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The key difference is that the China trade (outside of trinkets) didn't exist in the 80s and 90s. It only really started ramping up around the 2000s. Americans are now trying to compete with a billion people who are also looking to join the middle class.
Somewhat difficult question because there are obviously pluses and minuses of each era. I was born in the 80's and was a teenager in the mid/late 90's.
One thing I do really value about the 80s/90s was being able to have lots of in-person interaction. I remember kids in the suburb I grew up with would ride our bikes and spend lots of time outdoors playing sports back then. My family had dinners together most nights, and there were no distractions of phones/electronics back then. I vividly remember lots of holidays and road trips because there weren't the kinds of gadgets we have now to distract. Also, not everything was centered around politics. The only time I remember politics really coming up was around the election. Other than that, that topic was pretty silent. Times were a little simpler, but I can list a bunch of things I liked about these modern times too.
Note:
The amenities we have today were still around in these days, but just in a more simplified way (but were still entertaining) Instead of Wiis and Playstations, we had Ataris and 8 & 16 bit Nintendos. Instead of HDTV and a trillion satellite channels, we had stereo and basic cable & broadcast channels with quality shows. Instead of T1 and broadband, we had Dial-Up and DSL. Instead of mp3 and iPods, we had cassettes/CDs and walkmans. Despite these things, people still maintained a sense of awareness and communication with the outside world.
I know that the (mid-late) 2000s were good and 2010s will be better for me - by a default financial standpoint - because my standard of living increased by attaining a college degree in a decent major, and I'll be able to mobilize myself easier if I don't like a certain city/region. But I'm asking this for the general aspect of the quality of living and the outlook of the 2000s and the upcoming decade.
The 80's were devastating to rural areas economically. BUT I had a good income.....living in a rural area.
I did have "trillion satellite channels" with C-Band satellite. Didn't have to pay a monthly fee. And all the broadcasts were in the clear!!
Yep, ask me about Henry Kissinger talking to the make-up artist before going on air. Classic Monday Night Football games, where I got to hear the banter in the broadcast booth, while the rest of America was watching commercials. Really Don Meridith was funnier off camera than on camera. Yea, Dan Rather is really a butt....off-air. It was great!!
My rural community had next day delivery of the Wall Street Journal. But with CompuServe I could read the journal is real time. Yep, did the have problem of explaining to neighbors how to kick me off the party line when I was on-line. For courtesy, it was a late-night, very early morning reading of the journal for that reason.
My library system, had a bulletin-board where I could browse the card catalog and request books which were then MAILED to me with return postage.
I miss the 80's. It was cheap living, with today's technology for those of us in rural areas.
Yes, the internet is "easier" these days. But not worth the other trade-offs.
Oh yeah, the only daytime radio and TV service came from Canada.!!
Definitely the 00's - now for me. I'm a big fan of technology and communications though, and a general optimist. Not particularly young either so some tech is passing me by, but still. The 80s/90s feel ancient to me, imagine using DOS with a 386 processor with just 64 colors on an EGA graphics processor on a system where information was locked to whatever it contained in itself within your home, taking up the space of an entire desk.
Now I have 8k screens on a phone the size of your palm that I can talk to to ask for information in an instant. Health expectations have gotten better, medical treatments have improved, humanity just knows more. We can look forward to rockets going to space, vehicles that drive us in pods, a cleaner future, nanotechnology to repair damaged cells and VR to immerse us into entirely different worlds and experiences.
Why the heck would I want to go back in time and watch some crappy 80s movie on a VHS with skipping? Or be limited to 12 songs on a CD, or even worse 5 on a tape deck when I can play almost anything recorded in the world with a tap? At the same time, I can still go out and enjoy nature and the outdoors like I did in the 90s, so it's not like I've lost anything.
I wonder what age I have to get to to be a general pessimist, I've just never found myself longing for "yesterday" like so many. It's an odd and seemingly unhappy position to take in life.
I agree, as a 96 born I felt like I grew up on the cusp between a life pre-social media to a life centered around it. Even though most of my adolescent years were spent in the early 2010s I still felt like people were way less concern with being woke sjw's like we saw post-2014.
I don't know how one could possibly say social media isn't a catalyst for why things are worse off now. Social media is largely responsible for the "instant gratification" many people have nowadays, political divide, and is 100% exactly the platform that allowed "political correctness" to take off and basically destroy mainstream TV, movies, and other media, as well as culture overall. It is why 13 year old Tik Tok "dancers" become millionaires while everyone else works their ass off and makes nothing.
Social media is exactly why everyone is so PC now, and directly is what killed mainstream comedy.
I would say the sweet spot would be the 2000's alone. We had technology for communicating with one another over the internet, had cell phones, and yes, when smartphones were in their infancy, it wasn't such a big deal. Mainstream movies/TV/music were all decent then too (not as good as the 90's and earlier, but still good). Once everyone began having a smartphone though is where things started to deteriorate, which was roughly 2011-2012. I would say before that was the "good ole days". When people started caring about "likes" and when people began simply "blocking" people they disagreed with, was when things went to crap, and everyone became fragile and filled with anxiety.
Last edited by CCrest182; 01-21-2021 at 05:45 PM..
lol is this a joke. I live in Seattle and 90% of our electricity come from river dams and the other 6% on nuclear energy. Tell me how my electricity is going to get more expensive to the point that the Internet will disappear.
The machines that mine the raw materials in hydroelectric parts run on fossil fuels. From various mines around the world, the materials are transported by fossil fuel machines to many factories, then the parts are transported to more factories to be assembled and then finally to Seattle, which is seismically active. As climate change delivers more rain to Seattle, old poorly maintained infrastructure is generally ignored until it breaks, including dams. And if you're not deeply scared of nuclear energy on the Ring of Fire, then fine, you can assume you won't have a Fukushima in your back yard. But nuclear energy has never been profitable anywhere. As a subsidy dumpster, it is being phased out as existing plants become too old to maintain and uranium mines are depleted.
I was not old enough to remember much of the 1980s, I do remember the 1990s onward.
I think the mid and late 1990s was the best in my opinion. There was some communications technolody but very little compared to today which was exciting but people did communicate much more back then.
If one looks at polls from different times in history, the years when people approved of how things were going was in the mid and late 1990s by a wide margin.
In general, it was a much, much far social era in many ways compared to today. A higher percentage of individuals were happy and in my opinion healthier back then.
It was just such an exciting time. I remember looking at newspaper archives and what one could buy or purchase for the wages typical of the day were far more than today.
I also liked like the mid 2000s but I was typical college age at the time. I think my happiness in early 2000s was just my age at the time. Early 20s seem to the best age there is freedom and usually humans are at that their healthiest at that age and socialization in general is likely highest at that age.
I remember taking many thousands of miles of bus rides across much of America from 2001-2005 and every bus ride would be full of people talking the entire ride, during bus rides and train rides the last five years it's extremely uncommon.
I think in the late 2000s, rather than people just trying to have the best life they can under the circumstances that there was an unhealthy competition, pretention and arrogance that begun to entrench itself in culture.
I don't think it just me but things started to go down-hill around 2010. During the last decade, People seem to be far more rude, much unhappier, a very high percentage of Americans health has gone down-hill.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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It's going to vary by the person. For me it's now, by far. In the 1980s and 90s we had 3 kids, both working, but needing a larger house, driving older cars. Now making three times the income, with the kids on their own, vehicle 3 years old and one new, plus a 25' travel trailer, and still working in jobs we both love. Yes, since 9/11 trips by air are a nuisance now, and now the pandemic, but if the pandemic had been in the 80s-90s we would probably be homeless.
I'm 34, and the 80s and 90s were a utopia compared to today. The world is never a perfect place regardless of the decade, but when it comes to 9/11 this and outsource that and downsize this and Patriot Act that and my own military enlistment and job layoffs and so on and so forth, 2000-09 by comparison was absolutely the worst decade of my entire life. I sincerely hope it stays that way.
Randomly opened this old ass thread and saw this post on the first page. LOL! I wonder how this guy feels about the 2020s so far. 9/11 was the good old days.
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