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You had nine channels? Wow! Without cell phones people talked to one another face to face rather than texting, tweeting, twerking or whatever they do now. Sometimes I think no Internet was a blessing in many ways. As for air travel, at least people dressed nicely for it; church and going out to dinner as well.
Nine channels existed only in NY, Chicago and LA. Many had only three, mostly black and white, Even for those rich enough to have a color receiver. Yes, people dressed well for air travel. I would like to see that revived.
There were few people with degrees then, especially advanced degrees. About 8% of men, and 5% of women had college degrees in 1950. I couldn't find a stat those with advanced degrees, but the number would be less than the above. Most of the people in my hometown who had degrees were the school teachers, doctors, dentists, lawyers and a few engineers. Those people did quite well. My father was an engineer with an advanced degree; he was a manager. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf
Broadly professionals as you have described here are doing better than they were back then (and even more so when you consider the increase in marital homogeneity), which is why I excluded people with advanced degrees in the initial statement, although in retrospect using the term professional rather than a degree level would have been more appropriate. Which of course isn't to say that they were doing badly then either, because they definitely weren't, and isn't to say the rate of growth has been as fast as back then, because it hasn't been. If you are in this part of society, it is unlikely that you would have been better off back then, but of course that's only a relative statement and not an absolute one.
It's also the segment of society for which things are better where the improvement has been the smallest -- so people like myself and (if what I remember from reading your posts in the past) yourself generally would be expected to discuss this with the least emotion, and I think that broadly is what you observe, as opposed to the people who look back at a time when they would have been unable to make it due to discrimination or the lesser opportunities available to unmarried women on the one hand and the broader group of white people below the upper-middle-class professional threshold who have the nasty, loss-aversion-triggering experience of living with less in the way of resources or opportunities than their parents had. For me, it's pretty much academic since folks like myself have mostly treaded water with moderate improvement, but I can definitely understand why other people can feel so strongly about this, on both ends.
Last edited by ALackOfCreativity; 12-27-2014 at 04:40 PM..
A forum is not a pulse on the American public. It is only about those who choose to post here.
I agree the sample is very small. But so far it has confirmed my belief that straight white males as a group are the most nostalgic. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few counter examples though and would be very interested to hear why they think that way.
LOL! My mom was a young mother then. I think back on how it was for her; in the early part of that era, she had no washer or dryer, she said laundromats were just starting to become common. She had two kids in the space of 13 months in 1949-50; she had to wash diapers in the bathtub, and hang them up to dry in their apt. No TV then, either. I remember when my family got their first TV-in 1957. I will say they were among the last I knew to get one. No dishwasher, no microwaves, few frozen foods,even. Lots of work to do to keep a house clean. Of course, most families only had one car then, so Dad took it to work and there was nowhere much you could go, so you stayed home and cleaned. We did have a downtown you could walk to, but to buy groceries you had to wait till Dad got home with the car.
My aunt was a widowed single mom back then. She could not even get a store credit card in her name. Fortunately, her name was Freda, so she opened one as "Fred A. (Smith)". They didn't care who paid the bills, just whose name was on the card.
We spend half the amount of our income on food now as we did in 1950. 50 Years Of Consumer Spending
Cars had few safety features then, and were always breaking down. They needed to be replaced about every 5 years or so.
I think that about sums it up.
An original 57 Chevy can fetch $200K easily. Let's see what a 2014 MB fetches in 2064.
My mom liked to say "Family Planning" meant if you got pregnant, you planned to have another
baby.
I take it the option of abortion is more supposed to be an attractive and acceptable option? Given the fact at least 50% of children are born out of wedlock and raised by single mothers, it could be.
Mom was more responsible else you may not be here.
I agree the sample is very small. But so far it has confirmed my belief that straight white males as a group are the most nostalgic. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few counter examples though and would be very interested to hear why they think that way.
Most in here haven't even stated what their race and sexual orientation are. It only makes sense though that both males and females who grew up in that era can make an ample comparison to today regardless of what their race or sexual preference is. I see more moral decay today and yes I am a male but many females agree with me also and they aren't all white either.
I take it the option of abortion is more supposed to be an attractive and acceptable option? Given the fact at least 50% of children are born out of wedlock and raised by single mothers, it could be.
Mom was more responsible else you may not be here.
It should be. A lot of our social problems of recent years have occurred precisely because of a societal social change where people view carrying pregnancies out of wedlock to term as a better option than either abortion or a shotgun wedding.
This is also part of why the upper-middle class and above has been spared the decline elsewhere -- not completely spared the divorce epidemic, but hit less hard and pretty much completely dodged the surge in illegitimacy. Family dynamic decay has been a big part of why things are worse for people in groups that were impacted and didn't have counterbalancing declines in discrimination to balance it out, it's not just economics.
Similarly the rise of technology described in Katiana's posts is a large part of why things have gotten so much better for married couples within the segments of society where marriages have remained stable. You now have both spouses free to work outside the home if they want to and mechanized chores and a bit of outsourcing of tasks makes that possible. That's a huge boost for quality of life.
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