And that was because of the tax rates companies paid, and were able to avoid much of because they invested back into the company to pay for workers pensions. That and the anti trust laws that were still in place from the 1930's.
That all changed with the trickle down lie, that is supply side economics, drawn up by some clown named laffer on a napkin in a restaurant.
And the Reagan crowd ran with it, and we went from the greatest middleclass expansion from 1945-1980, when one income could support a family, to the deregulatory wild wild west of conservative economic criminal grift that we have to day.
The national debt was less than $1 trillion before 1980, and the $34 trillion it is today is directly a result of those criminal policies.
The child tax credit is nothing but another band aid that is now required for the theft of those criminal tax and deregulatory policies.
The fix is actually very simple. Return all anti trust laws that have been repealed in the last 40 years, and end all of the tax cuts from the Reagan, Bush, and Trump adminsistrations.
Now you don't need that pesky child tax credit anymore. See how easy that was?