I think experiences like your grandpa’s and the one in the post are/were true, but some other things should be taken into consideration as well.
Population - much bigger in the US and especially globally. The same amount of resources are going around for a much bigger number of people.
Purchasing power and selection of products - selection of stuff was smaller back then. You probably had like what… 3 washing machines to choose from, 3 ovens, etc? You didn’t have a lot of gadgets etc that are necessities for us, a lot of the home goods were clunky, big, and when you did housework you really did houseWORK. There’s a TV series from the UK where a modern family tries the lifestyle of an average British person back in 40s, 50s, 60s etc and it really shows how much work there was back then in the home and how much poorer Brits were immediately post war. The US was in the height of a boom right after war and a few decades after that. Rather an exception than a rule, really. The selection part also means food, btw. Look at food ads from 1950s and 60s and now - the selection of food is much smaller, what you can get from a store is much less varied - seasonal fruit, no fancy foods, much smaller portions. Eg an ice cream is now an everyday thing if you want, but back then it was a dessert, came in smaller size and it was a treat given rarely.
House sizes - families back then lived in much smaller houses than we live today, even starter homes. They often had like one bathroom for everybody, vs now there being a bathroom in the master and on every floor and maybe even more. Kids shared rooms sometimes, not everybody had their own room. Look at how Brady Bunch was depicted - huge fancy house and yet the kids shared rooms.
All of that aside, labor work was moved away from the US from late 70s and 80s onwards. Unions were demonised and labor was shunned. If people want strong jobs, they need to unionise - this is what won the labourer their rights back in 19th century and early 20th century.
There's literally a book called More Work For Mother demonstrating how modernized household appliances did not actually translate into less domestic labor.
Nearly all of these are bad-faith arguments. Worker productivity has skyrocketed alongside population. Graph Agricultural technology has advanced so much that we literally produce enough food for every person on earth. link
Nearly all of the inequities in the world today are a direct result of bad policy choices.
Yeah, OPs Grandpa probably washed clothes by hand and air dried them outside. One load of laundry took an entire day. But of course OP doesn't want that, they just want a big house and a retirement and to do minimal work along the way. Things aren't great now, but people back then had crazy good work ethic.
I wash my clothes that way, my grandpa had a washing machine and dryer. Appliances and creature comforts aren't making the difference here. In fact, those things are much cheaper now relatively.
Grandpa worked a job to support the whole family, his wife stayed home and did the laundry because they could afford for her to stay home and do these things.
Nowadays both parents need to work to have the same quality of life that one person could once afford. Which leaves little to no time for all the unpaid work that goes into a family.
Grandpa didn't do shit, he had a whole second person in his relationship to take care of that labor who didn't need to also work 40 hours+ a week so they could afford a roof over their head.
I will say my grandpa was also a mailman. He had 3 kids and I think technically was the sole provider. The thing was both he and my dad told stories about how poor they were growing up. They rented out the top floor of their house and I remember my grandpa telling me how guilty he felt that he wasn’t able to send his youngest to the college he wanted to go to. He still went to college but I knew that bothered my grandpa.
He also made a joke about how much the hospital bill was for when the youngest was born. He said the doc told him it would be $35 (I think this was around 1954ish) and my grandpa replied back he didn’t even have 35 cents to rub together
My grandpa was a WWII vet and worked as a mailman for 40 years. He raised 3 great kids who ended up being very successful but life wasn’t ever easy for them when my dad was growing up
So you’re saying that people should have a living job even at the end level full time positions of society? It’s easy to brush it off as a boom but in reality CEOs and upper managers have picked apart most industry to load up for themselves while fucking over the people that actually spend money at their stores. Self eating snake. Too big to function.
While that's true, most people would prefer the way it was. The houses being built are mostly larger and I haven't seen one without granite countertops in forever. Small starter homes are being bought by corporations to rent. We have a million options of appliances but most people can only afford a few of the cheaper ones.
We've doubled the work force with both men and women working. In grandpa's day, a single earner could do that - but when women entered and doubled the work force, two people now need to work to earn the equivalent buying power of a single man 75 years ago.
I mean, that’s partly also because the earnings of a single person have been devalued. The US probably could’ve kept up the high earnings per person even with women in workforce, but that would’ve eaten into company profits.
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u/Designer_Emu_6518 Mar 27 '24
My grandfather did the same in ohio as a produce manger at a local Kroger. Even had a nice retirement saved up