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And it wasn't as good as it's often mythologised to be. Back in the 60s (in Australia) people weren't going on holidays overseas, they lived in houses under hal
by joegibbs 1y ago
And it wasn't as good as it's often mythologised to be. Back in the 60s (in Australia) people weren't going on holidays overseas, they lived in houses under half the size of modern builds, they had worse healthcare and lived 13 years less, they had relatively monotonous diets (growing up, my mother's staple food was bread with dripping), they weren't buying new clothes, furniture, knickknacks all the time.
And my grandfather, as a farmer, was up early in the morning and worked all day, never got weekends off. My grandmother was also working all the time - cooking, cleaning, sewing things, gardening. She wasn't employed but that didn't mean she was idle. The kids had to work when they were old enough too.
That was also a pretty decent income for time as well, there were a lot of urban poor living in tiny, crowded little houses.
It's not to say that it's never going to be possible for the mythical postwar boomer lifestyle of leisure (with modern standards of living) to actually available to the bulk of the population but it's going to need a lot more automation and productivity increases (like AI and self-driving cars) to get there, there's no "just tax the billionaires" one-simple-trick or policy that will immediately bring it in.
- ipdashc 1y agoWhile rose-tinted glasses are a huge factor, I feel like a big part of what people dream of when looking back on the last century is not just leisure, but stability and dignity. Stability in that you had jobs that lasted a lifetime and paid a pension once you retired, not layoffs every couple years. Dignity in that anyone could get a real, important, meaningful (and very rough, once you take off said rose-tinted glasses) job as a factory worker, farmer, coal miner, whatever, instead of what, working at Walmart or 7-11? I do agree with you though, especially your last paragraph.
- testdelacc1 1y agoWhat makes a coal miner that much more meaningful than a wal mart stocker?
- ipdashc 1y agoCoal used to power entire countries, and it still runs our steel mills. American industrial might and American quality of life was only possible because of our coal miners. A Walmart stocker puts cheap Chinese stuff on shelves. The typical romanticized coal miner is a masculine figure, a breadwinner, the representative of an industry that might have been core to the family and town for generations. A Walmart stocker is a guy in a T-shirt. Walmart itself is famous for... pricing out local businesses whenever it comes to a small town. I'm not at all denying that it's a culture and glorification thing. I just think this is a factor people sometimes miss when looking at how a lot of the country is nostalgic for the 20th century economy, and why people keep wanting (mostly via vibes) to reindustrialize America.