Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I grew up in the 80s. The town I grew up in was considered upper middle class, though the 3 towns that bordered were all considered lower middle class. I had many friends and family from neighboring towns, so this account will be based on the sum total of what I saw from the community in general.
The first thing is that 'poor' back then is not what is considered 'poor' today. Everyone I knew had 2 cars, food on the table, clothes on their back, and good health insurance (including dental insurance). A 'poor' family was one that lived in an apartment, one that couldn't afford to go on vacation, or one that couldn't afford to send their kids to college. Everyone had the basics. As for my family, we had the basics including a house. We did go on occasional vacations and get holiday gifts, but other than that we did not have many extras. Thus we were actually considered poor by our community. How did the community know we did not have extras? Because we didn't have boats in the driveway, summer vacation homes, we did not go away often (and when we did it was usually for just a couple of days), our house was smaller than most, etc....
As for what we did have, that certainly includes health insurance. Everyone had health insurance back then, even the poorest families. In fact the first time I heard of someone going without health insurance I was in my 20s. It was shocking as that sort of thing was totally unheard of when I was growing up.
We also had new clothes. Thrift stores barely existed, and only the truly destitute bought them. In fact, the first time I ever heard of someone shopping at a thrift store for clothing I was in my late 20s. It was someone that was poor, though not destitute. The first time I ever heard of a 'normal' person going to a thrift store to shop, I was well into my 30s.
Jobs for high school kids paid much better then than they do now. They were also easier to find. When I was in high school I had what was then considered an 'average' job (average wage). I worked 20-25 hours/wk during the school year and 30-40 hours/wk during the summer. On that salary, I was able to pay for my car insurance, going out whenever I wanted with my friends (booze, food, dates, etc), save money, buy nice new clothes for myself, and even buy a very reliable replacement car with cash when my first car died. Raises for even high school students were SOP, even at what is now considered 'low skill' jobs. I got my first raise a few months after I started working and that was the norm.
Because high school students with jobs had such high purchasing power relative to today, their spending itself created a lot of jobs. Restaurants like Denny's, McDonalds, Friendly's, etc... were generally packed with high school students. Also movie theaters and malls got a lot of business from these students.
When it became time to decide what to do with my life, I became aware that there were 3 companies within a 15 drive that were always hiring at good wages. What do I mean by 'always hiring'? They would take just about anybody. What do I mean by 'good wages'? Enough to support a family, even with one income. All 3 also had great benefits including pension. However, I was discouraged by many from working at these companies. Why? These were the places that 'screw ups' went. Most people wanted to do even better for themselves than to work at one of these companies, so they said no to working there. By the way, of these companies only 1 was a factory. All 3 still exist today. One of them (the factory) pays the same starting wage that it did then, some 25 years ago. They hire at times but it is far harder to get the job now than it used to be. And the worst part is that it is actually still considered a decent job by many! One of them stopped expanding. They still pay well (but not as well as they did then), but it is very difficult to get a job there unless you know someone. The 3rd started a campaign to cut wages about 12 years ago. They started actually paying people good money to quit. Like 25k. All of the new workers are paid a tiny fraction of what they used to pay.
When I went to college, I found that getting a decent part time job was even easier than it was in high school. With my part time job, I found that I could pay rent, car insurance, gas, food (often eating out), gym membership, buy nice clothes, and go out drinking nearly every night.
One aspect about the 80s and 90s that I remmmber is that if you had a full time job, any job really, you could have a basic place to live. The rents have far outpaced wages. You have a lot of people today that are basically the "working homeless".
Sheesh what is this rose colored glasses week here at City Data?
I remember back in the 1890s everyone had a pet unicorn, we swam in lakes of rich chocolate, and the gay sounds of laughter echoed through the villages as the happy children wrapped the maypole with ribbons interlaced with gold and platinum.
These days everything sucks, my internet slows down around 8:00 pm because everyone is online and the nearest grocery store no longer stocks fresh kiwi.
OP, I don't know where you lived, where middle-class families had boats in the driveway and owned vacation homes, but in the upper-middle class neighborhoods where my relatives lived, there were no boats or other expensive toys. Families only had one car for a long time, until the breadwinners reached mid-career level or so, and could afford a second car. Vacations consisted of renting a vacation house, or travel to neighboring countries (Mexico, Canada). These were doctors, lawyers, engineers. They had nice homes, some had kids in private school, but after paying the mortgage on a nice home, the kids' school tuition (if relevant), and saving for retirement and kids' college tuition, plus a nice dinner out for the family maybe once/month (nobody went out to dinner weekly, like people do now), and that one annual vacation, there wasn't a lot left over for splurging.
Maybe where you lived, people lived with a lot of debt, and financed all those extras with debt? My experience is that parents who grew up during the Depression did not take on any unnecessary debt. They lived within their means. Life was good enough without having expensive extras.
The poverty rate in 1982/1983 was the same as the Great Recession and the S&L meltdown in the early 1990's. It was a time of hyperinflation and economic stagnation. It's what got Ronald Reagan elected. I remember the housing market in 1981. It was a disaster. Mortgages were 15% interest. Nobody could afford to buy anything. The people who were smiling were the ones who had locked in fixed mortgage rates in the 1970's and were now paying off their debt with very inflated dollars.
If you look at the data, median household income has gone up steadily since 1980 for the top quintile. It's done pretty well in the second quintile. The bottom 60% has been flat since 1980.
I remember in the late-1980's when housing prices had run up and housing was completely unaffordable. We then had the S&L meltdown with a huge property crash. It took almost 10 years for prices to recover. We had another market correction at the Great Recession but the high cost of living places didn't correct much. Prices 8 years later are at their all-time peak. If you're in the rust belt or flyover country, you saw a completely different real estate market.
I don't get the revisionist history. In "good" towns in the prosperous regions of the country. Things are better now than they've ever been. Everywhere else, the results vary from mixed to awful. If you're in the rust belt, things were certainly better in the 1980's. If you're in Boston, NYC, DC, the Bay Area, Seattle or the booming sun belt cities like Austin, things are far better now.
The poverty rate in 1982/1983 was the same as the Great Recession and the S&L meltdown in the early 1990's. It was a time of hyperinflation and economic stagnation. It's what got Ronald Reagan elected.
Reagan was elected in 1980 and was the principal architect of the economic collapse of the early 1980s as well as a major contributor to the S&L debacle that plagued the late 1980's and early 1990's.
One's eyewitness account of the early 1980's recessions is going to vary with regard to one's location in the U.S. at the time. I was at ground zero in Detroit - it was nothing like the OP mentioned. On the other hand, I have been told that Denver didn't feel any of the effects of those recessions (yes, there were two recessions, back-to-back, but it most people think of it as one recession).
Sheesh what is this rose colored glasses week here at City Data?
I remember back in the 1890s everyone had a pet unicorn, we swam in lakes of rich chocolate, and the gay sounds of laughter echoed through the villages as the happy children wrapped the maypole with ribbons interlaced with gold and platinum.
These days everything sucks, my internet slows down around 8:00 pm because everyone is online and the nearest grocery store no longer stocks fresh kiwi.
My take-home pay in the 1990s from minimum wage was like $2.90 ($4.25 an hour) and a Chili's burger was still nearly $10, so I'm not sure what these faboo high school jobs the op is talking about are all about. No one I knew had one.
My parents and my friends' parents were upper middle class (engineers, doctors, lawyers) and no one had a luxury car. We all did take vacations, though.
Reagan was elected in 1980 and was the principal architect of the economic collapse of the early 1980s as well as a major contributor to the S&L debacle that plagued the late 1980's and early 1990's.
The 1980-81 recession was engineered by Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He raised the prime interest rate to 15% in response to inflation approaching 10% (roughly speaking). Ronald Reagan couldn't solve the recession because it was artificially created. And if Volcker hadn't eased up by Reagan's third year in office, letting the Reagan 'Morning in America' recovery happen, Reagan would probably have been a one term president.
The S&L debacle was caused by tax reform and S&L deregulation that occurred under Reagan's watch. Commercial real estate boomed during the mid 1980's, fueled by speculation and S&L funding. The tax reform removed special tax breaks that commercial real estate relied upon to be profitable entities. When they went belly up, commercial real estate entities were unable to pay back their debts to the Savings and Loan industry; in turn, the S&Ls started failing due to the bad debt and the federal government had to bail out the industry to the tune of $160 billion. I've often thought that the S&L debacle was a warm up to the 2008 financial meltdown, as they shared deregulation, real estate speculation, and a big federal bailout in common.
I grew up in the 80s. The town I grew up in was considered upper middle class, though the 3 towns that bordered were all considered lower middle class. I had many friends and family from neighboring towns, so this account will be based on the sum total of what I saw from the community in general.
The first thing is that 'poor' back then is not what is considered 'poor' today. Everyone I knew had 2 cars, food on the table, clothes on their back, and good health insurance (including dental insurance). A 'poor' family was one that lived in an apartment, one that couldn't afford to go on vacation, or one that couldn't afford to send their kids to college. Everyone had the basics. As for my family, we had the basics including a house. We did go on occasional vacations and get holiday gifts, but other than that we did not have many extras. Thus we were actually considered poor by our community. How did the community know we did not have extras? Because we didn't have boats in the driveway, summer vacation homes, we did not go away often (and when we did it was usually for just a couple of days), our house was smaller than most, etc....
As for what we did have, that certainly includes health insurance. Everyone had health insurance back then, even the poorest families. In fact the first time I heard of someone going without health insurance I was in my 20s. It was shocking as that sort of thing was totally unheard of when I was growing up.
We also had new clothes. Thrift stores barely existed, and only the truly destitute bought them. In fact, the first time I ever heard of someone shopping at a thrift store for clothing I was in my late 20s. It was someone that was poor, though not destitute. The first time I ever heard of a 'normal' person going to a thrift store to shop, I was well into my 30s.
Jobs for high school kids paid much better then than they do now. They were also easier to find. When I was in high school I had what was then considered an 'average' job (average wage). I worked 20-25 hours/wk during the school year and 30-40 hours/wk during the summer. On that salary, I was able to pay for my car insurance, going out whenever I wanted with my friends (booze, food, dates, etc), save money, buy nice new clothes for myself, and even buy a very reliable replacement car with cash when my first car died. Raises for even high school students were SOP, even at what is now considered 'low skill' jobs. I got my first raise a few months after I started working and that was the norm.
Because high school students with jobs had such high purchasing power relative to today, their spending itself created a lot of jobs. Restaurants like Denny's, McDonalds, Friendly's, etc... were generally packed with high school students. Also movie theaters and malls got a lot of business from these students.
When it became time to decide what to do with my life, I became aware that there were 3 companies within a 15 drive that were always hiring at good wages. What do I mean by 'always hiring'? They would take just about anybody. What do I mean by 'good wages'? Enough to support a family, even with one income. All 3 also had great benefits including pension. However, I was discouraged by many from working at these companies. Why? These were the places that 'screw ups' went. Most people wanted to do even better for themselves than to work at one of these companies, so they said no to working there. By the way, of these companies only 1 was a factory. All 3 still exist today. One of them (the factory) pays the same starting wage that it did then, some 25 years ago. They hire at times but it is far harder to get the job now than it used to be. And the worst part is that it is actually still considered a decent job by many! One of them stopped expanding. They still pay well (but not as well as they did then), but it is very difficult to get a job there unless you know someone. The 3rd started a campaign to cut wages about 12 years ago. They started actually paying people good money to quit. Like 25k. All of the new workers are paid a tiny fraction of what they used to pay.
When I went to college, I found that getting a decent part time job was even easier than it was in high school. With my part time job, I found that I could pay rent, car insurance, gas, food (often eating out), gym membership, buy nice clothes, and go out drinking nearly every night.
...to be continued.
This post is one big anecdote about your personal experiences and environment and is no way an accurate description for most of American society in this time period.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
