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I bought a copy of Arthur Frommer's "Europe on $5 a Day" and started planning. Spent most of '68 touring Europe, on an average of $7 a day. 210 days on $1500, lodging/food/transport. In London, B&B in Edgeware Road was 15 shillings (75p). I think the RT ticket across the Atlantic was $135.
My grandparents built their house in 1967. Grandfather is dead, but grandmother is still living there today.
One thing to remember is that a lot of the standards we have today were greatly reduced then. Their house is a 3BR/2BA ~1,400 sq. ft, including the basement garage and den. Tiny little place.
Houses have gotten much bigger over the years, and fundamentally nicer IMO.
That's just one economic data point I can think of where people will say "but it was so much better then," but that's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
I think part of why it was better was because people had more realistic expectations. There was also not as much of an income/wealth gap. People inevitable compare themselves to others, even though they shouldn't. So even if a middle class standard of living today is higher, the spread between the bottom and the top of the middle class is wider than it was then, and people always compare up; they almost never compare down. So there's more to be unhappy about in that regard. Families were also more stable. I know lefties like to say the liberation of women was a good thing; but not in every respect. High divorce rates have come at a high emotional and financial cost to both parents & children.
This being the Economics forum, and not something about politics or culture, I can't avoid mentioning, that 1966-1967 was the beginning of a gruesome and protracted bear-market in stocks - not to end until 1982. It was an awful time to invest, even if manufacturing jobs were plentiful, cars had powerful engines, and a single-income could support a family. So long as we're going to reminisce, I'd much rather go back another 20 years.
Yes, people tend to look at the past with rose colored glasses.
No, it wasn't, and then there was that little Vietnam thing going on. The world was pretty sane until about 1963, and then it began to drastically change, and not for the better.
Correction: The World was pretty from about 1946-1963, then it began to drastically change, and not for the better.
And when you really look deeply, you find there have been some very shady people manipulating world events for several hundred years--and their vise grip continues to tighten.
Families were also more stable. I know lefties like to say the liberation of women was a good thing; but not in every respect. High divorce rates have come at a high emotional and financial cost to both parents & children.
I would be careful about romanticizing that period. One reason that divorces were lower in the 60's than in subsequent decades is that divorces were a complicated and expensive legal fight. In 1970 California became the first state to have 'no fault divorce', before that you had to prove abuse or adultery to get a divorce. And in the 60's those perfect families weren't all they seemed to be. Domestic violence was largely ignored by law enforcement unless the victim require hospitalization and even then her abuser might get off with 'counseling'.
I read the article and agree with the notion that most of those I have known in my age group have contributed much to the 'changed America" outlined in the article.
I grew up in the 30s and 40s, joined the Navy 1950, to keep from going to the army with my draft notice in the post office box when I went into the Navy. Got married in 1952, and entered the civilian work force in 1954. First I worked retail, selling furniture in retail stores, and for 4 years in a major department store. Back then minimum wage was 50 cents per hour. I was a commission salesman, and earned $125,000 to $150,000 in today's dollars. From there I went into the corporate world, and worked up to division sales manager for western half of the country. In 1972, I entered the real estate business as an investment real estate broker, where I remained till I finally retired.
I am bringing this up, to show I have lived and worked through the periods that people that are way too young to understand those times, are trying to give opinions on. Times were not as different as the young people think. People made much the same complaints about the times, as they do today.
My dad's generation was far from the greatest, I remember when few men would be caught dead shopping for groceries, hugging their children, helping around the house, accepting blacks in their workplace, or women, the list can be quite lengthy when counting the ways most men were just not there for their families beyond bringing home a paycheck.
I have no idea, what you are talking about.
When I was a child the men I knew, hugged their kids and grandchildren, they went with their wives grocery shopping, and often did it by themselves.
Family life was not much different than it is today. The technology has changed, and back then the family would gather around the radio, and today it is around the TV, often hooked up to a computer and streaming movies off of the Internet. The families went to movies as a family, where they watch them in their home today.
The husband did not do as much around the home as they do today, because the wives back then took care of the house during the day while the husband worked, while today the majority of the wives work and there is more sharing of the household duties than back when the wives stayed home. The wives today, simply do not have the time to take complete care of the home, and also work at their jobs.
Nostalgia is a byproduct of BS news and the folks who love the myth of the nifty fifty's...
Most of the BS news and myth as you call it of the nifty fifty's, does not come from the people that lived through those times, but the young people trying to say they have it tougher than the old people had it. And that includes news people.
Technology has made fantastic differences in how things are done, starting way back when man discovered fire when he bumped two rocks together and the sparks started a fire.
The people in the 1900s, went from the horse and buggy, to the automobile. A lot of factory jobs went from hand and back breaking labor, to automation.
Farm and food production went from 1/3rd of all working people growing food, to today with only 1.5% of the people growing a tremendously larger amount of food.
People cry that they closed thousands of retail stores this past year, but truth is for every 1,000 closed 1,040 opened up for business. This year, retailers just had the biggest Christmas Season in history.
People say that we have shipped all our factory jobs overseas, along with not making things in the USA any more. False. We made more goods than at any time in history total. Due to changes in how things are made, it just takes less people to do the job. Look at all the jobs we have imported from other countries. Example there are only 2 real American owned auto companies. But there are 13 major auto companies producing cars that are made in the United States. We export some low pay jobs that cannot compete in the world market, but we import a lot of high pay jobs from overseas.
We export a lot of goods from the United States, such as we are at the $195,000,000,000.00 level of exports for this year. Far above what we exported 1950s.
Working people 154,345,000 September of 2017 and 57,635,000 Thousand in January of 1950. Just think almost 3 times more people employed today, than back in 1950. As the population has increased, the country has produced jobs to meet the need, and will continue to do so.
But today, just as in 1950s, everyone cannot find the perfect job for one reason or another. Too many younger generation, think it was much easier 60 years ago to find the perfect job, and everyone was working at the perfect job for them back then. Wrong. Employers hire the person they think will fill their needs better than other applicants today, just as they did back then. Just because you think you are the perfect person for the job, does not mean the employer feels the same way. When they hire someone else, it just means the employer thought the other person was the best fit within their organization plan.
Just for the record, not trying to live in the 60's nor am I wishing for their return. China's got killer statistics today as a macroeconomy, but I'd hate to be a worker there too. In some ways though, it's ironic that the country crushed by the opium wars today faces the US with an endemic opiod addiction issue.
Germany's the other economy that's killing it, but apparently the populace is growing tired of Merkel and the country is discontent. What did they do differently? Aren't they one of the highest cost regions in a massive free trade zone? Are they also not facing automation? How did this economy take the lead? Aren't they aging even faster then us? Don't they have an even more liberal array of things then us?
As to the US...the boomers are not any more responsible for entering Vietnam than we were for entering Afghanistan. The young generation does not yearn to live in the 60's. Yet this country is forever going on tangents. We build straw men and look from approval from our peers that said straw man is ridiculous. Those tangents politicians have long used to keep focus away from the battle we were losing. International trade and economic clout. A rush of blame goes on.
So what have the world economic kingpins done right?
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