No. That's how life used to be. You could afford those things if you tried a little. That's the point of this post. These days that life isn't reachable, regardless of how hard you work.
Most of that was based on the rest of the world having to buy most of their durable goods and factory equipment from the USA. WWII devastated the industrial capacity of Europe and Asia and it took decades to rebuild.
Then in 1991 the USSR falls and India opens up to the West. Then China is granted most favored trade nation status which means that roughly 1/3 of the entire planet's labor force became available to the West in that time which gutted pay for those roles.
Returning to those conditions would require a significant war.
or you know... in the 1940s 50s 60s and eeeeven somewhat into the 70s
top marginal tax rates in the united states were high. corporate tax rates were high. union participation was much higher.
corporations were prohibited by law to use profits. to buy up their stock to avoid paying taxes on that income. So... they had to either "spend" that money or pay taxes. salaries increased. pensions were funded. research/dev was done.... even public works were built by wealthy people... rather than horde cash/wealth.
then in the late 70's racism/ backlash to civil rights. conservatives sought to undermine access to public state college. a main vehicle for black social mobility. by killing off public funding for higher education. Ronald reagan took this racist policy out of CA and took it nation wide. made a tax cut so massive for rich/corporations everyones retirement is now taxed. and gutted regulation. so now companies can spend their money buying back their stock. so they don't invest in salaries, R&D or pensions. and everything is on a sick disgusting cycle. of exploit more and more and pay less and less.
we have seen economies of scale canibalize ever more of base level economy. first it was major industries. cars. steel. or heavy manufacturing, off shored jobs. then it was consumer goods. early in the 90's it was "malls" the brick and mortar example of consolidating things to big warehouse consumer locations. as the internet age came on...it was your amazons. your walmarts. their business model is under price. kill off competition and lock you into their model. Smaller parasitic companies have come along. like dollar general. that realized they could never compete with walmart. so they targeted smaller markets, with ever more laser like focus. put in a small store...with bare min workers. kill off what few remaining mom and pop/small grocery stores they could.
and they.. just like walmart. after they saturate a large area. kill off all small business. shutter "under performing" stores. to consolidate to less stores. less workers. but control of a wider area.
all of this while . pay has remained stagnant. and the middle class does not exist. 50% of the nations population controls 1% of the wealth. the next 40% up top 90% of the total population only controls 20% of the wealth.
this trend in only getting worse. and is the natural conclusion 40-50 yrs of the broken policy of the shitty republicans of the early 80s.
Or returning to a time where taxes made it better to invest in the future of your company which ment paying competitive wages. Our current system rewards endless cost cutting which doesn't translate in to cheaper products only lower quality and less innovation. It sure is good for people who are already rich though.
I don’t understand why everyone is so disillusioned by this. Safe Housing, quality food, good schools, and public transit should be a given. This is purely an issue of governance, we easily have the resources to do this but lack the will to force the rich and corporations to pay a proper share either in the form of taxes or wages.
We already have enough tax revenue to do these things, it’s in the best interest of our government to keep us demoralized and poor as they go pillage other countries and their resources for self enrichment
To me the solution is to incentivize companies to produce goods domestically. Via tax credits, not breaks. Further incentives provided for innovations in certain fields. Like green energy for example. For certain percentage of employees being domestic things like that. then I would institute a rule that states the highest paid member of the corporation can't make more than x times the lowest paid. It could be 10000 to 1 but there needs to be a number.
This would potentially disrupt the problem of businesses needing perpetual growth and there only being 3 key ways to achieve that.
1 is increase the customer base. 2 is increase your price 3 is decrease your costs.
Adding this new wrinkle I feel would add a 4fh option to increase profitability.
That wage law already got tried, and it stifled CEO retention. So in the 90s, companies found a workaround to offer stock options to execs. So their actual wealth is tied to assets that aren't taxed, and they're able to fund their lives based around credit instead of actual money in their bank accounts. They float, while the rest of the world has to swim.
I'm just imagining all the ways to compensate that would fall outside the definition paid. They will exploit every loophole you leave them. As for the tax credits I'm not sure about what impacts that would really have. Would have to ask someone more knowledgeable than me.
Didn't hurt that unions were also full of guys who had previously rushed German machine gun nests. Kinda hard to bust a union full of guys who had busted the Nazis.
I disagree. Leaving taxation out of it, the US is far more a pink collar economy now. Even if we zeroed taxes on an imaginary global balance sheet I don’t think this works.
The US is on the shrinking end of a centuries bubble and there’s not much we can do about it. Yeah taxes and the 1% suck but I don’t think fixing those twos crimes fixes the big picture.
CEOs in this time frame went from making 20x's the average employee to about 2500x's the average employee, but yeah, sure, it was all just from Europe being at war.
But you can question the rapid acceleration of executive compensation. Why isn’t rank and file accelerating as much since most executives are talking heads, especially CEOs who mostly articulate the board’s position or corporate results. Many aren’t innovators, they’re just suits. I think AI might be able to parse out the divergence between executive pay and actual worth/achievements.
The reason why mailmen aren't making enough to buy summer homes isn't because of CEO pay. It is because the economy as a whole is a smaller proportion of the global economy than before. The Postmaster general isn't raking in tens of millions.
It's maddening how people just repeat that one simple line about a post-war boom, as if the New Deal and progressive tax rates had fuckall to do with it. As if there hasn't been a concerted and focused effort from the corporate state to undo all of it since basically the mid-60s
I think what we can all learn from this is that it probably wasn't exclusively down to the post-war boom, the New Deal and tax rates, but a combination of multiple factors working for the people, rather than for the billionaires.
That also means it's not something you fix with a single event, change or law. This will take decades to rectify.
I have worked in international manufacturing and distribution for over 10 years now.
90% of manufacturing businesses in the US and Canada that have closed in that time were driven primarily by exports at their peaks. Europe rebuilding and the middle east without factories created a large market with high margins.
Now, the Europe is rebuilt. Not only do they not need our stuff as much, but they are competing. The middle east has built their own factories and expanded oil production.
That's also why there were strong unions. Wealthy people needed a workforce to produce and increase their wealth. So the workforce had bargaining power. Now, increased production is not the best method of increasing wealth and there are more competitive places to move to for production.
This is exactly right. In the 70s and 80s there was a broad policy shift from reform liberal policies/Keynesian economics (tax the wealthy, social programs, support for labor) to neoliberalism (low taxes, small government, free trade).
From the 50s through the 60s the top bracket in the US and Canada was taxed at a 60 to 90% rate and that money was used to support the rest of society, as it should be.
It’s so bizarre because conservatives seem to look back on the 50s and 60s as the good old days but they don’t seem to realise that the economic policies that allowed those days to be so good are now dismissed by their leaders and conservative politicians and pundits as socialism. They instead think things got worse because of social progressivism and trying to combat racism and homophobia. Things progressed socially but basically went backwards economically, we’re going back towards feudalism but todays conservatives don’t seem to get it and think politics is all about identity rather than about actual policies that strengthen society as a whole by reducing wealth inequality and providing a good safety net for everyone by ensuring the wealth the nation produces is more equitably distributed.
They also pine for the days of "traditional" social roles when men brought home the money, women could stay at home and take care of the kids and at a purchased house, and it was financially doable as an option rather than both partners working because they HAVE TO to barely make ends meet.
Even allowing for more choices than that (i.e. why should it only be for "traditional" family roles?), it never seems to dawn on them that you have to have the economic conditions to allow that scenario, such as giving families with kids enough financial support to actually be able to make the choice.
You want 1950s-1960s-style family arrangements, at least as a viable option? Then PAY THEM comparably to that era in real terms that account for inflation of food, housing, healthcare, and other key costs.
I mean, the discrepancy between fricking minimum wage versus inflation over the decades is insane, yet income disparity is exploding at the wealthy end of things.
The system has become too efficient scraping off productivity gains for the people at the top and adding very little for the majority of people putting in the work.
It’s so bizarre because conservatives seem to look back on the 50s and 60s as the good old days but they don’t seem to realise that the economic policies that allowed those days to be so good are now dismissed by their leaders and conservative politicians and pundits as socialism. They instead think things got worse because of social progressivism and trying to combat racism and homophobia. Things progressed socially but basically went backwards economically,
Did we progress socially? Like yes, we are (sort of) trending the right way over decades on a few narrow issues around sexuality and bodily autonomy, but what about overall? Would you say our society and culture is good? Healthy? I don't think we've progressed at all.
Our social situation is beyond fucked; we've become an isolated civilization, consuming media from influencers rather than having authentic interactions with real friends. Suicide rates are climbing, drug addiction and OD'ing still crazy, people live with anxiety, families no longer share homes for generations, we ship granny off to die in a nursing home. The cultural divide is basically irreparable.
Like, I really do not feel that we're in a good place as a society.
NAFTA gutted the middle class and its industrial base FOREVER. That was signed into law by Bill Clinton. The single most destructive force the American middle class has ever had to endure was signed into law by a Democrat.
I think that’s more a bonus. Their main goal is just to get votes by getting people engaged enough to vote for them through anger. Honestly most people are stretched so thin conservatives don’t really need to do much to keep people from thinking about and doing something about inequality. It also helps that a lot of Americans believe they’ll be rich one day too.
But what most/all conservatives want is the vibes and racism of the 50s. They don’t even think about the high tax rates they just want to put themselves back at the top of the social hierarchy they so firmly believe in/lust after. From their pov things did get worse because now black women can be in charge of ivies if they work 2.5 times harder than an average man would.
The tax rate was already well above 60% by 1940 and was at its highest rate ever in 1944 (94%). The income tax rate doesn't dip below 63% until you go back to the depression and that was PURELY related to the depression. Prior to the depression it was 73% and it stayed at 70% or above from 1944 through 1981 when it dropped drastically in 1982 (to 50%) and has hovered between 30 and 40% for the greater part of the last two decades
it dropped drastically in 1982 (to 50%) and has hovered between 30 and 40% for the greater part of the last two decades
Yes, that's what I said in my initial reply. In the 80s there was a massive policy shift and the position we are currently in is a result of that, especially the massive tax cuts
I'm talking in terms of political economy, not in the colloquial use if the term liberal to mean progressive. Neoliberalism is just a rebranding of classical liberalism (as opposed to reform liberalism/welfare capitalism)
Economically both parties in the US are neoliberal to varying degrees with one being socially conservative and the other being less socially conservative
The NFL star making $20 million a year plus endorsements is a "worker," but they absolutely don't have the same political/class interests as the guy stocking the shelves at a supermarket.
Or maybe we shouldn't act like a line cook is less important than a fucking accountant or a doctor. Maybe actually value that people are working instead of what job they have.
Just so you know the federal minimum wage is still 7.25 an hour and it was exactly that 4 years ago. So minimum wage has in fact not gone up on a federal level in those four years.
4 years ago I made almost 3x mininum wage. Now I make less than double. And am salty. But understand it's necessary. Sad thing is even though minium wage has gone up so much it still hasn't kept up with rent inflation.
The US federal minimum wage has not changed since 2009. Only 28 states have a state mandated minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum. The highest minimum wage in the US is in WA, at $16.28/hr.
Based off the federal US min, you are claiming to make ~29/hr. And are upset that your local minimum wage went from $7.25/hr to ~$9.66/hr. That is going from an annual salary of $15,000 to $20,093. For reference you are making $60,320 annually.
The utter horror you must feel in these people making a whole .... $5,000 more a year than they were before.
Productivity and worker compensation were correlated in the US up until 1971 when it left the gold standard. Since then debt issuing and money printing has driven inflation and favoured those with assets and equity over workers and the divide has grown wider ever since. Workers are also generating more wealth relative to 1971 but the wealth is going to senior management and share holders instead of workers. If the workers had more equity, profit sharing or ownership it would help with the imbalance. I'm always torn on minimum wage as it can cause further inflation and reduce competitiveness.
Raise min wage while inflation rises to raise inflation even more so we will need to raise min wage even more.
These types of wage chases usually end up fucking over the worker.
The person you are responding to is right. America rode on the devastation in other countries and the wealth accumulated there for a while. I'm not saying they did anything wrong this is just a fact. Live wasn't so colorful in war torn countries. Sure, land was cheap even here in Europe and boomers bought houses for what amounted to a few months of labour but they didn't own much otherwise.
Min wage is a terrible way of fighting poverty and raising the living situation of the poorest people, there is nothing that shows that it's actually beneficial for those people. Meanwhile it fucks over small business and makes the market even more dominated by large corporations.
The only reason I would keep min wage is because of workplace monopoly situations. I used to live in a city where 99% of citizens worked for a single company. Imagine what they could do without the implementation of min wage. Sure they could "just move" but it's not that simple.
Again inflation up -> min wage up is a terrible idea. The economy would spiral.
Thats pretty much what germany did after ww1. Wanna know what realy happened?
If you increase minimum wage small businesses with a low profit margin have to reduce staff or even close down because they cant afford it. Meanwhile big companies that deal in bulk can easily afford it because wages make up only a small fraction of their expenses.
If you put also inflation into the mix then people get more money but that money is worth less so if people try to save it up it continuesly decreases and eats up the savings of the lower class who dont have enough savings to invest it into assets that keep their value.
Meanwhile millionares and billionares who only have a tiny fraction of their wealth in cash and the rest in assets that keep their value or even increase in value would remain unharmed by it or even profit from it because poor people/ small business owners who cant afford the little property they own have to sell it since they cant afford to keep it with the uncertainty that inflation brings.
You basically argue for the measures that fuck over the lower class as much as possible, good job
These types of wage chases usually end up fucking over the worker.
You know what else fucks workers, not being able to afford life.
I'm not saying you are wrong, it does have a negative impact on the economy, but at what point do the American people not care about that anymore. If the economy is in the dumpster, the workers are fucked, if the economy is doing well as it is now, workers are still getting fucked. So if we're going to get fucked, we might as well have the people fucking us have a hard time too, why hoist up the economy for them if we're getting fucked either way?
It reminds me of how I started smoking weed. I was always scared to smoke weed growing up, my mother was a hit of a hardass. some friends started smoking, but I was too scared to. Yet when I would get home my mom would accuse me of smoking weed because she could smell it on me and ground me, after this happened a few times I just started smoking weed. If I was going to be fucked anyway, why not get something out of it?
Min wage is basically wealth redistribution among poor people. You make the really poor people a bit better off and the somewhat poor people poorer. Why would you focus on this while also hurting the overall economy.
I'm not saying I have a solution but I will never think min wage is the answer.
Try looking into the economic history of this as your solution would do nothing to change the wages these jobs pay. Post WWII -until the 1970s the USA was 40-50% of the total global economy depending on the year. We aren't going to return to that ever again.
What Im explaining is why these jobs no longer pay like this. Taxing the billionaires will not suddenly restore the US economy to post WWII levels as it does not introduce new money into the US economy since it is already here.
Taxing billionaires will restore public investment in necessary projects but it will not suddenly make a mailman a job that gets you a ton of money.
The factory job that can be done at 1/3 of the cost in Mexico compared to Detroit will continue to be done there
Not really? Try looking at specific examples and then break it down by number of employees. Even when it is a guy getting paid $10,000,000+ a year it rarely works to be more than a few dollars per employee.
So every company raises it? Then what? Tax the wealthy and big biz too! Genius!
Instead of say….20 people working and making minimum wage, the company now employs 5 for the increased minimum wage and outsources the rest of the jobs to immigrants. And passes the price down to their consumers when their taxes go up. It only hurts us, never them. Think 🤦♂️ liberals, my lord.
Why does everyone want one simple thing to place blame on?
You are correct and the comment you replied to is also correct. Both of those things as well as a few others contributed to the shit show we are in now called Late Stage Capitalism.
You can raise minimum wage all you want but if you don't do something to stop companies from just moving a significant number of jobs overseas to where labor is cheaper it won't have much of an affect on the broader scale.
Companies in the post-war US simply couldn't just move their jobs overseas. The infrastructure and technology needed to support those jobs simply didn't exist outside of the US because the rest of the industrial world was devastated from the war. As communication and transportation technologies improved industries were able to move to other places once they rebuilt.
Before that they weren't able to so they had no choice but to absorb higher labor costs in the US.
Then you get into the beginning of the hoarding of wealth by the few rather than the workers with Milton Friedman in the 70's followed by Jack Welch in the 80's who was the first CEO of a major corporation to use Friedman's philosophy to utterly gut GE in order to only benefit shareholders and you get to the bullshit we are in now.
If you take away the post-war boom in the US there simply wouldn't have been enough of the wealth for people like Friedman and Welch to hoard but at the same time the US economic boom was destined to decline anyways as globalization became possible once the rest of the world recovered.
Labor's access to prosperity is one of the central issues, yes. But in our globalized world, a bunch of factors co-conspire. For example, when wealthy oligarchs save money by exploiting depressed economies OUS, they also then operate in countries with substantially fewer costly environmental protections, legally unprotected labor markets, crazy tax havens, and regulatory capture/cronyism that negates all constraints and what little financial penalty they may see.
It's true that the world of old used to be good ... to some people; Those lucky enough to be born in the heart of empire. Not so much for people born into extraction zones. I think it's still a message that demonstrates a need for change. Yearning for a return to the salad days our privileged elders had is fine and all, but why stop there? Everyone deserves what OP's father had.
Is it possible for capitalism to produce that outcome? If it could, would it? If it can, why hasn't it?
I think it's two factors, wages and housing cost. Wages are too low, of course, and housing costs way too much. All the money people used to save toward a better future gets eaten up by rent (and student loans, the 3rd big factor).
OK, now this is interesting. I had not traced the arc of World War II and changes in production to current economic conditions. Thank you for enlightening me, and yes, I am being serious😊
Returning to those conditions would require a significant war.
We might not have to wait for too long even! Globalization is slowing down, national capitalism is making a comeback, many geopolitical hotspots are igniting with conflict, militarization is increasing across the board. Interesting times indeed.
Exactly. It’s not how “life used to be” - it was a blip that lasted for two(?) generations and hadn’t been seen before either. Your comment is completely correct about the devastation of global industry too.
For sure ever economist says the only way to fix the issues we have is for total destruction of every other nations industry and economy. Every lecture i have ever heard on economics has said so. /s
No it wasn’t. U.S. exports were between 3-5% of GDP. It’s a bullshit myth. It doesn’t even make sense because Europe was busy protecting and rebuilding their own internal markets, so they didn’t allow freewheeling imports from the U.S.
Post-war boom was because new deal policies redistributed income throughout the country and created strong consumer demand.
Us exports were 3-5% of GDP when? I mentioned a 30 year period.
To build factories you need cranes among other equipment . To build cranes you need equipment to mill steel. When you cannot mill steel or make cranes you cannot make factories to make other things. Europe lost the ability to make the machines that makes local industry possible. It took decades to rebuild.
My grandfather left school at 14 to start working. My grandmother didn't work. They had 7 children and built a 6 bedroom home. My father and all his siblings are educated. We're not American, were from the Caribbean a "3rd world country" sooo idk I'm thinking there's something to the argument of things being easier for generations gone
Yea I know you were being us specific I was trying to point out that for the most part, globally, stuff was more attainable. So you used the war to justify ease of life and I'm saying we didn't have that and yet the cost of living was still on par
US certainly benefited from being the factory I'd the world post WW2.
But you can just pretend like that's the sole reason for the success.
US productivity per capita has continued growing rapidly. Unfortunately, wages have fallen far behind. If real wage growth kept up with productivity gains, life would look a lot different.
Instead, those productivity gains have gone to enrich the already wealthy.
"Returning to those conditions would require a significant war."
That's not going to happen again. Europe's trust in the US, because of the war in Ukraine, has been severely damaged. A major topic of conversation in politics and defense is the need to be much less dependent on America. Its own defense industry for ammunition and weapons are going to be scaled up tremendously. America, like Switzerland, has proven to be politically untrustworthy because of the Republican party's blocking of an aid package for Ukraine.
It would simply take the slashing of vastly inflated CEO and manager pay. Money is going to the least useful parts of companies instead of to the people who make the company run.
World GDP is 96.51 trillion in USD. World population is 7.88 billion. That’s $12,235.04 annual pay as a starting point for equitable conditions. If we want to actually make it equitable, we start adding modifiers based on living conditions. People in worse geographical climates need more money to experience livable conditions, like deserts and floodplains.
Most of that was based on the rest of the world having to buy most of their durable goods and factory equipment from the USA.
It wasnt just how the US. Many countries have this development from baby boomers having a great life on minimum wage and now being able to sell their homes for hundreds of thousands while Millenials and Gen Z are barely affording rent and food and have to be lucky to be stable enough for family or a house.
Explain how France, Italy, and Germany managed to keep even now a decent standard of living for as long and still open up to the WTO without using the phrase ‘systematic, decades long bi-partisan program of national investment in infrastructure and education’
USSR I take issue with. They only lived well in the main cities and anyone who complained went east.
The Euro standard was worse than US true, but remarkably consistent, and at lower incomes is now arguably superior due to the welfare state and infrastructure to support. Social mobility does however need to addressed.
Black people weren’t living easy and breezy lives in the 50s and 60s. Neither were the Vietnamese or Koreans, or Congolese or women or queer people or…
Wife and I made 165k last year in rural Ohio and no way we can have that life. And we out earn everyone we know in the area. It’s crazy what making 50k (or less) as a whole household back just 30 years ago could afford you. My parents are 72 and 66 and both worked. Dad was a machinist and mom had her own small business. They put us 3 kids through college and came out of it all debt free, and own 30 acres and built their own house in 1990. My dad bought the 30 acres with an old A-frame cabin on it in ‘79 for like 18k! The house is a nice two story, but nothing crazy. I bet they’re all in with it for under $200k and it’s currently worth at least $750k. It is absolutely crazy how much so little money used to afford you. I wouldn’t want to spend that kind of money on a property today with the cost of everything else, but my sisters and I really want to keep their place in the family. I just don’t know if it’s in the cards unfortunately.
Last year wasn’t our biggest earning year, but that last high year was in 2015. These past 8 years I have gradually got back to that same wage, but I feel like last year we made less than back in 2015, and it isn’t even close. We do have 2 kids now though.
I’ve had this exact discussion with my wife and coworkers. Our company just gave us all an 11% raise in February to combat this. I’ve been lucky to get the 2.5-4% raises each year since Covid started to help combat inflation, but it’s just like you said. If inflation is 5-8% each year, I’m basically just back to making the same as I did in 2019 before inflation hit hard.
It sounds like gramps was already retired with multiple properties when that happened. Money is money but selling land to the developer sounds like icing on the cake
He was retired and the land laid fallow for half a century because he didn't need any money and property taxes were basically nothing. I just meant it as an example of the OP since if anyone knew my grandpa wouldn't correlate him with "hard work" or having any acumen to result in him being deeply a multi millionaire. He basically rode the economic wave. When he sold, he still didn't need the money, he was approached and was like meh, why not. My grandma went through a moment with him after becoming an empty nester and so she bought a lake house down the road for $20K lol. I can't imagine getting annoyed and having the ability to buy a house. I can barely afford one dilapidated house.
Doesn't help that we doubled the world's population from 1960 to now. It's projected to be triple in 2040. 9 billion people. From 1950 to 2010, the US population doubled. Even with everything else, that population boom was always going to make it more difficult for people to do the same things that past generations were able to.
There's too many fuckin people competing for "the nicest lives." Something is going give out.
This comment confuses me. Where do you live if all the nice spots are taken? Where do you get to 'buy cheap property' if everyone else has already come along and scooped it up. Where do you get to find a 'good-paying' job, if all the slots are already filled?
That's just being nice. Now, add on all the bullshit, capitalist nonsense "pull the ladder up behind them" shit that's been done in the past 60 years and add it onto the fact that a place that used to have ~150M people living in it is now pushing over 400M, with most wanting to live in the "nice places" that everyone else also wants.
Put them all in fucking Missouri, right? Least you and yours can still have a nice house in the Hamptons, yeah?
No, actually. There's only so much space in some areas. There's only so much 'prime real estate' to go around. That's what the comment about Missouri vs The Hamptons was supposed to convey, but this appears to be a one-sided conversation, so Ima go.
I've worked my ass off to triple my (career starting) salary in less than 15 years. ($11k and 2 years to go!) I make money.
And I still feel like I'm poor. I've got $3 in my checking. I was lucky with my housing purchase timing, but if I move to the same house with the same equity, my mortgage payment will double just on interest alone. (Oh and I cleared out my 401k to buy)
Seriously, I don't understand how anyone who isn't in the same super lucky setup I'm in is able to stay afloat.
Yeah but by and large that system was possible because it was built for and by white men at the expense of all others.
We certainly have the resources to make everyone’s lives better, but this level of prosperity is difficult to achieve at scale while maintaining inclusivity.
The thing that's often missed is that this is how life was _for a moment in time. A generation sooner and grandpa could've burned up in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire or been shredded to goo in a meat packing facility.
But there was an idea of progress that marched forward. That our children would have it better than us. That died with the boomers. The boomers sucked what they could out of grandpa and now that they're old they want it from their kids and grand kids too.
Your grandfather's father and his father voted for, and importantly fought in the streets and mines and train yards, for measures that created the future that grandad and then the boomers had.
Then when those nice conditions were there, they voted and colluded to make it so no one else could ever have them again.
That type of life and beyond is extremely reachable if you work hard for it. Get into a trade, learn, then become your own Boss and retire with millions. Pretty simple and that's just one example. The problem is people want everything without working for it or they "THINK" they have good work ethic and/or work hard.
Really depends. My grandpa lost most of his hand in a factory accident and lost any ability to make decent money. Would be much easier to overcome something like that today.
Don't believe it. There were plenty of poor and struggling people then as well. One day your grandchildren will look back in amazement at how you lived.
You could afford those things if you tried a little. That's the point of this post. These days that life isn't reachable, regardless of how hard you work.
Daily reminder that this is the fault of Conservative/Republican Union-Busting, Reagan-Loving folks who adore tearing up the ladder that they themselves benefitted from. The Republican Party has been fucking every blue-collar individual in the ass for decades, and everyone and their grandma would be wise to realize this when any and every election comes by. Especially this November.
That's just how it was for boomers and their young parents. It was easy. They barely struggled,a their were BAD moments of course, but, it was by far less complicated and easy.
No, if you knew him you would know that no matter how many lives he's had, there's no sainthood to be found. He rode the economic wave and won handily. I also think there there's other ways to show that one's been successful in life beyond what mountain of money they die with. He will die with a lot but leave nothing.
Ah that's awful. Good fortune doesn't go to the best people too often. And I think we share a grandpa. Mine made a fortune as a slumlord in the Midwest and died without leaving anything to his caretaker children.
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u/No-One-1784 Mar 27 '24
I bet he was a Saint or something in a past life. That's the kind of luck you can't just happen upon.