Were people much happier in the 1950s and 1960s? (generation, military, myths)
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I know it was just a movie, but I watched "It happened at the world's fair" starring Elvis Presley last night on TCM and had to laugh at one of the first scenes.
Elvis and his buddy are hitchhiking on the side of the road and are picked up by an Asian man and his young niece. The Asian man allows his young nieceto ride in the back with perfect strangers. Later he allows Elvis to take the kid to the 1962 World's Fair and was to return at 8pm.
Compare that scene to the reality of what could have happened in today's society.
Compared to today, the average family was dirt poor in the 50's and 60's. Racist unions with overpaid workers were in their golden age; everybody else was broke.
You're right. One of the big myths about this era was that people made relatively more money because one income could support the family. That wasn't true at all. One income could support a family only because families simply did without an awful lot of what we take for granted today. The families portrayed on tv programs like Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver were upper middle class families not most Americans.
Furthermore, among the working class people at least, many women worked part-time or in the family business once their kids went to school. The truth was that most unionized workers weren't that well-paid. The union workers who made big $$$ worked for the big corporations in industries like steel, auto, chemical, and aeronautics. Most other unionized workers made much less, especially women who frequently worked in the textile and electronics industries, and who were barred, like minorities, from the assembly lines in the best paying industries. Non-union workers were even worse off.
Public employees from police to teachers and everybody in between were paid pittances compared to what private industry paid. That was the reason that governments offered generous pensions -- they could offer workers incentives while pushing the cost off into the future.
H.E.L.L. NO. I was born in 1950, female and mixed blood Native American. I HATED the restraints put on me, can't do this and that, no you can't be this or that. I rebelled at an early age, I hated the frilly dresses, I wanted to play sports like baseball or basketball and I was great, but not allowed. The mantra I was raised with is: "you can't do that you'll never get a husband" and "you don't need a college education it would be wasted because you'll get married". My mother ragged on me until the day she died.
I'm pretty sure black people were a lot less happy in the 50s and 60s.
Not according to Phil Robertson. Black people sang on their way to the fields and Jim Crow bothered no one. Seriously, though, people in general were happier. One reason is they did not have talk radio or the internet or Tv to rile them up and report every negative the instant it happened and without perspective. But the biggest reason is that the economy was going through a period of wealth redistribution where the middle class was growing. It ended in the late 70s with the advent of a corrupt Congress passing policies that favored the wealthy and punished working people. The problem of the wealth inequality grew to unheard of levels in the 21st century, and it weighs heavily on the nation. If we ever get the good sense to enact policies that build the middle class and provide opportunity again, we can have the good feelings back.
I bet the blacks were happier when they could live in their own communities, shop in their own stores and not be forced to integrate with whites.
How about going up to a "black" baby boomer and asking him/her how fun it was in the 50s and 60s, when BY LAW they were not allowed to use the same facilities as the whites, and he/she could get killed for wanting to vote.
Rosa Parks was thrilled when she got arrested for not giving her bus seat up to a white man. She laughed all the way to jail.
But the biggest reason is that the economy was going through a period of wealth redistribution where the middle class was growing. It ended in the late 70s with the advent of a corrupt Congress passing policies that favored the wealthy and punished working people. The problem of the wealth inequality grew to unheard of levels in the 21st century, and it weighs heavily on the nation. If we ever get the good sense to enact policies that build the middle class and provide opportunity again, we can have the good feelings back.
Sort of right.
The biggest factor in the growth of the middle class was the fact that after WWII, the US was the only industrial nation in the world still standing. Germany, France, Russia, and Japan were smashed. Britain was dazed. The natural resources of European colonies were laid open.
But the US was untouched and stronger after the war than it had ever been. For nearly three decades, the US was the primary source of goods for a desperate world-wide market. I remember when Americans sent CARE packages to starving children in Europe. American industry surged like no national industry had ever surged in the history of mankind. Of course the middle class in America grew.
But that global industrial supremacy ended when the rest of the world finally recovered from the war in the late 60s. By the 70s, the US had entered an economic crisis of enormous proportions. People don't recall the extreme measure President Nixon took back then, such as taking the US economy off the gold standard and even ordering a national wage and price freeze (imagine the howls if Obama tried to order a wage and price freeze). Anyone remember double-digit inflation and double-digit home mortgage interest?
There would have been an economic collapse back then if women had not entered the workforce in numbers as great as WWII. If the nation had continued to try to get by on single-income households, 2008 would have occurred in 1978.
How about going up to a "black" baby boomer and asking him/her how fun it was in the 50s and 60s, when BY LAW they were not allowed to use the same facilities as the whites, and he/she could get killed for wanting to vote.
Rosa Parks was thrilled when she got arrested for not giving her bus seat up to a white man. She laughed all the way to jail.
Fun fun fun...
Ironically, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to integrate...the man demanded a seat in the designated black portion of the bus.
The current economy seems to make people unhappy, but when the economy was better were people happier?
I was a teen in the 50s and yes, I would say we were happier, in the 60s we were young, middle management families or skilled craftsmen in many cases. Unemployment was low, prior to the hippy days we used, pretty much rolled with the punches. Things started changing in the mid to late 60s. They haven't gotten any better and in many ways worse, but I look at my grandkids, now the age we were in the 50s and 60s. They seem pretty happy, have faith in the future and are enjoying themselves. I do know they are much more mature than we were and they do question things more than we did.
I would love to hear from more black people who were teens in the 50s and 60s. How did they feel, were they happy or sad? Many of us were middle income, our families didn't have to deal with discrimination and we were mostly white. We really do not know how others felt. I was raised in a middle class neighborhood, all white with few minorities: some Hispanics (it was L.A. after all) and some Asians. We even had a few families who had immigrated from Europe in our community. As I mentioned, most families were skilled craftsmen, many union workers or they were white collar employees, mostly mid management. My husbands family were blue collar, I came from a family of white collar workers. Many of our friends fought in WW2 including my dad. We were content with so much less, than the young people today.
Last edited by nmnita; 01-09-2014 at 08:03 AM..
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