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I think those who look back to other decades and decry how easy people had it then are just cop-outs who are looking for excuses as to why they can't make it in the present day. Every generation has had its unique difficulties in making it. Few people had everything handed to them.
I for one, get really tired of hearing the old cliche of "your generation had it so easy" from those who know nothing about what the majority of my generation really went through to succeed. We had our opportunities and obstacles just as any other generation both past and present. Those who insist we had it easier are simply indulging in selective history. They are taking the positives and completely ignoring the negatives. What they don't realize is the future generations will do the exact same thing to them.
I'm not saying you had it super easy, maybe I made it sound like that but I realize people had struggles back then. I'm sure the person who talked about the tannery was not an uncommon story back then. Though then again I'm sure there are plenty of people today who work jobs that are just as miserable and dead end.
At the same time though my generation doesn't have it easy either like many older people seem to think. Your generation didn't have to compete with billions of people from Asia, nor did you have to compete with machines (as much). 20 years ago, people weren't constantly on call via their cell phone and ordinary labor jobs actually paid enough that a married couple didn't have to work two of them each just to give their kids a place to live and put food on the table. And most importantly, back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even the 90s nobody had to worry about a future where in many cases jobs simply do not even exist, and populist right-wing reactionaries want to force the people who are under or over qualified to work to rely on charity or accept maltreatment from abusive employers.
I'm just saying we don't have it easier, and in some ways making a living is harder today. The rewards are larger too, if you want to work your ass off/sell your soul/never have time for yourself, but there's not nearly as much balance. It's just a fact there was a lot less inequality and ruthless competition 1-2 generations ago than there is now.
Your comment is absolutely spot on. Life in the mid-20th century was no picnic. Let's also not forget the layoffs and strikes, and pensions plans were solvent only because most workers didn't qualify or, if they did, they didn't live long enough to draw on them for more than a few years. Factory work was dangerous and back breaking, and the higher paying jobs weren't available to everyone. And let's also not forget that many of the workers of the 50s and 60s grew up in abject poverty during the Great Depression. Yes, the "good old days" were never as good in real life as in fantasy.
I think you're thinking of 1910, not 1960 lol. We are quickly returning to the conditions of the Gilded Age.
Furthermore, I'm not a "right winger", callous or otherwise. In fact, people who know me would find that accusation hysterically funny. I have said that you, specifically, seem to be spoiled and not very ambitious, and I'll stand by that. You have said in your own posts that you could go to college but that there's no career "lucrative enough" to make it worth your while. You said you don't want to work long hours or have a lot of stress or be in a competitive environment. In other words, you want to make big money for doing next to nothing. That, sir, has never been the way the world works unless you're born into a wealthy family, not fifty years ago and not today.
I don't care about making "big money", I just want to make enough to survive off of and do something fun maybe a couple times a year. I'd rather make $20,000 and work part time than make $60,000 and have to work 10 hours a day 5 days a week with almost no time off during the year. Unforunately in this country it's very "all or nothing".
I have tried and have done jobs on Craigslist for people, but lately there's just been nothing there. The gigs people do need done usually require me to own some tools such a truck or a lawn mower that I do not have, or they require references or even a degree which seems kind of ridiculous for chores literally anybody can do with half an hour of training. I have also tried selling my art, my music, and even rare coins, but it never amounts to anything more than pocket money and indeed I often end up losing money.
Your comment is absolutely spot on. Life in the mid-20th century was no picnic. Let's also not forget the layoffs and strikes, and pensions plans were solvent only because most workers didn't qualify or, if they did, they didn't live long enough to draw on them for more than a few years. Factory work was dangerous and back breaking, and the higher paying jobs weren't available to everyone. And let's also not forget that many of the workers of the 50s and 60s grew up in abject poverty during the Great Depression. Yes, the "good old days" were never as good in real life as in fantasy.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by belmont22
I think you're thinking of 1910, not 1960 lol. We are quickly returning to the conditions of the Gilded Age.
No, Glenfield is describing the 1960s.
You keep insisting that life was so great back in the 1950s-1960s, but it wasn't significantly better economically than it is today. There are a lot of myths circulating about this time period that may have been true for the middle class or the upper middle class but certainly wasn't true for the working class or probably for the lower middle class either.
If you look at the myth that families could live well on one income, consider that most people had a much lower standard of living in the 1950-1970 than most people expect to have today. They had 3-5 kids and lived in 2-3 bedroom, 1 bath room houses without central air. Families had 1 car without most creature comforts and safety features we take for granted today; 1 BW TV with rabbit ears or possibly a roof antenna; 1 AM radio. People seldom ate out, not at the local fast food joint (they didn't exist in many cases) and not in the "fancy" restaurants. Families also didn't go "out" to movies, shows, dances, etc frequently either; mostly they visited with family and friends -- or they stayed home. Kids only got toys/gifts at Christmas and birthdays, and sometimes for big life events like First Communion.
Moreover, at least among factory workers and poorly paid white collar workers like teachers and retail clerks, etc, many wives DID work outside the home, especially when their kids started going to school. Even when wives didn't work away from home, husbands frequently worked lots of OT or had second jobs. Many of my friends' moms worked part time and full time jobs in the 1960s, and although my mom did not, my father worked a full time factory job and also farmed part-time.
Teachers were so poorly paid in the 1960s and 1970s that even single teachers couldn't live on their salaries and needed part-time jobs during the year or full time summer jobs to make ends meet.
So much for the wonderful economic times of the 1950s-1970s.
From say 1950 to 1990, in the West one could graduate high school, get a well paying stable unionized retail, government, office or factory job, have time to see their children, and eventually look forward to a cushy retirement. With globalization and automation, it seems like people increasingly have four choices:
*Enter a super competitive stressful field like engineering or medicine and spend life working your ass off, never getting to see your family or friends or do anything fun whatsoever. I tried doing an engineering degree but I am quitting because I hate it.
*Accept increasingly unlivable wages, government handouts and poverty in exchange for having more free time. IE roomsharing with strangers, living in tiny studio/one bedroom apartments, having non-existent security or insurance, etc.
*Do dangerous and back breaking but well paid work in a hellhole like Alberta, Texas or North Dakota.
*Become an entrepreneur and hope you win the lottery.
If things get worse, the former will begin to go hungry, the second will become chattel for the techno-industrialists and the third will have fewer and fewer rights and such jobs will also become more scarce and poorer paying as robots and people from the Far East who are willing to accept less pay take the jobs away.
Are people who are not willing to "live to work" doomed for disappointment at best and tragedy at worst as the social safety net becomes more and more scant and market fundamentalism more and more prominent? Seems like the future will be great if you are a technical person, a workaholic or a crook but dismal and depressing if you are an artist, a lover of nature, or someone who values family, friends and leisure above their job.
I disagree with many premises of your post.
1) One may be competitive AND easy-going. These are not mutually exclusive traits. Some are happiest and most at ease while competing - they love it, they thrive on it, it makes them happy. Quiet, non-competitive environments may make them uneasy.
2) Engineering and medical fields need not be high stress for those with the right skillset and temperament.
3) Often, higher income allows one more free time.
4) Becoming an entrepenuer is not akin to winning the lottery. Lottery is all luck. Entrepreneurship is strategy, skill, hardwork, risk-taking, drive, intuition, smarts, with a bit of luck thrown in...
For anecdotal reference, my opinion is coming from a highly competitive, highly easy-going, lover of hard work, lover of lots of free time, entrepreneur of an engineering company.
Though I do agree that if one highly values making a lot of money and what it can provide, being noncompetitive can be a burden.
Belmont22, families can still survive on one "average" salary.
They just have to do it the same way families did in the 1950s. No luxuries, every meal prepared from scratch, only the clothes that you truly need, no tech toys, and do it all living in a 900 sq ft rancher or row home.
There was never a time when the average American without specialized skills or education could easily find an undemanding job with great hours that paid enough for an upper middle class lifestyle. HARD work or brains have always helped, as have being willing to go where the work is, or managing to get into one of the pockets of highly paid union work (which proved to be economically unsustainable, anyway.)
For most people, it wasn't any better. People not born into wealthy families have always had to hustle.
I'm not saying you had it super easy, maybe I made it sound like that but I realize people had struggles back then. I'm sure the person who talked about the tannery was not an uncommon story back then. Though then again I'm sure there are plenty of people today who work jobs that are just as miserable and dead end.
At the same time though my generation doesn't have it easy either like many older people seem to think. Your generation didn't have to compete with billions of people from Asia, nor did you have to compete with machines (as much). 20 years ago, people weren't constantly on call via their cell phone and ordinary labor jobs actually paid enough that a married couple didn't have to work two of them each just to give their kids a place to live and put food on the table. And most importantly, back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even the 90s nobody had to worry about a future where in many cases jobs simply do not even exist, and populist right-wing reactionaries want to force the people who are under or over qualified to work to rely on charity or accept maltreatment from abusive employers.
I'm just saying we don't have it easier, and in some ways making a living is harder today. The rewards are larger too, if you want to work your ass off/sell your soul/never have time for yourself, but there's not nearly as much balance. It's just a fact there was a lot less inequality and ruthless competition 1-2 generations ago than there is now.
I do not think your generation has it easy. I never said I did. I was not born in your generation but I did have to struggle to find work in the 21st century and it was darn hard especially because I was in my fifties so I know what it's like. I had to return to school to make myself more employable after experiencing several layoffs even though I had a college degree and my competition were freshly minted younger college grads.
You, on the other hand, did not live in the 50's or 60's so you did not experience what it was like to live in those times. That is why many people such as myself are challenging some of your comments about the conditions that existed then. Your observations about those times are more cliched hearsay than anything else. Saying that people did not worry about job in past decades is ludicrous. Did you ever watch the show "All In The Family" which takes place in the 70's? There are a lot of episodes about just how difficult jobs were hard to find as an example of the times back then. Just an example.
Also saying that married couples didn't have to work in the 50's and 60's. My mom did. So did a lot of moms we knew.
Where do your sources of information come from anyway? Can you give us links to websites or names of books or articles? I would really like to know where your knowledge is coming from.
Belmont22, families can still survive on one "average" salary.
They just have to do it the same way families did in the 1950s. No luxuries, every meal prepared from scratch, only the clothes that you truly need, no tech toys, and do it all living in a 900 sq ft rancher or row home.
Actually tech toys are very cheap because of Moore's Law, you can afford a smartphone much more easily than putting dinner on the table. A smartphone is often free and costs just $50 a month for the plan, much more affordable than you'd think. That 900 square foot house would still cost a fortune in many cities in the United States today, though it's true many families buy the big home just for the status even though they can't afford it.
I grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s and while we did eat out maybe once a week or so, mostly we ate hot dogs, potato chips, chili, and mac n cheese. Making your meals from scratch would be more time consuming and not much if at all cheaper than buying prepackaged crap, most people don't have time to do that anymore.
I do not think your generation has it easy. I never said I did. I was not born in your generation but I did have to struggle to find work in the 21st century and it was darn hard especially because I was in my fifties so I know what it's like. I had to return to school to make myself more employable after experiencing several layoffs even though I had a college degree and my competition were freshly minted younger college grads.
You, on the other hand, did not live in the 50's or 60's so you did not experience what it was like to live in those times. That is why many people such as myself are challenging some of your comments about the conditions that existed then. Your observations about those times are more cliched hearsay than anything else. Saying that people did not worry about job in past decades is ludicrous. Did you ever watch the show "All In The Family" which takes place in the 70's? There are a lot of episodes about just how difficult jobs were hard to find as an example of the times back then. Just an example.
Also saying that married couples didn't have to work in the 50's and 60's. My mom did. So did a lot of moms we knew.
Where do your sources of information come from anyway? Can you give us links to websites or names of books or articles? I would really like to know where your knowledge is coming from.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's harder now actually, more just I see the direction things are going with globalization and automation and I think we have seen nothing yet.
I'm sure some moms did have to work in the 50s and 60s, after all the war was already changing the economy, but nowadays being a SAHM is usually not even a choice. The economy demands both parties work. I'd rather it be that one spouse, either the mom or the dad could choose to stay at home but the way house prices are that's no longer an option for most people; it's a luxury. It was a luxury in the mid-20th century too, but one many if not most people could still afford.
I wasn't alive in the mid 20th century, but facts ultimately have more value than subjective experience, even if you were there, since your subjective experience would only be relevant to your community/people you knew. You are correct in that single income families were far from a universal experience, especially if you weren't white, but they were nonetheless much more common. However admittedly this had largely to do with the post-war prosperity in the West and arguably was a 20th century phenomenon. Prior to modernity of course, and in poor regions of the world today women do a ton of labor such as carrying water, probably more than the men do when you factor in child rearing.
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