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As a counter-anecdote, my grandmother is still alive: she was born in 1918. She just voted for Trump, to give you an idea of where she stands politically. She c
by mod 9y ago
As a counter-anecdote, my grandmother is still alive: she was born in 1918. She just voted for Trump, to give you an idea of where she stands politically. She coped with it by scrimping and saving every penny. She literally washes saran wrap to reuse it, despite having enough pension these days to get by. She saves grocery-store bags. She eats every crumb on her plate. She never wastes leftovers, ever. She went to college at 40 years old, which was not thought of highly in her time, and had a 20-year career as a schoolteacher. She still corresponds with some past students, who are her last living friends.
My grandfather's college fund (to be a dentist) was wiped out, the bank closed. He worked at a GE factory his whole life, work that I will say was far beneath his potential. He never complained. He once traded his easy job on the line for a much harder one, where he had to lift each engine block twice to inspect some fiddly bit on it. He traded to get a 5-cent raise. If you offered my grandfather a government subsidy, he might not have been able to conceal his contempt.
I don't think the decisions of any of the individuals we've mentioned are great indicators of what's correct or incorrect, but the depression didn't influence everyone the same way.
- dvtv75 9y ago> He traded to get a 5-cent raise. A five cent raise in today's currency or back then? Per hour or week? Assuming it's hourly, if it's from "then" could you convert it to modern currency, or present it as an percentage increase so we can understand what kind of relative increase that was? Five cents sounds like nothing today, but 70 years ago it would have been significant.
- bzbarsky 9y agoAccording to https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm $0.05 in 1930 works out to $0.73 today. Figuring out a percentage increase is a bit complicated without knowing how much mod's grandfather earned. According to https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/1940.html https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/1... in the 1940 census average (yes, not median) annual income was $1368, which works out to $24,505 in 2018 dollars, or $12.25/hour assuming 40 hour weeks and 2 weeks of vacation. So at a guess, $0.05/hour was less than a 10% raise, but more than 1%. I expect it was /hour, not /week, because weekly wages would have been in the ballpark of tens of dollars. Disclaimer: I am not mod, and this is not my grandfather we're talking about.
- mod 9y agoThis happened when my father worked at the same factory, so it was all the way in the 60s. My father passed up on the same job because he didn't think it was worth the raise. He's the one that tells the story--the entire thing was not noteworthy to my grandfather.