
  
  Yes, that was absolutely what he wanted to be called.

WELL, I DON'T NEED SAFETY GLOVES, BECAUSE I'M HOMER SIMP--
- Good ol' Grimey.
- [hnngk] change the channel Marge!

I'm fifty one years old and just kinda wanna break down what I've seen in my life:
My grandparents generation: Was able to buy housing, get healthcare, receive retirement. Note: They lived through the great depression, and categorically never spent any money that wasn't necessary, even when they had several boatloads of it.
My parents generation: Housing was achievable but not given (I remember a whole lot of single wides, apartments, and duplexes among the adults of my childhood). Healthcare was affordable. Retirement was promised but not delivered.
My generation: Housing was achievable if you moved to the sticks and loved you some Jesus at the local Baptist Church, but not in the cities. We got a taste of healthcare twenty five years ago, but then yeah no. Retirement? Hahahahaha! We got 401(k)s forced in us, and they never materialized into dick. Many flatout vaporized when our marriages fizzled out.
My kid's generation. Seriously, just die in the street. You'll get absolute fuck all nothing, and you'll like it as the older generations blame you for our fuckups.
My great contribution is that I'll be able to leave my house free and clear of mortgage to my spawn when I check out. She can live in it, sell it, rent it, burn it to the ground. Whatever she wants, but damnit, I'm giving her the opportunity to do it, which most of her peers will never have.
- What if in the future her family’s possession of a house is used as justification for judging her “capitalist scum” and she gets sent to the gulags for it?
  Just kidding. Not that that can’t happen, but you shouldn’t plan for that.
  It’s good that you’re doing the work necessary to give your daughter some security and stability.
- Sounds like you're a good father, sir
- Well, what a refreshing and completely reasonable opinion that's totally objective, accounts for all historical nuance, and doesn't arbitrarily villify hundreds of millions of people for being born somewhere.

Hedonism and Wealth should not be your metric for evaluating people, anon.
Homer sleeps at his job, is a habitual drinker, and is willfully ignorant.
- But he did also win a nuclear power plant design contest.
  
  It was a contest for children!!
  And he whooped their butts!
- Sounds like a nice simple life
- Also constantly abuses Bart
- Also painfully inept at his job, but they're corrupt, evil, and also pretty inept

There are jobs that provide that kind of compensation (granted, a very small % of total jobs are like that), and it's actually very realistic for an absolute moron to have one of them.
Have you never spoken to someone who makes much more money than you and thought, "wow, what an idiot" in your life?
- I had many colleagues like that in my previous job that only required a highschool diploma 🤷

He’s portrayed as a loser due to being self-unaware and generally clueless.

Homer Simpson is why unions are important

Nuclear plant salaries can be huge. Operators make $200k+ per year in the US.

I am so smart
I am so smart
S-M-R-T
I mean S-M-A-R-T

Because in the 90s that was like 30th percentile status, not 95th percentile status.

The show was also conceived with Bart as the main character, with the world being from Bart's perspective. As a kid Bart's age of course your dad is dumb. Homer is the irl name of Matt Groenig's dad.
As the show progressed the writers ended up latching onto Homer more and he gradually became the core of the show. Also the characters "Flanderized" (literally!) more and more as time went on and he became more ridiculous. The Frank Grimes episode is pretty genius for capturing all this in a funny way.

...Fuck OP is right.