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I am a kid right now I would really love to see a mixture of the 50s with today's world and the economy of the 90s.
The 50s sound great as many Americans had very good values and traditions. Mixed with today's world of tolerance and living with every race sounds great. Finally mixed with the great economy of the 90s will leave a finishing touch.
How can the 50s outweigh the 60s?! Come on, the 60s was the huge change in economic growth!
There were more jobs, more money, people were able to afford luxuries i.e washing machine, dishwasher, high tech vaccum cleaner etc. flower power increasing, the financial system was booming. If it wasn't for the 60s we wouldn't be where we are now! Women then had the opportunity to work so more money came into the family, less harsh treatment on blacks( I'm not black but my friend is black), Civil Rights, everyone treated each other equally.
The 50s in my opinion, was just a backwards decade. And not as nice. Immigrants who worked hard weren't treated fairly, sexism -there were hardly any women singers back in the 50s, clothes were plain, too much smog, very classist, lot of racism, too many to name. The only nice image I have of the 50s is cheaper prices, maltshops and drive-ins. Apart from that, the 50s are nothing. Everything happened in the 60s and nearly everyone had a tv by then. I wouldn't imagine not having a tv and having a laugh with my favourite comedians!
You mean you'd have been willing to put up with Joe McCarthy and his Communist witch-hunts? (To say nothing of the fact that the Korean War had barely ended, and there we were, beginning to involve ourselves in Vietnam).
I'm voting for the 1920s, because that was a time of optimism.
1. The 1920's. Economic advances were occurring, but there was a huge disparity of income between the rich and the poor. Many people still worked 10 to 12 hours a day. The rural south? Poverty on a huge scale. Blacks were truly second class citizens. Oh, and the Ku Klux Klan was at its most powerful point during this decade.
2. The 1950's. A good decade in many ways, but full of problems nevertheless. The Korean War lasted from 1950 to 1953. Racially segregated schools were totally legal until 1954. In reality, they existed well into the 1960's. Anyone who looked at what happened when they tried to desegregate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 could hardly be proud of the country they lived in. Eisenhower was probably a pretty decent President, but he stood by and took actions that set the stage for the Vietnam War of the 1960's. Than there was Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, and other rightwing groups that labelled anyone who did not agree with them a "communist". You had to take it seriously too. Many people lost their jobs and careers over this kind of labeling.
3. The 1960's. An era in which we faced up to many of our racial problems and we did things to help the poorest in our society. Yet, I would never choose to go back to this decade. There was that awful Vietnam War that claimed 58,000 American lives and left untold suffering behind. There were three assassinations that struck at our very fabric as a nation: John Kennedy; Bobby Kennedy; and Martin Luther King. There were huge race riots in Watts, Detroit, and Newark. Other smaller riots were so common, I can't even remember them. I regard the decade as one in which simply mere survival proved the strength of our system.
4. The 1970's. A much calmer decade. However, as a country we faced huge gasoline price hikes that brought astronomical inflation. We dealt with a corrupt President who was forced to resign after the Watergate Scandal. We actually learned that there was much corruption throughout our political system. We learned our power as a nation was limited after South Vietnam collapsed and North Vietnam won the war. We stood by while terrorists worked all sorts of evil around the world.
5. The 1980's. Many people saw this as a relief after the 70's. However, it was a time of high unemployment which reached greater than 10% by 1982. Many of us struggled during this period. The real beneficiaries were the wealthy who saw their income tax rates slashed. Eventually, the Cold War would end, but before it did many of us were scared to death. Our President made jokes about bombing Russia, stated he could recall nuclear missiles after they were fired (when he could not), and referred to the Russians as an "evil empire". Even if they were, it was hardly the right thing to say with hysteria running as high as it was. When a KAL Airliner was shot down by the Russians because it crossed into their territory many of us wondered if a nuclear war was unavoidable. Fortunately, things calmed down.
Anyway, the moral of this is that all the decades that people thought were "great", weren't nearly as good as they imagine. Not if they look closely at them. The challenges we face today seem daunting at times. Yet, I still wouldn't want to go back and live through some of those decades again.'
My advice to those who are tempted to do so is: Live, Rejoice and be here Now.
This thread is now more than two and a half years old. Checking the latest poll results (as of a few minutes ago), I note that not only is the decade of the 1950's ahead, but more than twice as many people voted for it as for any other decade. Opps! Edited to add that the 1990's have more than 50% of the votes of the 1950's.
Perhaps it's good to keep in mind that the OP's question is what was the "best" decade, not which decade was perfect (since there is no such thing as perfection). It's easy to cherry pick all the good points or all the bad points of a decade to make a case. People especially delight in demonizing the 1950's, and there were definitely draw-backs: Racial equality was still a dream and not yet a reality and women faced certain barriers which have since been removed. The dangers of tobacco were just beginning to be debated and many young people were becoming addicted to it.
But do you think masses of children are now better off being raised by single working moms? Many of these children are really raising themselves, and that was virtually unknown in the 1950's. Do you think we are better off since drugs other than tobacco became so much more readily available? I didn't know or know of a single kid who was on drugs until after I had graduated from high school.
Having lived through the 1950's - and of course by necessity every subsequent decade - I can say that the 1950's were the best despite the admitted downsides. The nanny state was not yet so advanced as now and the generalized hatred of a highly polarized society which came later was unthinkable. McCarthyism was mild by comparison. Or maybe we can say that McCarthyism was the beginning of it, and that the insanity was just going to grow and grow. Race riots, assassinations, and random bombings in the name of anti-capitalism or white supremacy or any other name were pretty much unknown and unthinkable during the 1950's. It was, on the whole, a more decent and livable and enjoyable time.
And quite frankly, I'm amazed at how naive people are in regards to "how far" women have come since the bogus '60s revolution. In case anyone forgot, women have been working in this country since they first laid their foot here. So it isn't like women weren't allowed to work before. That's not what created the hoopla. Women were clamoring then what they should be clamoring for today - equal pay and the opportunity to land the top jobs, the really big paying jobs. Recent news flash reported women today get paid 70% of the wage a man would get in the same job, and women still are not hired in top elite positions to represent their numbers in society, so are we any better off in 50 years? Sorry to burst the bubble, but the answer is no. Well, I take that back, in the '60s I think women were getting about 65% of a male's wage for the same job. So we're improving about 1% per decade. Wow, I'm so "liberated"!
The only "liberation" we got was more, blatant, in-your-face sexploitation of women by the media and every advertising agency in America (most run by men, btw).
Come to find out the whole women's lib movement was a Rockefeller scam to get women into the work force so the Federal Reserve Banksters could collect more income taxes via the IRS, as well as destroy the American family so the children can be brainwashed in schools to accept a nanny state. You have to know how the entire money scam works in this country to understand how it all works. Check out full aaron russo interview by alex jones concerning nick rockefeller « quintal do at 29:00 where Russo gets into "women's lib".
Having that knowledge, it appears the '50s was the last decade where the American family was still valued and intact, and that, my friends, coupled with Elvis, drive-in dinners, the emergence of Rock 'n' Roll, R & B, skates, go-carts, feeling the wind in your hair as you rode you bike to your friend's house - with no helmet, playing flag football/3 flies up/basketball out in the street 'til dark with the neighborhood kids, Saturday matinee movies & cartoons for .25, double feature movies, and don't forget .20/gallon gas and solid cars built with real materials, and little girls weren't being indoctrinated to dress and act like tramps, is what makes the '50s the best decade in America.
And while there were social taboos, we certainly didn't have all the politically correct censorship of Truth we have today - I just went through 3 websites that are down trying to find the link I just posted in this comment.
It was the last decade that decency was actually decent.
The good...
the booming economy
low cost of living
middle class families could live comfortably off of one income
The transition to your adulthood (job, marriage, kids, house etc.) was easier.
Parents were parents.
Children were more respectful of their elders and of authority.
There was corporal punishment in public schools.
The 1950s was sort of a combination of traditional/simplicity and modernization going on.
People were actually married BEFORE they had children.
Other than McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and racism, things were quite stable.
Society actually encouraged people to abstain until marriage.
Desegregation was ruled unconstitutional.
The baby boom.
The bad...
Racism, especially in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc.
TV laws were too strict. You couldn't even show married couples in the same bed nor could you say the word "pregnant" on television. I don't care for the material that's shown on TV and think TV laws should be more strict but not like in the 50s.
Spousal rape was legal.
Some women were trapped in abusive marriages due to the stigma of divorce and being unmarried.
Child marriages (marriages of people aged 15 and earlier) were common.
Interestingly, if so many people say the 50s were better times. Why don't people try to act and behave like we did then?
Common? I took the question to be about the USA as a whole, and I think you would find that marriage at age 15 was not common by any means.
In 1957, among 23 states, more than 1,600 girls and 8 boys married at 14 and younger, plus nearly 6,000 girls married at age 15 in addition to over 60 boys.
As I said, that's just among 23 states, there were 50 states total. So the numbers of 15 year olds shown is actually probably more than double that. The table also shows that more girls got married at 15 years old than at 27 or 28 years.
I think all those thousands of children marrying at 10-15 is quite significant.
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General thoughts
