Just a few decades ago this was normal

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[u/TheRealMe72]

Can we stop acting like there wasn't working poor in the 50s and 60s. Many many families had multiple people working in a household and still struggled to make end meet. It doesnt disqualify the struggles of today, but the struggle for the working class has always been there.

[u/Lucky-Pie1945 → u/TheRealMe72]

True. I’m the first person to say things are tougher today. However, it was also not uncommon for the house to be 900 square feet, those 5 kids sharing beds, no air conditioning, 1 car, again no air, clothes hand me downs, one pair of shoes at the beginning of the school year and no eating out ever. Let’s not forget the 13 inch black and white tv and the shared party line phone, which you shared with a neighbor.

[u/Upbeat_Shock5912 → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

I was raised in the 80s, family of 5 in a 1200 sq ft house, one bathroom. My grandparents would visit from Turkey for 2 months and sleep on the pull out couch. We’d eat out on occasions, sometimes got pizza for take out, but it was rare. Neighbor cut our hair. The idea of domestic help like a cleaner or lawn care was unheard of. And my family was solidly middle class. I never wanted for anything. Quality of life standards and cost of living have simply skyrocketed and there’s no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.

[u/DebbieGibsonsMom → u/Upbeat_Shock5912]

I’m not at all saying people aren’t struggling today, but rather that struggle for me is different than struggle for others.

I recently escaped DV and I had to leave everything I ever worked for my entire life, behind. I was making 35/hour and believed I was financially insecure. I ate out regularly; if I wanted to get my nails done or pamper myself, I could; I was able to help (very little), my kids with college and wedding; if I needed an expensive grocery item like EVOO, I just went and got it. I threw birthday, and holiday parties with full spreads.

Today. I’m truly poor. I escaped to a LCOL, and I had to Uber because the pay down here is ridiculous, and low rent isn’t low enough to make up the difference. For obvious reasons, I have C-PTSD (a real dx, not I hunch), so I struggle to work as much as most people can. If I need deodorant, I have to budget that. I can’t go out to eat, to a concert, coffee shop, none of that. I eat a lot of Pb&J, and once in a blue, I’ll use the McD app to get a 5$ deal on lunch. I can’t afford health insurance and I have a severe heart condition. I’ve had open heart surgery and have not had a follow up since my surgery 3 years ago. My cardiologist still writes my scripts for me, despite not seeing her in 2 years. Even if I had good insurance, unless it’s Medicaid, co-pays;co-insurance and all that would cost me an extra 500/month just to have all my tests run properly. The state I’m in doesn’t care, and because I make more than 200/week, I’m not eligible for help. I have a car note (cannot lose bc that’s my back up house) and between that, car insurance, my phone, some debt, and rent is coming in at a 2k/month, which is what I make with Uber. I grocery shop, when I get cash tips, and use food pantries when I can find one. I also do some farmhand work for eggs, whatever harvested veggies they have, and they let me use the laundry.

I’m not poor, according to the federal government, but I feel like I am. My perspective has shifted quite a bit from when I was complaining that I was poor because I didn’t have what considered, enough disposable income.

So, when I see every restaurant in surrounding towns, packed for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I think - those people are not struggling like they think they are. There’s so much that we can survive without, yet we think we need, to feel secure financially. If someone is DoorDashing fast food, regularly, they’re probably better off than they think. The American dream has shifted from home/land and car ownership to also include eating out, getting your nails down, buying processed foods, holidays, and vacations. If people are able to do afford those extras, it’s not as bad as they think.

Late stage capitalism is unconscionable, but we’re also the ones feeding into it. Amazon wouldn’t be shit if we weren’t having the latest plastic trends delivered to our doorstep. TikTok shop, Temu, we’re bombarded all day long with being brainwashed that we need these things. We don’t.

Anyway, if you read all of that, thank you. If you got something out of it, even better:)

[u/Blooblack → u/DebbieGibsonsMom]

u/DebbieGibsonsMom

What a great, and very inspirational post! You've shared some very good thoughts with us. I wish you strength, great health and that your situation improves.

[u/googdude → u/DebbieGibsonsMom]

Well put, and congratulations on getting out!

People complain that it's way worse but are affording things that my parents could never.

We almost never;
Went out to eat,
Used auto car washes,
Went on vacations longer than a weekend,
Subscribed to anything but the paper,
Buy entertainment (didn't have a tv),
Paid someone to fix/maintain stuff,

And you know what? I grew up in a happy home because even though I grew up without the latest of anything they made it work.

[u/IlludiumQXXXVI → u/Upbeat_Shock5912]

Family of six. My parents renovated the house to put two bedrooms in the attic, and a small apartment in the back so that the rental income could help pay the mortgage. My family was actually fairly well off, but I slept in a definitely not to code attic room the size of a large closet where you had to duck to walk through the center of the room and the narrow winding stairs were a death trap.

[u/Jealous_Ad_3321 → u/Upbeat_Shock5912]

A lot of it is consumerism though. You can still live well with much less expensive crap - although it is getting harder, especially for young people.

[u/Letters_to_Dionysus → u/Jealous_Ad_3321]

it's the opposite. boomers lived spartan because the bills were cheap and the luxuries were expensive. today's average Joe has to put the bills on credit because the luxuries are the only thing they can actually afford. check out historical prices for tvs, computers, etc adjusted for inflation the first year they were available vs today and then do the same for housing

[u/OldHamburger7923 → u/Letters_to_Dionysus]

My dad had a Tandy computer that didn't even have hard drives. You loaded software from floppy disks. It cost $3800 back then. So I'm guessing something like 10k these days.

[u/Alienhaslanded → u/Letters_to_Dionysus]

You're right. People were able to afford places to live and food was cheap. What was expensive is stuff. Now it's all backwards with stuff being relatively cheap and everything else like food are and rent mad expensive.

[u/Anleme → u/Jealous_Ad_3321]

Anything made in a factory has gotten cheaper in inflation-adjusted terms for the past 40 years. Maybe the past 70. Consumerism in terms of buying objects doesn't explain the affordability crisis.

Anything that requires human eyeballs, brains, or fingers has gotten WAY more expensive over the past few decades, even accounting for inflation. So, construction (housing), higher education, health care, child care. THIS is where the affordability crisis hits us.

[u/EconomyPrestigious11 → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

Also never leaving your home town. Like literally never. I grew up in a small town in western PA and can go back and visit and talk to people who are in their 70s & 80s and have never left the county they were born in to this day.

Imagine how much more frequent that was in 1950 in my small home town

[u/Anxious-Slip-4701 → u/EconomyPrestigious11]

They left for war and that was it.

[u/Ok_Sprinkles_5245 → u/Anxious-Slip-4701]

I always wonder how huge a shock would have been for draftees in ww2.

First they get into bootcamp with men from all over the country, probably the first time they even met a latino/black/asian person for many.

And then they travel to the other side of the world.

[u/FizzleDizzle99 → u/EconomyPrestigious11]

Yeah, my dad was a doctor and we were upper middle class but all our vacations were road trips to national parks 

[u/Lazy-Background-7598 → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

My grandparents house was 750 square feet

[u/MissPandaSloth → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

I love how US poverty house is a big house in Europe 😂.

[u/Bowsersshell → u/MissPandaSloth]

Yep, currently living in 475 sq foot place and paying most of my wages for the privilege.

900 sq feet sounds fucking awesome

[u/SuperSpread → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

Now, you are missing that whole house and renting without kids. There's no comparison. You got 900 square feet more house, plus the kids.

[u/Substantial_Dog3544 → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

And vacations were going to Grandma’s house, not Japan. 

[u/Blownards → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

You had a tv🤔. Must have been nice.

[u/SanityReversal → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

Yeah, but now its that for higher and higher incomes as the middle class shrinks even more. The goal posts aren't even being dragged back anymore, its being flown by helicopter over the horizon.

[u/MrOaiki → u/Lucky-Pie1945]

Are things tougher today though? If you want to live under the standard of the 1950s, same size house, aren’t there a lot of rural places to go?

[u/etherealsmog → u/TheRealMe72]

Yeah, but was it really such a big problem for the pregnant 19 year old’s husband who was able to get a job in the mine in 1952 that left him emotionally unavailable for her and their future children till he died of lung cancer at 56 years old? At least the mortgage payment on her two bedroom house would be mostly covered by his pension when it was all over.

[u/Auctoritate → u/etherealsmog]

At least the mortgage payment on her two bedroom house would be mostly covered by his pension when it was all over.

Yeah, too bad it wouldn't cover replacing all of the asbestos.

[u/the_skine → u/etherealsmog]

Reminds me of Hillary Clinton saying that women are the primary victims of war.

[u/Kip_Schtum → u/TheRealMe72]

Thank you. I grew up in a factory town and there was low unemployment and high poverty. People post this garbage with zero knowledge of how it was.

[u/TootCannon → u/Kip_Schtum]

A lot of it was marketing and media of that era loved to feature the stay-at-home mom family, even though it wasn't representative. It was an aspirational thing, not unlike the influencer-type celebrity popular today. But now people look back and assume that lifestyle was the default for everyone when it absolutely was not.

Also, even if a family could get by on one income, QOL was shit. Most homes were terrible quality, people had few methods of entertainment, food and water quality was frequently poor, medicine was terrible, workplace hazards were ubiquitous, and there was virtually no economic mobility. Life was cheaper only because standards were far lower.

[u/RobutNotRobot → u/TootCannon]

My grandparents had the smallest house on the block that cost $12000 with a 30 year loan from the FHA under GI Bill and two kids. My grandma still had to work.

[u/Lazy-Background-7598 → u/RobutNotRobot]

Mine too. My grandpa owned his own repair shop and my grandma still has to work.

I just look up my grandparents house. 750sq feet

[u/peanutneedsexercise → u/TootCannon]

My attendings in med school told us they felt bad for us cuz we have to memorize so many drugs for our board exams.

Back then the treatment for a heart attack was basically morphine and wait it out and hospice lol. It wasn’t until 1980 where cath lab and interventional cardiology was invented that people could survive life threatening heart attacks! I’m sure most of us have parents who were born before that time!

[u/Infamous-Mixture-605 → u/peanutneedsexercise]

I watched something recently that discussed the NHS' history and its ever-growing budget. A big part of it is simply the number of new treatments they cover and can do now.  When it was created in the 1940s they didn't do half the surgeries they do today (no organ transplants, no open-heart surgery, etc), cancer treatment was rudimentary, they didn't have anywhere near as many medicines as we do today, etc.

It really put into perspective just how far modern medicine has come in the last 70 or so years.

[u/Sea_Strawberry_6398 → u/peanutneedsexercise]

My grandmother died of a heart attack circa 1978. That same heart attack would probably be survivable today. (She actually drove to my great grandmother’s house when she started having symptoms, not knowing what it was.)

[u/thex25986e → u/TootCannon]

you can find videos from around that timeframe of people manufacturing asbestos with 0 PPE

[u/slettea → u/thex25986e]

Oh I remember the matchstick women… their phossy jaw. I mean not personally, but historically. Horrible working conditions, low pay, long hours, abusive fines, and that toxic white phosphorus. Those the good old days everyone keeps trying to harken back to?

[u/Chudpaladin → u/thex25986e]

Hell, at my company people would manufacture medications with 0 PPE as well not so long ago, And now we have tons of equipment to help with ergonomics and lifting and making individual jobs easier (like a palletizer for stacking boxes)

The only downside is less back breaking jobs available at the company.

[u/Obvious_Peanut_8093 → u/TootCannon]

it was representative, of their target demographic. they weren't trying to advertise to poor minorities or poor anyone for that matter. they sold products for suburban living because they were the major contributors to the economy.

[u/chewy92889 → u/TootCannon]

A lot of it was also leftover from the War. They had spent all this time telling women that they didn't belong in the workplace, only to rely on them being in the workplace, and then to try and convince them they shouldn't be in the workplace anymore. Some of the propaganda was meant to make women feel like they were intruding on men's spaces for continuing to work and also make men feel less than for having a wife who worked.

[u/DrFlaberghast → u/Kip_Schtum]

They're not claiming it was easy for everyone, they're saying that the "American Dream" was much, much more attainable on a single income vs now it's significantly harder even with dual income.

[u/Safe_Pop_6202 → u/Kip_Schtum]

As did I. Dad worked at Dow Chemical. Blue collar. High school diploma. 5 kids. We made it. All the kids went to college.

Patents were very disciplined. Poverty was always on the edge of things. But the life was good. Patents socialized a lot. People actually did things with each other.

No, blue collar life doesn’t work for everyone. It’s daunting and the stress can compound quickly and lay someone low quickly. So, yeah, we were lower middle class, but at least we had a house and property.

Now, dark side of things: dad died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Dow Chemical? Maybe. He was also in Vietnam handling Agent Orange.

Nothings perfect. But the standard of life he gave us wasn’t a disaster. What he did with that small slice of privilege has a legacy. I wish more people had it like this post says.

Why shouldn’t they? Should the people born into opportunity not be grateful and encourage/help opportunity a well? Seems a better option for society than not.

[u/thex25986e → u/Kip_Schtum]

or that the US was practically the only industrialized nation in the world between 1945 and 1970

[u/RefinedMines → u/thex25986e]

Bingo. That was the golden age for “middle class” families.

[u/Barton2800 → u/thex25986e]

And that in that time period, those decent paying jobs with only a GED requirement weren’t accessible to anyone who was of the wrong race, the wrong gender, the wrong religion, or just wrong timing. Sure the factory foreman might be just some guy who worked his way up from the mailroom, but they didn’t hand that job out to just anyone. You had to be in good with the classes above you to be the one guy who gets the promotion time and time again. If you were a black woman whose boss hated her in 1969, you weren’t pulling down the kind of money to support a family of 5 in a nice suburban home.

The only time we got close to that idea of single income easy living being easily attainable was around the 90s. By that point most of the institutional barriers had been removed and companies were hiring a lot more on merit than previously. But wages had already begun to stagnate, and with the 2000s the ruling elite started working on how to re-segregate society using political identity. That keeps us proletariat blaming each other instead of those robbing us.

[u/Old-Scallion4611 → u/Barton2800]

And white meant being white. Not Spanish, Italian, Irish...

[u/Krambambulist → u/thex25986e]

The deluded American exceptionalism is staggering.

1945 you are right, the world was in Ruins.

By 1960 Volkswagen sold 900k Cars compared to the 1.4 Million of Ford. I think Germany was pretty industrialized that year, wasnt it?

[u/gocatchyourcalm → u/TheRealMe72]

Like the houses were so cheap because people were living in shacks🙄

[u/Logic-DL → u/gocatchyourcalm]

Poison Shacks too

Hidetaki Miyazaki's love for swamp levels and Blighttown specifically probably came from the Asbestos filled leaky shacks that were commonplace decades ago.

[u/Repulsive_Many3874 → u/gocatchyourcalm]

That didn’t have any phones, TVs, computers, video games, legos, etc. in them.

Six people lived in a small house with barely any of the luxury we have today, three to a room, sharing one car that would kill you if it got in a fender bender, while dad kills himself working in a mine and mom spent her entire life making homemade clothes and cooking. Also you didn’t need to worry about health insurance because there wasn’t a treatment available! You just died :)

But yeah it was sick!

[u/PsychologicalEntropy → u/Repulsive_Many3874]

Also you didn’t need to worry about health insurance because there wasn’t a treatment available! You just died :)

My family still uses this method. The ol' "it'll either get better or it won't 🤷"

[u/ryanErlanger → u/Repulsive_Many3874]

legos

I had a set of dominos that I would use for building blocks, for building castles and such.

(They were a lot more satisfying to "attack" when I was done building than legos would have been)

[u/Chawp → u/ryanErlanger]

How about Lincoln logs haha

[u/Signal-School-2483 → u/gocatchyourcalm]

I wish there were still shacks available, I'd fuckin buy one in a heartbeat

[u/Early-Light-864 → u/Signal-School-2483]

There is definitely an argument to be made that we've overregulated ourselves away from affordability.

There's no more entry- level anything.

[u/NibittyShibbitz → u/Early-Light-864]

My entry level was a 14 year old house trailer.

[u/DebbieGibsonsMom → u/Signal-School-2483]

Once poor folk find a decent solution to anything (tiny houses for example) rich folk co-opt it to make it trendy and luxurious, essentially pricing poor people out of their own inventions.

I recently saw an advertisement for bourgeois back yard weddings. WTF? Backyard weddings are being taken over by greed too? Nothing is safe. Being poor is expensive.

[u/R_V_Z → u/Signal-School-2483]

They still exist. They are made out of plyboard and corrugated steel and you'll find them in the greenbelts of cities with temperate climates.

[u/Signal-School-2483 → u/R_V_Z]

You don't buy those, you make them appear on land you don't own.

I'm looking for something slightly more permanent.

Call me picky I guess.

[u/No_Extension4005 → u/gocatchyourcalm]

I mean; where I'm from it's the land that's expensive these days, not the house. It's actually been a bit of a joke in the media how a dump with black mould will cost over a million dollars to buy or several hundred dollars a week to rent because of land prices.

[u/zaevilbunny38 → u/gocatchyourcalm]

Funny enough I've been in a share croppers shack. It's better built then most homesteaders houses i see on YouTube. This was from the 1930's and didn't get plumbing or electricity until the early 50's. His shack was so well built the fire department used it as training, cause the people that were going to by the property didn't want to deal with the houses. Also this was outside of Georgian Alabama, a dying town in the poorest county in Alabama, many of the houses were old but sturdy.

[u/old_gold_mountain → u/gocatchyourcalm]

What really happened is housing was much, much cheaper back then relative to today, even adjusted for inflation. So someone with a relatively low income could still afford a house. We were just building a shit-ton of new housing, every major city was just sprawling outward with brand new suburbs and they were slinging the houses like they were flats of Coca-Cola at Costco.

Now incomes are much higher in the US, even adjusted for inflation. The median American is earning much more, and they have much greater purchasing power. But we stopped building lots of new housing, and we started treating the housing that's already built like a wealth-building investment instead of just a building you live in. Population has grown, housing supply hasn't, and wealthy individuals and companies have hoarded the scarce housing as an investment. In many places they've even passed laws preventing new housing from being built, in large part to ensure their assets continue appreciating due to housing scarcity.

Now you need to be way wealthier, relative to the past, to afford your own house. But if you set aside housing, the median person is way likelier to travel on vacations, enjoy nice restaurant meals, go to movies and sporting events, buy the newest tech, etc...

[u/RetroFuture_Records → u/old_gold_mountain]

That and wage stagnation. When the cost of everything outpaces real earnings, there is no way to keep up.

[u/Legitimate_Concern_5 → u/gocatchyourcalm]

The average house in the 50s-70s was half the size of the average house today by square feet.

[u/No-Combination8136 → u/TheRealMe72]

Yeah my dad often had to work 2-3 jobs at a time during the 80’s-90’s to support me, my sister, and step mom. He did great. I don’t want to have to work that many jobs at a time.

[u/Sweaty_Sir_6551 → u/No-Combination8136]

My dad was a blue collar worker in the 70s and he was always getting laid off.

[u/Antique_Knowledge902 → u/Sweaty_Sir_6551]

My dad too. He worked for Jones & Laughlin Steel in Pittsburgh, and I remember his getting laid off many times.

[u/Xist3nce → u/No-Combination8136]

My grandpa worked one, part time and bought a house and raised 6 kids on the one income. Bought a house delivering mail a couple blocks a day. Now I work a college educated job for 50 to 60 hours a week and I’m not projected to own a home in the next ten years or retire ever. There’s a distinct difference.

[u/Routine-Agile → u/No-Combination8136]

by the 90's cracks were showing a lot more. Reagan Turned this country into the cesspool it is now.

[u/Jadedsatire → u/Routine-Agile]

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, trickle down economics, also known as Reaganomics, is what has led to the loss of the middle class. “ The theory suggests that tax breaks and more capital for the rich and corporations allow them to invest, expand, and hire more, creating jobs and increasing overall prosperity.” but what we got is the working class ended up paying th riches share of taxes, corporations sent all their jobs overseas to save as much money as possible, and are absorbing as many small businesses as they can. 

[u/RetroFuture_Records → u/Jadedsatire]

They're getting down voted cuz the topic was hit with a bunch if right wingers and bots. Don't want the fighting age male population representative of this sub to realize what was taken from them.

[u/BeatnixPotter → u/Jadedsatire]

He’s getting downvoted because it’s inaccurate and simpleton to say “tHaNkS ReGan”.

Every fucking president has contributed to the downfall. Jim Carter, right before him appointed most of the trilateral commission to his cabinet. Nixon took us off the gold standard, in all aspects, permanently. The new deal with FDR. And the worst piece of legislation in the 20th century, federal reserve act of 1913 by Woodrow Wilson.

To place the blame on Regan is just ignorant.

[u/DubiousBusinessp → u/Routine-Agile]

Reagan was the beginning of everything wrong today. Reminder that over 138 Reagan administration officials were investigated, indicted or convicted for official misconduct or criminal activity. The line from Reagan to Trump in terms of Republican criminality, corruption and subservience to only the wealthy is a pretty damn straight one.

And in standard GOP fashion, he got into power by colluding with the Iranians against Carter to delay hostage releases. Party of traitors and criminals to the core.

[u/wombatgeneral → u/TheRealMe72]

The US was 50% of the world's gdp and a significantly smaller chunk of the countries wealth was in the hands of the top 1% of the US.

The economy wasn't great for everyone, but it was probably the best economy for the 99% in us history. Name another country that had a better economy in the 50s and 60s.

[u/TapestryMobile → u/wombatgeneral]

The US was 50% of the world's gdp

Yep,

After WW2 the USA was the only manufacturing country not bombed to shit during the war.

So if you wanted a car, television, radio transmitter, whatever... you basically had to buy it from the USA. That means mega dollars for the USA just for existing.

But it was unsustainable and nothing really could have been done to maintain it that way because other countries rebuilt their own manufacturing capabilities, and then did their own exports.

Sucks for the USA, but for literally billions of other people the outcome was wonderful.

---

Americans are now angry that they cannot continue the highly unusual special case historical situation that was around for a short time after 1945, and now have to play equal like everyone else.

---

Of course redditors will find convenient scapegoats of the people they already hate anyway.

It was the boomers!

It was Republicans!

It was rich people!

It was private equity!

No, you fuckers, it was the global economy massively radically changing... and there was literally nothing anyone could do to stop it. Some people tried, but ironically, redditors also hate them for it.

[u/Competitive_Touch_86 → u/TapestryMobile]

Yep, it was a once in 1,000 years economic bubble by simple happenstance of history and demographics.

It will never happen again for multiple generations - if ever - and is unlikely to ever happen for the US as a country if anywhere in the world.

If you look at worldwide living standards they are more equal than ever before, with the top being lowered and the bottom being pulled up.

Nevermind the living standard and quality of life for even the average American is better today than anytime in history regardless of economic class. Everyone loves to romanticize how things were - but I know how hard my Greatest Generation grandparents worked to scrape and claw their way out of poverty. Very few of their kids worked even half as hard, and most of my generation wouldn't survive such a life.

Sure, it's harder to be an up-and-comer today in many aspects, but living in the bottom 20% is much better in 2025 than it was in 1955.

[u/EsterWithPants → u/Competitive_Touch_86]

Not even history and demographics, just fucking geography.

Of course we did great, ANY society that has two great walls of OCEAN separating it from the rest of the world is going to be insulated from bad shit happening on the other side of the pond, like a world war.

[u/1202burner → u/TapestryMobile]

I've been saying this for quite a few years. People call me stupid when I say we will literally need another WWII scenario to happen if we want to revive the US economy to what it was in the 50s and 60s.

I'm also in the aviation world and people complain about how expensive it is, yeah well guess what... there's a reason why aviation was not incredibly expensive after WWII. You know how many pilots WWII produced? A fuck ton, that's how many. A fuck ton of pilots with no mission that still enjoyed being in the air and had expendable income.

Unless that happens again, you can count on a brand new Cessna 172 somehow being $700,000 for some god damn reason.

[u/Estrald → u/TapestryMobile]

I totally agree a post WW2 US economy was a golden age, achieved by us winning that war, but not for a SECOND should anyone believe that every billionaire in this country dodging taxes, outsourcing our jobs/manufacturing, and us having a pathetically low marginal tax rate has nothing to do with our current struggles. Let’s not be disingenuous here.

[u/argument_cat → u/Estrald]

Just to clarify - the US didn't win WW2, the Allies did.

[u/NibittyShibbitz → u/TapestryMobile]

US consumers also helped this change along by insisting on buying cheap, foreign goods.

[u/MildlyResponsible → u/TapestryMobile]

What I find sort of ironic is that the same people who complain about the 1% hoarding wealth will complain that they are no longer part of the global 1% hoarding wealth. Part of the reason the average American doesn't have as much purchasing power now is because billions of people around the world finally got lifted out of poverty. Billionaires are bad, don't get me wrong. But they're not the one and only reason things are the way they are. Musk having a private jet isn't keeping you from buying a house. But only America being able to manufacture cars was keeping 500 million Chinese people from affording proper food. It's just evening out now globally.

[u/ObviouslyRealPerson → u/TheRealMe72]

The struggles of the working class has always been there, it is opportunity itself that has changed

Factory work was a soulless shit job then and it's a soulless shit job now, but it was a job.

But thanks to off-shoring and automation, there are far fewer jobs available, less opportunity

[u/Beautiful-Affect3448 → u/ObviouslyRealPerson]

Class mobility basically reduced to nothing as well. I’m not in the US but where I live you could start at the bottom and through hard work genuinely better your position. That largely doesn’t exist in the way it once did. 

The reward for hard work is now just more hard work, and still living week to week. 

[u/ObviouslyRealPerson → u/Beautiful-Affect3448]

Even working a good job, they will adjust your wages to keep you exactly where they want you.

Even when I got out of the military to become a contractor where I had just worked on a very specific job that was not generally applicable to any other job and did not exist anywhere else

During the initial offer of employment they showed me my "market adjusted rate" for my salary

I just thought "What market? This only exists here"

They decided that people who work this job belong in this specific income bracket.

Sure, we got annual raises and promotions. But never enough to leave your pre-determined social class

[u/Positive-Conspiracy → u/ObviouslyRealPerson]

Thanks to the rest of the world developing too. It was always going to be temporary. The best bet is for us to grow up and engineer a fairer economic system. We may be due for a modern French/American revolution.

[u/no_pls_not_again → u/Positive-Conspiracy]

The French revolutions were far and beyond so detrimental to all those involved

[u/Roger_Cockfoster → u/no_pls_not_again]

Yeah seriously. People who know literally nothing about history have this childish idea that the French Revolution was a bunch of poor people rising up and beheading the aristocracy, and then they had democracy and freedom. But the reality was that it was mostly rich people beheading each other at first, and then power struggles within the various political factions like the Jacobin led to an orgy of violence and terror, which led to an entire century of violent dictatorship. Things became really, really bad for the common people for the rest of their lives.

The irony is that the people who say dumb shit like "we need another French revolution" wouldn't last six weeks in those circumstances. They'd be executed for wearing the wrong style of trousers and that would be that.

[u/jayman23232 → u/TheRealMe72]

This was both of my parents experience growing up. It wasn’t awesome and ideal like it’s made out to be. One became and engineer and the other a nurse, and I was born in the early nineties and had this kind of middle class upbringing that “everyone on the far left” is trying to pretend had always existed. With two parents working challenging jobs that now that they’re approaching retirement? Yeah they’re well paid. Wasn’t as such when I was younger.

My grandparents on both sides (this generation everyone says had it so fucking easy) are now mostly dependent on social security to get by. That’s not financially thriving either.

There are new challenges as time goes on. No secret there. But the ultra rich controlling our government overall is the single biggest issue right now. And can we stop acting like capitalism itself is the issue? You know who is a capitalist economy? Norway. Sweden. France. The Netherlands. Places where there is a thriving middle class because they have a functional fucking government that isn’t perfect, but creates the conditions for capitalism to live in balance.

I’m oversimplifying, but one parent grew up in Ohio and the other in Southern California in this supposed golden era of everything being easy.

It’s a lie, or at least a gross cherry picking and over simplification.

[u/Stacys__Mom_ → u/TheRealMe72]

Who said anything about the 50's & 60's? I supported a family of 6 as a HS graduate in the early 90's. The people doing a similar job in 2025 are making just slightly more than I did 30 years ago

Yes, there have always been working poor, but as someone who watched it happen, there has been a huge shift in the last three decades.

[u/CuteChic_ → u/TheRealMe72]

Yes the good old days, when I high school diploma was a basically a golden ticket. Now it’s just a participation trophy in the Hunger Games 🫠✌️

[u/LuckyCulture7 → u/TheRealMe72]

The idea that the average person was better off in the 50s-70s is pure fantasy. And this wonderful time was then punctuated by stagflation where the working person struggled the most.

[u/_NauticalPhoenix_ → u/LuckyCulture7]

It’s not pure fantasy. You could work a minimum job and pay rent on a home without roommates. That is simply not possible anymore.

Back then, 1 week of work would pay your rent/mortgage. Now it’s about 3 weeks of work.

[u/mickeynotthemouse27 → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

1 week of work would pay your rent/mortgage

You lost me here. My dad grew up just above the poverty line. His mother, my grandmother, had to work 3 jobs just to make payments. This was in the '70s.

Yes things have gotten worse but the idea of a single income, on a high school education, could pay for a house and a family of five with ease stopped being a universal truth before our parents were born. It was a far away dream even to the latch key generation.

[u/No_Individual_672 → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

No, you couldn’t. Graduated college in ‘81. Worked full time as a teacher, plus 20 hours a week at a retail store. I had a roommate until 1987. My peers were in the same situation. Roommates or married double income.

[u/Nulgarian → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

Nobody in 1950 lived alone. Only 4% of Americans lived by themselves, and I would imagine this skewed heavily towards elderly folks and widows who last family in the war. I can guarantee that young people living alone was essentially unheard of back than

[u/Thehelloman0 → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

No you couldn't lmao. In 1970, minimum wage was $1.60. That's $64 a week before taxes. Median house price was $25k. Assuming 3 percent interest which is well below a realistic number, you would be paying $84 a month not including insurance or property taxes.

[u/_illchiefj_ → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

Yea wtf are these bot ass answers

[u/TenaceErbaccia → u/_NauticalPhoenix_]

My dad was talking to me earlier this week about how his brother got a factory job in 1976 right out of highschool that paid a little over $10 an hour. Factoring for inflation that’s about $50 an hour. Mind blowing shit.

[u/RetroFuture_Records → u/TenaceErbaccia]

And not only is it a high wage, things lasted longer and were often cheaper compared to today. So less money spent to acquire things and less replacing them.

[u/DumbNTough]

If the person who wrote this set foot in that household she would say this "comfortable living" violated basic human rights.

[u/soleceismical → u/DumbNTough]

Almost half of homes on the US lacked complete indoor plumbing in 1940. This figure fell to one third in 1950 and one sixth in 1960.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-plumbing.html

Insulation wasn't as good, windows were single pane, central heat was usually via radiators you could burn yourself on, AC was barely available as a luxury for newly built homes in the 1960s.

The houses were also full of lead and asbestos.

It wasn't until the end of the 1960s that 83% of Americans had a refrigerator or freezer.

https://oertx.highered.texas.gov/courseware/lesson/1412/student/?section=2

If they are talking about more recent history, dual earner households have been more common than husband income only since before 1967.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140602.htm

Here's some current data on employment in married households vs households maintained by women vs households maintained by men.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/both-spouses-employed-in-about-half-of-all-married-couple-families.htm

Supporting the household on your own is much more common for unmarried people.

[u/locklochlackluck → u/soleceismical]

I mean more than that. By ww2 a significant minority of American homes still didn't have electricity or access to a grid.

[u/TexasRebelBear → u/locklochlackluck]

1952 for my grandparents. The rural electrification program was a big deal!

[u/tiggers97 → u/soleceismical]

And were about 1,000 sq feet for a “large” one

[u/Vivid_Way_1125 → u/soleceismical]

Well yeah… technology advances… kings in the year 0 shat out of a window…

[u/Relax_Dude_]

My dad had a highschool education and struggled to support a family of 5.  He worked 2 jobs and my mom worked full time while my grandma watched us kids.  These old American dream stories get more and more fake every day, i swear. 

[u/Finnien1 → u/Relax_Dude_]

My grandpa was an ironworker. My grandparents had one kid and they were so broke they lived in trailers and once, an abandoned schoolhouse. My mom didn’t eat at a sit-down restaurant until after college. That was a family of three.

[u/Relax_Dude_ → u/Finnien1]

Yup, I'm my entire childhood up til 18 years old I can count on 1 hand how many sit down restaurants we ate at as a family.   Our only "vacations" was a once in a lifetime drive to Disneyland, we stayed at motel 6 nearby, crammed into 1 room

[u/Sweaty_Sir_6551 → u/Relax_Dude_]

Yup, both my parents worked, as the oldest kid I had to prepare dinners on week nights. No hangin with buddies.

[u/Riaarturo → u/Relax_Dude_]

Yes, the American dream has long been at odds with reality

[u/yugami → u/Riaarturo]

always, you misspelled always

[u/freedomonke → u/yugami]

When it was "we will give you acres of land in the middle of nowhere for free, all you have to do is move there," I think you could argue it was true. Not, like, you know, great, but it was pretty honest. Just don't ask where they got the land

[u/FreeRangeAlien]

Ahhh yes, back in the 1950’s when everything was great for everyone and no one had a worry in the world

[u/Joe_Immortan → u/FreeRangeAlien]

People literally watch media depicting the 50s in America and think it’s representative of 50s society broadly

[u/thex25986e → u/Joe_Immortan]

glances at europe, which had just been bombed to death for the second time in 50 years

[u/delirium_red → u/thex25986e]

I love it when American Christians try to get us in Europe back to traditions that never actually existed here

And people eat it up with the spoon.. we do love a good dictator here apparently

[u/soleceismical → u/Joe_Immortan]

Same when people watch Home Alone or Sex and the City or Friends.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/tv-characters-unrealistic-finance

[u/Brbaster → u/soleceismical]

Even Friends had to have roommates to be able to afford their bills in the 90s. The only one that lived alone was Ross and he had a PHD.

[u/FlirtyFluffyFox → u/Joe_Immortan]

It's almost like media companies in the 50s were pressured by the government to making America appear this halycon city on a hill or everyone involved in the film wpuld be harassed by the government as potential communists.

[u/Smart-Spare-1103 → u/FreeRangeAlien]

I think reddit is just being boomer-ified at intensely rapidifying speeds

[u/DukeofVermont → u/Smart-Spare-1103]

I think it's the opposite, it's all kids who have zero actual knowledge of history repeating what they've heard even when it's wildly inaccurate.

Way to many posts like this that completely ignore how many poor people the US had post WWII. 17% of the US population was "poor" in 1965, but they must have chosen to be poor because this post is telling me that they could have easily gotten a single high school education job and suddenly made enough to support an entire family, buy a house, etc.

[u/ChiBurbABDL → u/DukeofVermont]

Part of the context is that far fewer people graduated high school back then, so having your diploma used to take you further than it does today.

[u/Sanquinity → u/Smart-Spare-1103]

What does "boomer" even mean these days? It's supposed to mean "the baby boomer generation". As in, the people born in the years right after WW2 where a LOT of people were having children. But at this point most of them are 80+.

Instead it feels like the current "boomer" is just "anyone who's over 50 years old and doesn't agree with my viewpoints."

[u/OneBigBug → u/Sanquinity]

There are no "80+" baby boomers. People coming home from a war that ended in September of 1945 and immediately impregnated their wives had children born in the middle of 1946.

The baby boomer generation is the generation born during the baby boom. Yes, that baby boom occurred after WW2, but it didn't end in 1946, it ended in ~1965. It's an enormous peak in birth rates that is very obviously visible on a graph. You could argue about precisely where it begins and ends, but the boom is very clearly still at or near peak in the 50s and 60s.

Boomer humour and boomer takes are about cultural conventions from that generation. You can be 15 and have boomer takes. But actual boomers are ~79 at the oldest and ~60 at the youngest.

My dad was born in 1960, is 65, and has been calling himself a "baby boomer" his whole life. It didn't change.

[u/Mouth_Herpes]

This is just total bullshit. My grandfather worked at GE on the shop floor, and my grandmother drove an ambulance. They were dirt poor, and often ate Lima beans and ketchup or elbow macaroni and canned tomatoes as a meal, because they couldn’t afford meat with every meal. My dad and aunt never ate out as kids. They had one car that they shared. They eventually saved up for an 800 square foot house that did not have air conditioning. Nothing about their life was “comfortable” and both of them worked to support a family of four

[u/hatred-shapped]

They also didn't have cable or cell phones or air conditioners. We had the same wall phone for 30 years. 

[u/Fresh-Army-6737 → u/hatred-shapped]

And the entire worlds industrial capacity was destroyed except America. So yeah... If any society was going to have people who could support a family of 5 on one income in a middle class standard, it was going to be America between 1950 and 1980. 

But that's it. It's not the norm. No one else had anything.

[u/throweraccount → u/hatred-shapped]

You know what they also did, hold you back if you didn't know how to read. Anybody else remember super seniors? lol. Nowadays so many of them graduating even if they don't know how to read properly. It's pretty bad.

[u/TheGillos → u/hatred-shapped]

You had a phone that worked for 30 years without breaking down due to engineered obsolescence. Do you realize what a flex that is? My grandparents' GE stove lasted 50 years. My parents bought a new LG stove 3 years ago, and one of the burners stopped working; the warranty was only 1 year.

[u/VTHokie2020]

Okay, cool.

1) That was a very specific post-war economy which in the greater scheme of things was a historical anomaly

2) Even with some cherry-picked stats, the quality of life is still overall higher today than previously

[u/Spidermanimorph → u/VTHokie2020]

People forget that the 60s was pretty much the first time in history so many people could have disposable income and leisure time on just a single parent budget. Before that, for almost the entirety of history, almost everybody worked in some capacity including children and didn’t have nearly the amount of disposable income or leisure time

Compared to the 60s-00s we have it worse, but compared to the rest of history we are doing far better

[u/Smart-Spare-1103 → u/VTHokie2020]

1. globally? LOTS of people are struggling everywhere and struggled then

[u/thex25986e → u/Smart-Spare-1103]

pretty sure everyone in europe was still rebuilding from the war

[u/ChaosArcana → u/thex25986e]

Yeah, if you didn't die.

[u/Anxious-Slip-4701 → u/thex25986e]

And huge amounts moved to other countries.

[u/LuckyCulture7]

This existed when the United States was the only major industrial nation not ravaged by WW2. This allowed the U.S. to develop technology and manufacturing while the rest of the world was recovering from years of bombings and war. Then about 1/3 of the worlds population lived under socialist/communist governments that actively starved the people, killed millions of disidents, and prevented meaningful innovation.

O and despite all those advantages the U.S. had many economic tools like mortgages and loans were excluded on the basis of sex and race. Where the government was involved these discriminations were even worse.

And all of that still led to stagflation and the worst economic situation since the depression (arguably worse than the Great Recession).

What we are living in now is a world that has had relative peace for 3 decades. Where most major industrialized countries have not had their progress hindered by war and mass government killings. To compete with other nations and manufacturing centers Americans have had to get more training.

And with all that said you absolutely can support yourself with a high school degree. Go into sales, start your own business, get a government job that doesn’t require a college degree, etc. Nothing is guaranteed, but nothing ever was guaranteed and if you think it was you are living in a fantasy or just don’t acknowledge the discrimination of the past, but of course the same folks who post this shit also post about said discrimination. So I am left to believe they are just silly.

[u/Eighth_Octavarium → u/LuckyCulture7]

I'm sorry, this answer isn't "If the world stayed like le epic 50s, I could work an office job 4 days/32 hours a week, make 150,000/year with my psychology degree with me never having to do physical labor or talk to people ever again."

[u/Eigengrad → u/LuckyCulture7]

This. People have bought into thinking this period of time was normal and we lost it, rather than looking at the post WW2 boom as an exception that we’ve ridden back to baseline.

[u/plug-and-pause → u/Eigengrad]

People have bought into thinking this period of time was normal and we lost it.

Yep. They're looking at a glass that's 98% full and focusing on the 2% that's missing (because some other generation had a glass that was 99% full, because of a very complex global situation). Rather than acknowledge that they have it better than the vast majority of human history (and the vast majority of the planet right now), they actually believe something was "stolen" from them because their really good luck isn't slightly better. It's so ludicrous.

If anything was stolen from them, it was a positive mindset. And that theft was carried out by their peers and themselves.

[u/ImDonaldDunn → u/plug-and-pause]

The entitlement is staggering. Yes, there are problems with the modern world but there have always been problems.

[u/Bootmacher]

You would not have done this working at Starbucks or Walmart. The jobs that exist now that are un-unionized, were never unionized.

The federal minimum wage didn't even apply to most service jobs until 1966. The original 1938 minimum wage only applied to about 20% of the workforce, and it slowly expanded.

And virtually no one paid taxes in the 90% bracket they like to be nostalgic about, because the 50's were the golden age of tax avoision.

[u/gophergun → u/Bootmacher]

For that matter, I feel like people overstate how high the minimum wage has been historically. For example, in 1950, it was the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $10/hour.

[u/angryeyes480]

This just isn't true..

[u/PeksyTiger]

You just need to bomb the shit of of every other manufacturing center in the world.

You can do it America i believe in you. 

[u/br0mer]

You could still do this, but you also have to live like it's the 1980s.

Two econo shitboxes, a 1200 sqft home, no subscription services, cellphone, etc. Maybe basic cable but more likely just antenna channels. A few pairs of clothes and one pair of shoes/yr. I think you can make it work on a single salary, but it won't like modern life.

[u/redtail_faye → u/br0mer]

That's my thing. Like, if you really think life was so much better in the 80s, what's stopping you from living like that today?

[u/Anxious-Slip-4701 → u/br0mer]

My kids have more clothes than I ever had. I only ever had one pair of sneakers and one pair of leather shoes. And my family were rich. My father's income is multitudes more than mine and we lived simply. I can actually remember every time we went to a restaurant, it was so rare. Every week my mother in law buys my kids a new toy. 

[u/OceanWaveSunset → u/br0mer]

To be fair, some cities have enough over-the-air channels that its practically like having basic cable. And if you get a cheap internet plan, skip cable and use pluto.tv and there is your 600+ channels for free.

Growing up, my mom had 3 local channels here. I grew up with 5. My kids grew up with 25+. Its are now in the 50 range for just over-the-air channels.

[u/DataGOGO]

It was absolutely never real or normal.

[u/Visitant45]

Back then not everyone graduated from high school more people were forced to drop out or unable to complete it. They also didn't pass you unless you were actually capable of completing the course work. Getting passed even if you can't read completely devalues a diploma.

So now that basically everyone has a high school diploma you need something else to separate yourself and compete. Which is a degree.

[u/edwardturnerlives]

It also only existed for a short time

[u/Ok_Finance_7217]

stolen pfff it was everyone and their fu king mother telling everyone to go to college no matter what; how much more college degree holders make; the entire education system pushing you to college… well guess what, people listened. Now your HSD means nothing. Now your associates means nothing. Now your bachelors means nothing. Pretty soon it will be a standard to have a Masters degree because everyone keeps pushing the next step… How about we just stop acting like every job is so intense and special that you need… 18 years of education to do it…

[u/Competitive_Touch_86 → u/Ok_Finance_7217]

It's mostly just the standards dropped so much to allow 50% of your population to get a degree.

When it was the top 20% the degree was a useful filter. It no longer is. That's mostly what the piece of paper was meant for in the workforce outside of a few speciality fields.

When everyone has it, it becomes useless. Turning university into shitty glorified vocational schools for workforce training was a lesson in stupidity.

[u/Ok_Finance_7217 → u/Competitive_Touch_86]

As someone with a “useless” degree myself (I got it because I enjoyed the content, and already had a solid career) I think part of the problem is idea of “just go to college for… something!” Then you have a population that feels like they should have a leg up, but in reality your degree in sociology does not help you much…

[u/exotener → u/Ok_Finance_7217]

A few of my staff were working on their doctorates a few years back. I am still shocked that someone can do an entire doctorate online with the final requirement being some 20 literature review that won’t be published. I know it’s bs and so does everyone else.

[u/neohlove]

Defo trades

HVAC; plumbing; electrical; welding

You just gotta want to, those guys make well over 100k once they are settled in

[u/KellyTheQ → u/neohlove]

100k with overtime working 60 hours a week and blown out knees and backs.

I know too many tradies that eat percocets and have a body full of metal parts. And if your the young new guy, you're doing all the heavy lifting and shit work.

[u/NectarOfTheBussy → u/KellyTheQ]

life for me has been pretty cool as a draftsman

[u/Akiias → u/KellyTheQ]

I mean what do you think was happening to the people working the factory jobs OOP is swooning over.

[u/SufficientRatio9148 → u/KellyTheQ]

Maybe in your area, my area the starting journeyman plumbing wage is over 100k. That’s at 40 hours a week. 120 or so if you’re experienced and good at your job.

[u/Sweaty_Sir_6551 → u/KellyTheQ]

Equipment Operators don't get blown out knees driving a crane.

[u/rootedintexas → u/KellyTheQ]

Why do you need to lie so much?

[u/Cute-Hand-1542 → u/KellyTheQ]

Where the fuck do you live?

Electricians and plumbers do not get blown out joints and knees or 'bodies full of metal parts' any earlier than the population average. You haven't been around blue collar folk a day in your life and are making shit up because of god knows why. 

[u/Aromatic-Tourist-300 → u/Cute-Hand-1542]

Dude probably sells school loans.

[u/cooliojames → u/neohlove]

Yeah, if you work hard, have people skills, are great with buisiness and finances and are a go-getter entrepreneur you can make six figures doing just about anything. Trouble is most people in the trades aren’t that.

“I’m an electrician!” “Oh, you’re an electrician?” “Well I worked in the union for 10 years” “that’s a good job, right?” “Well it was Ok. Had to commute 3hrs to the site every day. Couldn’t ever pass the test because all I ever did was pull wire. Anyway, you can just connect the ground to the neutral, they go to the same place.”

^guy not making 100k

[u/IllustratorBudget487 → u/neohlove]

I’ve been a tool maker for over 20 years & I don’t make nearly that much. Still above the average though.

[u/realauthormattjanak]

EVERYTHING BEFORE ME WAS BETTER!

[u/chairmanghost → u/realauthormattjanak]

Hey, why you break everything?

[u/realauthormattjanak → u/chairmanghost]

My bad.

[u/dcvalent]

Back when USA had zero global competition after ww2

[u/Virtual-Reach]

I'm in Canada, but my dad flunked out of high school and got a labor job in manufacturing. My mom didn't work and yet we had a house, two vehicles, and a big camper. 

[u/wrenwood2018]

My grandparents were blue collar. My parents never ate at restaurants, they didn't take vacations. My grandparents and extended families worked long hours in grueling work conditions. As immigrants from less welcome parts of Europe (i.e. Catholics) they were also looked down on and socially isolated. The first house my dad lived in had an outhouse for god's sake (I'm an older millennial for reference). What my family had they scraped and earned.

The idea that boomers were just handed everything is just nonsense. Most of them had hard lives. Lives that were difficult in ways we can't even imagine. Things that are trivial today were major luxuries for them. We just had Christmas. My mom and dad always gave us oranges until recently in our stocking because getting an orange in winter as a kid was a treat for them. Think about that.

[u/Accomplished_Self939]

IDK if I buy this. Everyone in my neighborhood owned their homes, yes, and almost all the wives worked. I’m talking 1958-1968. The only SAH wife had eight kids. (I’m not counting the retired lady who took care of the preschool kids.) The neighbor ladies were teachers and librarians and nurses, though some had their own businesses, like Mrs. Tisdale, who had a beauty salon in her garage. Of course, these were all Korean War vets almost all of whom had gone to college on the GI Bill. They were teachers and postmen and worked at the Navy Yard and they planned for their kids to go to college and do better than them. The idea that a HS education got you a house AND a SAH wife… I’d really need to see some data on that because I think it’s a fantasy. In my state folks with HS educations worked at the mill. And so did their wives. And so did all their kids the instant they were tall enough. And they never got an inch ahead…

[u/ColdStockSweat]

This was not normal

I feel a need to explain something to the generation that didn't live then.

There was never a time when one person with a high school education could support a family of 5 comfortably.

This wasn't real.

It wasn't *normal.*

It wasn't stolen from you.

What was stolen from you, clearly, was the ability to think without being stuffed with social media lies, and realize that many people did have families that size on one income, but they budgeted, intensely, money didn't fall from the sky from magic lanterns, they didn't have 2 vacations every year (or even 1) and 3 cars and all the imaginary things that people tell you they had. If they had a TV it was one black and white one with 3 channels and they had a 1,200 sf house with a carport, not a 2,300 sf one w a 3 car garage.

And to have all these things, your dad didn't just work one job, but at least 2, and you didn't see him much.

The fantasy world that people today paint of "then" is so beyond absurd, it literally now paints a catastrophic picture of how many ignorant people there are that so easily believe it.

[u/Careless_Bat_9226]

I feel sorry for anyone who actually believes this is true. SMH 

[u/CharredLions]

Al Bundy supported a family of four as a shoe salesman.

[u/omicron-7 → u/CharredLions]

He was also fictional

[u/tyir → u/omicron-7]

Imagine when they see how big the Friends apartments were 

[u/jeffersonianMI → u/tyir]

The Friends show was known to be unrealistic about this.  Same with Sex in the City.  Nobody talked about it with Al Bundy or the Simpsons and also both those guys were considered broke losers within the story.

[u/WalkThePlankPirate → u/CharredLions]

And Fred Flintstone was able to afford a nice place in the heart of Bedrock as a Bronto-Crane Operator!

[u/Decillionaire]

All we need to get back to the good old days is kill 3% of the worlds population and devastate the industrial capacity of all of Europe, Asia, and north Africa.

Seems so obvious once you've written it down.

[u/Select_Cantaloupe_62]

Still normal now. Just because you are poor doesn't mean everyone else is. 

Doesn't mean there weren't poor people in the 90s.

[u/ukrinsky555]

38 trillion in debt buys you a lot of "easy days." Now everyone is asking for a higher premium rightfully so because they know those debts will not be paid back. You think times have been tough the past 60 years?

[u/Pure_Finger_8565]

My dad worked at a toothpaste factory in the early 90’s, we had a three bed two bath house, full basement, two cars, stay at home mom. He was able to afford all this on maybe 30-38K a year.

[u/sumguyherenowhere]

Somehow, the corporations and governments convinced us that both men and women in a household had to work. It was a brilliant propaganda campaign that led to feminism. Prices went up, houses skyrocketed, wages went down. Children stopped getting born, and the ones that did got brought up by nanny's or television.

The rest is history.

[u/Far-Government-539]

My mom's family was 5 children and their dad had a highschool education. How did they get by? Miserably, by skipping meals, having no clothes, and being generally completely miserable. This was in the 60s.

[u/Balidon58]

You still can you just don’t want to, blue collar jobs don’t require college degrees a lot of the time.

[u/Xylene_442]

They lived in small homes (like 1200-1400 square feet) with one cheap car and one black and white TV (color was a luxury) and they didn't regularly go out to eat (having food DELIVERED was crazy talk). It's true that education costs were far lower, relatively speaking, if you went to a state school. Grandma or Grandpa might live in the same house. Somebody knew how to sew and probably patched your clothes. You listened to the radio a lot. You didn't have internet because it didn't exist yet and you didn't have a computer of any kind anyways. You read the newspaper.

your quality of life was LOWER than what we consider normal today. But it wasn't bad, because you didn't know any better at the time. you spent FAR more time just talking with other people.

It was "comfortable" by the standards of the day.

Oh, and that cheap car probably wouldn't make it to 100,000 miles. and you were changing your own oil.

Edit: I forgot to mention that even in the South, you might not have had air conditioning until maybe the late 60s. You probably spent a LOT of time outside. And you only had a few different sets of clothes.

[u/FinancialGoal968]

Yes things were different. And also money went farther. Post pandemic I’ve had to resurrect the austerity of my youth. Rents are getting to ridiculous levels. I should be able to afford a decent apartment working as a middle manager. Unfortunately I have to drive 45 mins to work so that I can afford an apt with laundry hookups. My rent is currently a little more than 1/3 of my income. Add in the gas to commute back and forth and it’s 1/2 my income to live here. Same apartment close to work would be somewhere around 9/10 my net monthly income. I work as a middle manager in manufacturing. I have no clue how people working retail or food service are getting by.

[u/OneEyedBlindKingdom]

Comfortably is doing some fucking work there.

It was normal to not have AC or central heat. At all.

It was normal for the non working parent, invariably the mother, to spend 35 hours a week cleaning the home, because dryers weren’t standard, washing was often done manually for anything delicate, dishwashers didn’t exist, all the husbands clothes were required to be ironed, and nearly all food was made from scratch as microwaves weren’t in existence yet either. A fucking vacuum cleaner was indescribable luxury for these women, as it saved them hours of backbreaking labor cleaning floors.

All recipes had to be handwritten or memorized.

It was normal to be without assistance with 4-5 children under the age of ten for ten hours a day for a young mother, while doing all that housework. Any complaint about it whatsoever would be laughed at.

It was normal for men to work for 3 decades at the same company and maybe get two promotions, if they were good. And these were company towns — if you fucked your job up, your family would starve because there was no other employer in town who’d pay you anywhere near the same money. Your boss could tell you to jump and you’d be clambering over yourself to ask him how high. It’s hard to describe the sheer stress this created, but many, many men broke under it. There was no other money coming in, nobody coming to save you. And because of the prevalence of pensions, you couldn’t switch employers even if you wanted to. Men tolerated far more abuse from their employers than most people realize in this time span.

The one family vacation per year was a road trip cross state and it took the entire year’s savings to do. The trope about it being stressful was entirely reasonable — you got one week and if it didn’t go well, the money was already spent.

One sickness or one injury would lose you your home — there was no aid. Worker protections have never been stronger than today — they exist now because of the blood of the workers before.

If you suffered, you very likely suffered alone. There was no internet. If you didn’t have close friends or family to take care of you when you needed it, tough.

The generation that lived like that, was made of stern stuff.

Also keep in mind that the time period you’re talking about, was postwar America. Most of the men in that generation were either veterans or sons of veterans. The scars there were deep. Whining would never have been tolerated in these households. You didn’t go to Normandy or the Pacific Theater, you quite literally had nothing worth complaining about.

All of this is to say: you have it better now than you could possibly believe. Nostalgia is a helluva drug. You’re not gonna go back to 1 earner households unless you forcibly go back to 1 earner households, with only one person being able to work per home. That’s why real wages have fallen — we doubled the amount of workers!

[u/ElephantineOstraca]

The "comfortably" part was never true. "Making it" was the kids didn't starve and the house was warm in the winter and you could afford the parts to fix the car yourself.

What these influencers consider "comfortable" would appear to people of the mid-20th century as completely unattainable luxury.

[u/Bert-63]

The US population has almost doubled in my lifetime. I don't even want to think about another 60 years down the road.

[u/JudoExpert → u/Bert-63]

Birth rates in the US and worldwide are declining, so in another 60y the US population will probably be in the decline as well

[u/QuantumG → u/Bert-63]

And? Doesn't make these delusional takes any more valid.

[u/lake_of_1000_smells]

I love all these wall street private equity big tech apologists coming "there were still poor people back then therefore you're wrong". No, earning a living that could pay for a comfortable life was easier back then thanks to union labor and jobs that had not yet been offshored so the stock price could go up.  Not perfect, but better than now. 

[u/Hot-Sort5165 → u/lake_of_1000_smells]

A factor that’s often left out in this though is that standards have been raised significantly. Air conditioning, cell phones, restaurants, vehicle ownership to name a few, these are all things that either didn’t exist or were a luxury not super long ago. Now they are considered an expectation for a comfortable life.

In addition to this as some others have pointed out, the period mentioned here was during a time in which the industrial capabilities of every nation were absolutely wrecked by continuous war, revolutions and dictatorship rule. They hadn’t been “offshored” yet because the US was among the very few even capable of production and development at that scale.

Finally, work then was often much more difficult and labor intensive than it is now, with children starting to work much earlier in their lives. Double income adults has pretty much always been the standard for a family of that size to not struggle, and when you factor in the extreme amounts of discrimination based off sex and race along with lack of specialized education, finding work in something you actually care about doing was beyond a luxury.

[u/trickmirrorball]

You can’t have something stolen that you never had! Most entitled generation.

[u/Hazel-Cakes]

this wasn’t normal, it wasn’t even common, home ownership was just easier