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This is nonsense. Obviously you don't have much experience with factory work -- or you romanticize it. Industrial manufacturing work paid well because it was hard, tedious and often dangerous work when it was unionized. If it wasn't unionized -- and many industrial workers, especially in the South, were not -- it didn't even pay very well.
As for having time for family, that's another romantic notion. Many factory workers worked second shifts and went to work before their children came home from school. Others worked swing shifts. Others were slaves to overtime. People working in retail/grocery frequently work/worked nights/weekends/holidays, and these positions paid better than government work but hardly better than factory work.
Government work paid so poorly that it was the last choice for most people, which is why public pensions are so much better than private pension plans: they are the vestiges of the time when public employment paid so poorly that governments needed more incentives to attract people. It wasn't until the 1980s that government jobs started to pay decently, and for technical staff, public sector pay still lags behind the private sector.
I repped you for this one. I remember back in the 70's my sister worked for a summer in a paint brush factory to help pay for her college tuition. She came home every day a mess. Every muscle in her body ached from the tedious work. There were bad odors from glue and the place wasn't well ventilated. It was dirty too. No picnic. They wanted her back the next year because she was a good worker. Even though the money was fairly decent, she found herself a better job working at a warehouse that shipped plumbing supplies. She was lucky to get that through a friend of the family.
During the time I worked from the mid 1960's to 1990 (and beyond) which covers the decades the OP mentions I never had a cushy job. I worked my tail off having office jobs with a lot of overtime and layoffs and stress. Would that it were cushy. I don't know anyone who thinks it was.
I am a baby boomer and grew up through the 60's. Things were so different back then. Most of us were middle class, stay-at-home mom, went to school and worked a part-time job, many babysat for the neighbors when they had their "date" night. People dressed up to go out to dinner. Many of the females went to secretarial schools or became teachers and others went to college when it was affordable, $1-2K year. Many worked their way through college, others were drafted and sent to Vietnam. I worked as a mechanic, pumped gas, on a farm, cut lawns, etc. to be able to get a better education.
My father was in the military for 20+ years so we moved frequently. I went to college but had to pay my own way, as most of us did back then. Now colleges are ridiculously expensive and people are mortgaging their lives to put kids through college to get the same education I got. I joined the military and got a MSEE degree, retired and worked in the civilian world for another 20 years. So because I worked hard, saved, didn't buy every thing one of my kids desired, made them contribute to their educations, today I am financially secure.
IMO today's youth are handed too much and don't know what it is to go without or work hard. Many are non-competitive/easy-going, as you call them. In my day, we called them lazy.
I repped you for this one. I remember back in the 70's my sister worked for a summer in a paint brush factory to help pay for her college tuition. She came home every day a mess. Every muscle in her body ached from the tedious work. There were bad odors from glue and the place wasn't well ventilated. It was dirty too. No picnic. They wanted her back the next year because she was a good worker. Even though the money was fairly decent, she found herself a better job working at a warehouse that shipped plumbing supplies. She was lucky to get that through a friend of the family.
During the time I worked from the mid 1960's to 1990 (and beyond) which covers the decades the OP mentions I never had a cushy job. I worked my tail off having office jobs with a lot of overtime and layoffs and stress. Would that it were cushy. I don't know anyone who thinks it was.
Thanks. I, too, grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and my family was definitely working class. My father worked in a tannery and farmed on the side. My grandfather and several of my uncles were factory workers. A couple of my aunts as well. Only a couple of cousins became factory workers. The rest of us went to college and looked for better.
From the vantage point of 2013, the "good old days" working world looks better, but it really wasn't unless you were seriously lacking in ambition. If you were looking to get ahead in the world, going to college was the best means to do that then as it is today.
So you think the 2010s are more fun than the 1960s?
I don't know about fun, but certainly people have a greater range of choices these days. In 1960, the choices for a woman were: 1. Marriage immediately after HS or College graduation or 2. Working in a female accepted profession (teacher, nurse, secretary) until marriage. Men got to choose: 1. Work 2. Marriage if it suited them. Sure, they could make other choices , but let's be honest, those who did were considered "odd" and avoided by many in society.
Today, it's accepted for people to choose their paths, not what societal norms choose for them. That's called progress.
I get what the OP is stating and I will not even compare to the 50's through the 70's. When globalism was introduced as a "good thing" in the early 80's and 90's it had the best intentions but hidden consequences and now with automation, globalism, a clear attack on any unions there will be a major shift to a dog eat dog world.
One has to think that with a greater elimination of the middle class, especially the lower middle class, there will be consequences that will not be pretty for the future. Regardless of what you think of the poor, the hungry and the homeless, they will need to eat and survive. When even a chance to survive on low skill work is gone by massive influx of legal previously illegal immigrants, a major influx of military being sent into the workforce, and an ever increasing bottom line for the shareholders with automation and efficiency measures there will be no choice BUT to survive by any means possible.
Expect more crime in general, and expect a lot more class warfare.
Students are asking why bother with a college degree and tuitions that are a mortgage, if even entry level positions are paying low wages and without any chance for advancement unless they brown nose management and work huge unpaid overtime hours.
As of recently, a survey stated that older workers will keep working past retirement, even less jobs because these workers have no choice.
So for the OP your best hope is to learn a Trade for services that can't be automated for now and learn to live frugally enough where there is more security. I understand that what you meant as artist is more to do with temperament and not the willingness to work hard. if you are an artist with that skill set, learn marketing for a direct audience of the upper middle class and the rich since they will be the ones that can afford your art or products.
I don't know about fun, but certainly people have a greater range of choices these days. In 1960, the choices for a woman were: 1. Marriage immediately after HS or College graduation or 2. Working in a female accepted profession (teacher, nurse, secretary) until marriage. Men got to choose: 1. Work 2. Marriage if it suited them. Sure, they could make other choices , but let's be honest, those who did were considered "odd" and avoided by many in society.
Today, it's accepted for people to choose their paths, not what societal norms choose for them. That's called progress.
Very well said. One of the reasons that "the good old days" appear so good, especially to white males with only HS educations and without a lot of ambition, is because they had little competition from women or minorities. There were always factories or retail or office jobs for these guys, especially in smaller cities and towns where they had "connections".
I would think that for people of color, "the good old days" simply never were, and today is clearly better. There were few choices in 1960: domestic service (maids, janitors, etc) or farm work. Later, some low level factory jobs opened up, but African Americans only got access to decent paying industrial jobs just as these jobs began to disappear in the 1980s.
This is nonsense. Obviously you don't have much experience with factory work -- or you romanticize it. Industrial manufacturing work paid well because it was hard, tedious and often dangerous work when it was unionized. If it wasn't unionized -- and many industrial workers, especially in the South, were not -- it didn't even pay very well.
As for having time for family, that's another romantic notion. Many factory workers worked second shifts and went to work before their children came home from school. Others worked swing shifts. Others were slaves to overtime. People working in retail/grocery frequently work/worked nights/weekends/holidays, and these positions paid better than government work but hardly better than factory work.
Government work paid so poorly that it was the last choice for most people, which is why public pensions are so much better than private pension plans: they are the vestiges of the time when public employment paid so poorly that governments needed more incentives to attract people. It wasn't until the 1980s that government jobs started to pay decently, and for technical staff, public sector pay still lags behind the private sector.
The stress of doing one thing over and over at rapid pace has been a problem even in Henry ford's assembly lines.
I think you guys are overromanticizing the present, to be honest. Not everyone in my generation is spoiled like you think - some of us still have to work through college. Many of us don't have parents that can afford to pay for it. I do, but I'm actually passing down the opportunity just because I can't find anything in college that is financially lucrative that I enjoy well enough to succeed at doing 40 hours a week (your choices are actually not that broad - tech and medicine are pretty much the only things worth going to college for).
And it's not like all jobs today are safe. Not everyone my age is a barista or in tech, some of us work in dangerous oil or fishing jobs. The main issue I think is that those who don't slave have no shot at ekeing out anything beyond a pathetic existence unless they win the entrepreneur lottery.
I think you guys are overromanticizing the present, to be honest. Not everyone in my generation is spoiled like you think - some of us still have to work through college. Many of us don't have parents that can afford to pay for it. I do, but I'm actually passing down the opportunity just because I can't find anything in college that is financially lucrative that I enjoy well enough to succeed at doing 40 hours a week (your choices are actually not that broad - tech and medicine are pretty much the only things worth going to college for).
And it's not like all jobs today are safe. Not everyone my age is a barista or in tech, some of us work in dangerous oil or fishing jobs. The main issue I think is that those who don't slave have no shot at ekeing out anything beyond a pathetic existence unless they win the entrepreneur lottery.
I disgress.
Sorry, dude, but it wasn't any better 50 years ago!!! //bangs head against wall// Contrary to what you think, if you didn't go to college, you were stuck "ekeing out ... a pathetic existence" unless your Dad owned the business.
My father worked in a tannery. Do you have any idea what a tannery is like??? It's like the most noisome f$%#king place ever created!!! They used these nasty chemicals, carcinogens mostly, to remove the hair from the hides and to soften up the leather!!! My father was diagnosed with cancer 7 years after he retired and lingered for 2 years before he mercifully died. That tannery and its neighboring glue factory are closed now, but both are superfund sites. That's how toxic they are. Oh, yeah, and my dad's "cushy pension" was $95 a month. Watching our father slave in that tannery is the reason that my brothers and I all went to college and got non-factory jobs. We saw what it did to him.
I don't know about your generation, but you personally are very spoiled. You've chosen not to go to college because you don't think you can make enough money to make it worth your while because you're not particularly ambitious. Poor baby. I suggest that you get used to slaving because that's your future -- and you've chosen it.
Not really, in many ways the past was much more leisurely than the present is.
Nope, it wasn't. Well it might be in a nostalgic looking back sort of way. My great grand parents going back and back relate sun up to sundown work. They did not have the entertainment choices or government entitlements we have today. You had to work to eat. It might have been a slower pace but you worked until you died. None of this retirement at age 62 to do nothing!
And, anyway wouldn't having an interesting and challenging profession be more enjoyable life than just communing with nature? Do you want to approach your 70s and 80s and think back on the great things you could have done rather that sink into couch cushions playing Grand Theft auto guzzling mountain dew and eating cheetos?
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