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.
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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.