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When adjusted for inflation, they started out at wages better than minimum wage workers today?
and that they had a very high minimum wage AND a low unemployment rate?
Guess you can blame rampant inflation during the Carter years on the baby boomers.
You youngster live on the same planet that the boomers lived on when they started working,...so do like they did,.....put on your boots and go to work, or build a better mouse-trap.
A smaller percentage of us obtained a bachelor's degree or higher - but we managed to climb the corporate ladder anyway.
That's because you entered the working world before the explosion of "credentialism," the system by which HR offices toss resumes into the trash if they don't have the right keywords, or by which states actually passed laws forcing teachers or other workers to hold graduate degrees if they were hired after a certain date. You "managed" anyway? You were permitted to do so in a way that many people across the age spectrum are now forbidden from doing.
So your saying life was better when your head was in the sand? Or all of the sudden the government became corrupt since the late 90's?
Things haven't changed, just our awareness.
See, that type of attitude as a first response is typical of what people post nowadays. Folks do not ask first anymore, they jump to conclusions with a jab. Like some weird action film. Violence is violence, whether virtual or actual.
I admit to being no saint and give tit for tat usually.
Today it is just a good day to be alive and in the USA. So you get off easy.
^^No Oscar Mayer variety pack in your house? You know with Bologna, Cotto Salami, Salami for Beer, Canadian Bacon, Olive Loaf?
You knew the family pecking order because Canadian Bacon went first, then Olive Loaf, then Salami For Beer, then it was me or the dog had to fight it out for the Cotto or Bologna. Dog was too big until a grew a few years. Fortunately, pop would give me the peppercorns from his Salami to make up for being low man.
That's because you entered the working world before the explosion of "credentialism," the system by which HR offices toss resumes into the trash if they don't have the right keywords, or by which states actually passed laws forcing teachers or other workers to hold graduate degrees if they were hired after a certain date. You "managed" anyway? You were permitted to do so in a way that many people across the age spectrum are now forbidden from doing.
Oh boy,...another "poor me" thread.
Obama really is having an impact on the young. Just like Obama, the younger generation is looking for someone else to blame for their sad economic conditions instead of looking in the mirror.
See, that type of attitude as a first response is typical of what people post nowadays. Folks do not ask first anymore, they jump to conclusions with a jab. Like some weird action film. Violence is violence, whether virtual or actual.
I admit to being no saint and give tit for tat usually.
Today it is just a good day to be alive and in the USA. So you get off easy.
Your response doesn't even make sense. It is like pretending we had less pedophiles in the 60's because we didn't have megans law to track everyone. It is always the same people/situatios as before, just now information flows more freely than before so people can make decisions based on more information instead of just your core group of friends.
People argue on this board because they are exchanging ideas with non like minded individuals. If you want everyone to get along you could read a distinct conservative/liberal forum and everything will be rainbows.
As a baby boomer, I also realize that my parents raised me in a 1500 square foot house. My brother and I shared a room till we were teens. We had one car. Mom stayed home and Dad worked 60 hours a week. We had one TV in the house, and three channels. We had two phones however - one in the kitchen and one in the master bedroom. We had no cell phones, no video games, no cable TV, no VCRs.
I had a pair of Sunday shoes, a pair of loafers, and a pair of tennis shoes. All three kids shared one bathroom with a single sink. Eating out was a special treat, not an every day occurrence. We went on one family vacation a year - all in one vehicle. That's right - three kids in the backseat together on a road trip.
When I was ten, I started working in yards with my brother for money. By twelve, I was babysitting for cash. When I turned fifteen, I started working at Burger King - that's right, for minimum wage, which was $2.15 at the time. I worked at Burger King for two summers in a row and saved my money over the summer so I'd have cash on hand during the school year. The summer of 1978 was the last time I ever earned minimum wage. The next summer, I started working in a job that offered a base pay (minimum wage) plus a commission on what I sold, and I never looked back.
We had 30 or more kids in each class. We were the largest generation ever born. We learned early on that if we didn't EXCEL -if we didn't work harder and shine brighter - we'd be lost in a crowd of mediocrity. So - we became competitive and grew to truly value a strong work ethic.
Speaking of school, kids didn't get a car when they turned 16 automatically. We rode the bus to school. When I started driving, Dad FINALLY got a second car and my mother and I shared a car - this was in 1978 and the car I shared with my mother was a 1969 Galaxy 500 Ford, with well over 300,000 miles on it.
And hey - we were solidly MIDDLE CLASS - not poor by any means. We lived in a nice neighborhood and my dad had an executive level job. But as you can see - VALUES for the concept of "middle class" were drastically different than they are today.
Us baby boomers moved out when we were 18 or 19 years old. Most of us worked our way through college as well. We were paid more than minimum wage by the time we were 19 or 20 years old because we'd already been working for four or five years by then, and actually had skills and a work ethic.
A smaller percentage of us obtained a bachelor's degree or higher - but we managed to climb the corporate ladder anyway. We knew we'd have to work long hard hours to do so - but we've always known that and been willing to do so.
Most of us bought our first home when we were around 30 - and that home was often very small. We didn't expect our first home to outshine the home our parents were still living in. We saved up our money and put a twenty percent (or more) down payment on that house. We didn't think it was fiscally responsible to buy a house with little or no money down.
We furnished our first home with garage sale finds, our parents' old furniture, and odds and ends. When we had two kids, we bought bunk beds, and we put two car seats in the back seat of the sedan - we didn't figure "OMG now we've got to buy a new vehicle and a new house so that each kid can have their own room and we can still have two living areas, a home office, and a workout room!"
Today the same parents would both be working, they'd have a 3000 square foot house, each kid would have their own room, with their own TV, their own cell phones, hell, their own vehicles. There'd be a media room, a three or four car garage, and every bedroom would have to have a walk in closet to hold all the clothing each child had. No one would eat dinner together, but each kid would have a preloaded debit card so they could eat out with their friends anytime they wanted to. They probably wouldn't really WORK because of all the extracurricular activities they're involved in - after all, their nanny can pick them up till they're 15 and can drive their own new Dodge Charger on a "hardship license." Never mind what their enabling parents have to pay for insurance, right? These same parents will, after all, be supporting them till they are about 26 years old - maybe even longer!
Baby boomers aren't without faults (no one is and every generation has it's good and bad points). All I'm saying is that we have DIFFERENT values than many in younger generations - just as our values differed from those of our parents.
I'm older than you, and I don't remember things quite the same way. As far as working goes--I agree that most kids had jobs after school in High School and worked harder, but I don't know anyone who was female, who had to share a room with their brother, who had three pairs of shoes, and who would have called themselves middle class. I also don't know anyone who worked their way entirely through college as an undergraduate, especially since night classes were almost unheard of in the late 1970s unless you were in a very major city. Lots of kids worked part time and went to college full time (as they do now), but student loans were 2%, so just about everyone borrowed the money to go unless their parents paid for it. Most people I know DID buy a house in their 20s after a few years of marriage. We bought our first home when we were 25 and my husband had just graduated from law school. We bought a fixer upper, but it was a lovely house, we renovated it ourselves, and sold it at a decent profit to move up to a bigger house that we again renovated, which we have continued to do over time and as our family has expanded.
Your description sounds more like my depression era parents than the boomers. I thought your depiction of kids today was just about as off. I have 5 teenagers, and I don't know any kids who live that way. We all have electronics now because they are AVAILABLE now and relatively inexpensive--they weren't in the 70s. TVs were much more expensive then too, and way less portable.
Regardless of my age, I hope I'm never so old and out of touch that I start in on the "I walked 10 miles uphill to school each day" rant. My kids have an incredible work ethic, as do their friends. I think this coming generation has a ton of promise.
When I got into the real job market it was in the midst of Carter's steep decline shown in that graph (I am at the tail end of the baby boomers).
The problem is inflation, not the minimum wage. If someone is truly concerned with a lower buying power they should be all over our economic policies that zone in on increasing prices as opposed to stability.
I usually got liverwurst to go with my white bread, though. Bologna was too expensive. Still hate that stuff.
Hey - remember that we weren't even ALLOWED to carry a calculator to class, either! Nope - we could actually count out change at our minimum wage jobs when we were fifteen years old - we didn't have to wait for the computerized cash register to tell us exactly what change to give the customer.
Oh yeah but that's a lost art too these days - no one pays with cash anymore.
But you get my point - we were more self sufficient. That alone is worth something.
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I thought your depiction of kids today was just about as off. I have 5 teenagers, and I don't know any kids who live that way. We all have electronics now because they are AVAILABLE now and relatively inexpensive--they weren't in the 70s. TVs were much more expensive then too, and way less portable. 
