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We can all toss around all the comparisons but until we do three things we will never again be a nation that prospers and allows anyone who is willing to work hard a chance.
1. We need manufacturing jobs, we need to make our own goods right here in the USA
2. We need to control imports with large tariffs to force items to be made here in the USA instead of them being imported.
( Hershey now makes their top selling candy bar in Mexico and they should be making it in Penn. We need to tariff them to death to force them to bring it back where it belongs in Pa.)
3. We need to stop the spending, both governmental and personally we are spending money like crazy, spending money we have and do not have has got us into trouble.
The difference between then is now is the fact that people of the 1950s were willing to work hard and had strong family values. The people of today there are way to many who do not want to work hard and the family values have went to heck.
We need jobs, manufacturing jobs like those that were created after WWII and forced the boom of the 1950s when anyone who wanted to work could find a job.
OK, call it "communications" then. Who among us would give up our computers, cell phones, CD memberships, etc.
Of course, if we were transported back to the '50s, we would miss those things. But I don't think that is going to happen.
Quote:
The idea that the fathers "babysat" implies they (the fathers) didn't have any child raising responsibilities.
You are taking what I posted too literally. I said in the instance with my family and in the general neighborhood, the fathers babysat while the mothers were at the movies (once a week). I never hinted that that was all the fathers did. I don't know how you arrived at that conclusion.
Computers, faxes, e-mail, City-Data. Health care, despite all its warts.
Children being raised by their mothers? Weren't the fathers supposed to do anything except "watch" the kids once a week while the women amused themselves at a movie? Even in the 50s, my father did more than that. He coached Little League, taught Sunday School, took us places, and the like.
I would love to see the numbers for uninsured people in the 1950's vs. today. Technology is better though
Computers e mail and faxes?? I think that these things have depersonalized society way too much rendering them more negative than positive
We lost our manufacturing sector.
Outsourcing of jobs.
Corporations are privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.
Out of control trade agreements.
The media has stopped reporting the news.
Americans have been dumbed down.
Industry has polluted our water, air and earth with toxic substances due to deregulations.
Pharmeceutical companies are allowed to push drugs on TV.
You do not need talent, brains or credibility to reach celebrity status.
Our elected officials are takng bribes from lobbyists.
Art and music has been taken out of the classroom.
We are shown that stealing, lying and out and out corruption is what enables people to get ahead.
Young people rely on technology way too much...I doubt that most of them them are able to pen a letter with correct spelling, grammar and proper penmanship.
Celebrities are given hero status even if they commit crimes.
We've allowed our food to be tainted and sprayed.
There's more, but this is what came to mind at the moment.
I have had my differing opinions with you on some issues, but all of this negative regarding to todays society is totally correct
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The Four Courtsmen of the Apocalypse are poised to finally bury American democracy in corporate money. The most powerful institution in human history -- the global corporation -- may soon take definitive possession of our electoral process.
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At a job I used to work at, sometimes we worked 12-hours days. A lot of the employees were women. I sometimes wondered if during one of those 12-hour days, those women wished they were at home, running a house, instead of working and standing up for 12 hours, and only taking a break at the designated times.
My mom worked until she decided to start a family. This was in the mid-'50s. She would definitely qualify as a "happy homemaker." Had the radio on as she did housework. She knew most of the neighbors so one would babysit for her when she drove to the market. And she would babysit neighbor's kids. Drove a new 1956 Plymouth Belvedere so transportation was no problem. One night per week, she and some of the neighborhood women would go out and see a movie. The husbands stayed home and watched the children.
So, children being raised by their mothers, mothers at home running a house, the husbands working... sounds like good, stable society to me! I'll take the '50s anyday!!!
Completely agree with you and I wasn't even born yet!
Overall, from what I have been taught about our nation's history.....it sounds like there was far more stability within individual families back then. Also......far MORE individual OPPORTUNITY!
Today......they DESIRE opportunity for ALL.....but only a few, truly will achieve their goal from an INDIVIDUAL standpoint since THIS is NOT the Socialistic spirit that many want in America!
Our policies of TODAY.........are designed to do whatever they can to BREAK UP stability at all costs.
Today.....NOBODY can be "viewed" in a way that might just hurt someone else's poor, little feelings. We MUST be EQUAL in EVERY way!
Our morals, ethics, integrity and much more......have ALL, collectively and systematically........faded into oblivion at our own doing.
There just MIGHT be far more politeness, compassion, tolerance, acceptance, courteousness and general, STABILITY.....IF, today.......enough people really cared.
A couple of things. First, the 50's were not an economic boom time. There were three recessions during the Eisenhower years, and while the working class (thanks to unions and the GI Bill) and above mostly did make out reasonably well by the standards of the day, there remained a huge underclass not sharing in that at all. Inner city slums and tenements were a disgrace. Even at the end of the decade, the poverty rate was above 22%. It was still not uncommon for an itinerant to knock on your back door (so as not to dishonor your front door) and ask if they could do some odd jobs or chores in exchange for a sandwich.
Consumerism was nonetheless rampant in the 50's. Keep in mind that consumerism was not invented by consumers. It was invented by manufacturers, but their plans were put on hold by the Depression and then rationing during WWII. They were ready at the end of the war however, and so were goods-starved consumers. When TV's hit the mass market, they were expensive. Only the few could afford to pay cash. The rest had to put one on lay-away, which was the 50's version of credit. But thousands of families who didn't have a TV yet or at all still put a TV antenna on the roof so that people would think they were well-to-do enough to have one. This was part of a widespread social phoniness...of constantly trying to live up to an imposed stereotype of what the good home and the prosperous family were supposed to look like. What will people think? was a watch-phrase for the day. It was indeed an era of enforced graces and conformity. When they came along, beatniks and this awful rock-and-roll music were vilified as rebellious by the mainstream. There is nothing on the social map today that would be comparable to this societal overlay of conformity to preset images, norms, and standards.
The public debt as a percent of GDP (which is a measure that allows temporal comparisons) was far higher than it is today coming out of WWII, and it didn't subsequently fall because the debt went down. It dropped because GDP went up. As with debt from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and WWI, the debt from WWII has not been repaid. It has simply been rolled over into new debt whenever it has matured.
Immigrant populations during the 1950's were not the norm. They were at artificially depressed levels. Backlash against the influxes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries followed by the eras of difficult travel imposed by the Depression and WWII cut the percentage of US foreign-born residents about in half. Through most of our history, the foreign-born have been 12-15% of the population. We are toward the lower end of that range right now.
Meanwhile, I haven't seen mention of the Korean War. Roughly 35,000 American dead. I didn't see mention either of the Soviets having beaten us into space, making us seem and feel like a second rate power barely a dozen years after having been victorious in WWII. No mention of polio, or that it was simply assumed that every child would get the mumps, measles, and chicken pox. Barely a mention of McCarthyism and the Red Scare and people wondering whether they should inform on a leftist-leaning neighbor. Having lived in both the north and the deep south in the 1950's, there is no question that racism was more overt and more visibly cruel in the south. But that should not suggest that there was anything remotely resembling equality in the north.
A good man in the 1950's was described as one who worked hard, went to church, and paid his taxes. Sometimes it was added that he didn't beat his wife. Women of course had been an integral part of the workforce during WWII, but as the troops came home, they were expected and in fact pressured to give up their jobs and return to the home. And stay there. And like it. If they didn't like it for some reason, they were encouraged to volunteer. Volunteering -- that's where you work but you don't get paid. Hmmm. Birth control was still illegal in many places. If a teen became pregnant, there were two options -- go visit an aunt in a distant city for a few months (that was the usual cover story at least), or up and marry the guy. And once you were married, it was very difficult to get a divorce. For any reason. Huge numbers of dysfunctional families resulted. One of the chief arguments in favor of liberalizing divorce laws was to prevent children from having to live in the brutalizing environment of a failed couple chained together forever by inflexible laws. If you were already married and confronting an unwanted pregnancy, you also had two choices. Seek out the local abortionist (there was one to be found almost everywhere if you quietly asked around), or simply have the kid and deal with it which is what most people did, all the while pretending to be overjoyed that God had chosen to give them another child at this incredibly inconvenient time.
So that's some other things about the 1950's that didn't seem to get much mention above. Overall however, the 50's were in a great many ways remarkably not different from today at all. What was taken for granted was different. But sunshine was just as warm, a hug felt just as good, the waves at the beach made the same sound as they do today, time went by at the same rate. In the long run, it's those sorts of things that may be most important anyway.
A couple of things. First, the 50's were not an economic boom time. There were three recessions during the Eisenhower years, and while the working class (thanks to unions and the GI Bill) and above mostly did make out reasonably well by the standards of the day, there remained a huge underclass not sharing in that at all. Inner city slums and tenements were a disgrace. Even at the end of the decade, the poverty rate was above 22%. It was still not uncommon for an itinerant to knock on your back door (so as not to dishonor your front door) and ask if they could do some odd jobs or chores in exchange for a sandwich.
Consumerism was nonetheless rampant in the 50's. Keep in mind that consumerism was not invented by consumers. It was invented by manufacturers, but their plans were put on hold by the Depression and then rationing during WWII. They were ready at the end of the war however, and so were goods-starved consumers. When TV's hit the mass market, they were expensive. Only the few could afford to pay cash. The rest had to put one on lay-away, which was the 50's version of credit. But thousands of families who didn't have a TV yet or at all still put a TV antenna on the roof so that people would think they were well-to-do enough to have one. This was part of a widespread social phoniness...of constantly trying to live up to an imposed stereotype of what the good home and the prosperous family were supposed to look like. What will people think? was a watch-phrase for the day. It was indeed an era of enforced graces and conformity. When they came along, beatniks and this awful rock-and-roll music were vilified as rebellious by the mainstream. There is nothing on the social map today that would be comparable to this societal overlay of conformity to preset images, norms, and standards.
The public debt as a percent of GDP (which is a measure that allows temporal comparisons) was far higher than it is today coming out of WWII, and it didn't subsequently fall because the debt went down. It dropped because GDP went up. As with debt from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and WWI, the debt from WWII has not been repaid. It has simply been rolled over into new debt whenever it has matured.
Immigrant populations during the 1950's were not the norm. They were at artificially depressed levels. Backlash against the influxes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries followed by the eras of difficult travel imposed by the Depression and WWII cut the percentage of US foreign-born residents about in half. Through most of our history, the foreign-born have been 12-15% of the population. We are toward the lower end of that range right now.
Meanwhile, I haven't seen mention of the Korean War. Roughly 35,000 American dead. I didn't see mention either of the Soviets having beaten us into space, making us seem and feel like a second rate power barely a dozen years after having been victorious in WWII. No mention of polio, or that it was simply assumed that every child would get the mumps, measles, and chicken pox. Barely a mention of McCarthyism and the Red Scare and people wondering whether they should inform on a leftist-leaning neighbor. Having lived in both the north and the deep south in the 1950's, there is no question that racism was more overt and more visibly cruel in the south. But that should not suggest that there was anything remotely resembling equality in the north.
A good man in the 1950's was described as one who worked hard, went to church, and paid his taxes. Sometimes it was added that he didn't beat his wife. Women of course had been an integral part of the workforce during WWII, but as the troops came home, they were expected and in fact pressured to give up their jobs and return to the home. And stay there. And like it. If they didn't like it for some reason, they were encouraged to volunteer. Volunteering -- that's where you work but you don't get paid. Hmmm. Birth control was still illegal in many places. If a teen became pregnant, there were two options -- go visit an aunt in a distant city for a few months (that was the usual cover story at least), or up and marry the guy. And once you were married, it was very difficult to get a divorce. For any reason. Huge numbers of dysfunctional families resulted. One of the chief arguments in favor of liberalizing divorce laws was to prevent children from having to live in the brutalizing environment of a failed couple chained together forever by inflexible laws. If you were already married and confronting an unwanted pregnancy, you also had two choices. Seek out the local abortionist (there was one to be found almost everywhere if you quietly asked around), or simply have the kid and deal with it which is what most people did, all the while pretending to be overjoyed that God had chosen to give them another child at this incredibly inconvenient time.
So that's some other things about the 1950's that didn't seem to get much mention above. Overall however, the 50's were in a great many ways remarkably not different from today at all. What was taken for granted was different. But sunshine was just as warm, a hug felt just as good, the waves at the beach made the same sound as they do today, time went by at the same rate. In the long run, it's those sorts of things that may be most important anyway.
Excellent post!
Pretty much everything I have ever known of that era are stories similar to this post.
Definitely, an era of social "norms" and conformity that is not so evident thesedays without the govt. dictating what its expectations are. Back then, the social conformity that was so common.....was of society's OWN doing and expectations and was not so FORCED as now, IMO.....maybe, my ignorant opinion.
I believe there was far more integrity, honesty and loyalty among people, back then. Moral and ethical standards have REALLY tanked since then and its for many of these reasons WHY......America today, is practically in a death spiral.
Must be payback time.
I did NOT know that there were so many people who apparently, erected TV antennas and didn't even own a TV then.
Man.....that only tells me that this thing with "Keeping up with the Jones's" must be epidemic, infinite and NEVER ends.
What will people think?
Americans have GOT to get over this once and for all!
Just QUIT defining one's "success" or their "financial freedom" with materialistic ideology.
I would have to imagine that Americans must have really been SICK of WAR by the 1950's, not thrilled that USSR was now their Cold War, warred-out after WW2 AND Korea, wondering when WW3 might begin!
Living in some FEAR!
Hey, this sounds familiar.
It must truly have been a TIME to "celebrate life" and reap the benefits of being the MOST powerful nation on the face of the Earth......for a while anyway. Doing so through mass-consumption, much needed to be built. But.....this approach keeps a LOT of people EMPLOYED! Not to mention.......the vast undertaking of REALLY BUILDING America's INFRASTRUCTURE up!
Didn't the Interstate Highway System start being built back then?
Anyway.......very insightful.
I would love to see the numbers for uninsured people in the 1950's vs. today. Technology is better though
Computers e mail and faxes?? I think that these things have depersonalized society way too much rendering them more negative than positive
Until you need them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sign
Completely agree with you and I wasn't even born yet!
Overall, from what I have been taught about our nation's history.....it sounds like there was far more stability within individual families back then. Also......far MORE individual OPPORTUNITY!
Today......they DESIRE opportunity for ALL.....but only a few, truly will achieve their goal from an INDIVIDUAL standpoint since THIS is NOT the Socialistic spirit that many want in America!
Our policies of TODAY.........are designed to do whatever they can to BREAK UP stability at all costs.
Today.....NOBODY can be "viewed" in a way that might just hurt someone else's poor, little feelings. We MUST be EQUAL in EVERY way!
Our morals, ethics, integrity and much more......have ALL, collectively and systematically........faded into oblivion at our own doing.
There just MIGHT be far more politeness, compassion, tolerance, acceptance, courteousness and general, STABILITY.....IF, today.......enough people really cared.
The fact that you weren't born yet back in the 50s speaks volumes. I was a child in the 50s.
The notion of more individual opportunity is nonsense. Opportunity to do what? The GI bill did enable a lot of returning vets to go to college; otherwise, few went, b/c they couldn't afford it. There weren't the student loan programs, state scholarship programs, community colleges and the like such as there are now.
Women were pretty much relegated to the home. If they did go to school beyond high school, they generally went into teaching, nursing or secretarial work. These are honorable professions, but that's rather limiting. Women who didn't marry and didn't go into one of the above lived at the family home, maybe worked in retail or some such, and took care of the parents as they aged.
Sex roles were pretty tight. Girls still wore dresses/skirts to school, even when I was in high school. There were few sports for girls; their role was to cheer for the guys.
As saganista stated, polio struck fear into people's hearts. So did cancer, a death sentence for sure.
I also agree with saggy's conclusion. In the day to day, they weren't much different than now. I remember thinking as I raised my kids, I pretty much did a redux of my mother's life; volunteering in the schools, teaching Sunday School, taking kids here and there. And so it will be for my daughters, if and when they raise a family.
I have had my differing opinions with you on some issues, but all of this negative regarding to todays society is totally correct
I think that our leaders and 'betters' were always predominantly lying cheats. There were also fewer laws to prevent those actions and people could get fired from their jobs at the drop of a hat. Crookedness is the way most of them got ahead. Some made their fortunes through illegal drug peddling (alcohol).
The difference that I see now is that the masses are wise to this and are adopting the same strategies to get ahead.
That is why there is more crime now. The lower classes cannot buy the best lawyers and don't golf with the judge, etc.
The fish rots from the head down.
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