That was a really long post arguing that they should be using median not mean when they were already doing that in the first place. In your buffet scenario the median income would still be broke, not $1 billion.
According to the US census bureau, the median household income in the US in 2019 was $65,712. It’s certainly closer to $70,000 in 2021. Not sure where your quote about $45,000 came from. Here’s the data with a definition of how they got to median income as well.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/acs/acsbr20-03.pdf
I also live in the Midwest and know many households making $70k a year. Who you know and I know and how much money they make is the irrelevant. That data is what it is.
Overall, I agree with the rest of your post though. There’s more to the cost of a visit than ticket prices.