Can we dispense with this nostalgia for the 1950s, already?

[TheWraith]

I was just replying to another message talking about how after World War II we were a wealthy nation and had a booming middle class, implying that none of those things are now true. It's not really the other poster's fault, but I get very tired of this persistent myth that somehow things were better "back in the good old days."

In point of fact, when you adjust for inflation, the average person today makes far more money than they did back in the 1950s. Circa 1950, the median income for individuals over 15 years old whose income was not zero was $2,570 for men and $970 for women. Adjusted for inflation, that's $17,076 and $6,333. Today it's $30,513 and $17,629.

Moreover, that "booming middle class" in the 1950s was built on institutionalized economic inequality. Go back to 1950 and ask a black man how good things are for him. You might get a surprising answer, though, because back then the median black man with a job made an inflation adjusted $9,775. Imagine today, trying to live on less than ten thousand dollars a year. I've actually been doing that for awhile, and I can tell you that it isn't pretty. Of course it was worse for black women, whose salary--when they had a job at all--would equal $3,150 today.

But lest you think that it was limited to minorities: an average white male with a job, in 1950, made a median inflation adjusted wage of $18,001. Today, that number is $31,335.

These are the raw economic numbers--let's not even get into the other ways in which today's economy is better than the "old days." Yes, it's true that no longer are you likely to get a job right out of high school and work there for the rest of your life until retirement. But it's also no longer the case that you'll be fired if they find out that you're a Jew. Or if you have a child out of wedlock. Or the protections we have for worker safety, disability, and discrimination that weren't there sixty years ago.

The "good old days" were anything but.

[treestar]

1. The 50s were heavenly for white men

Talk about anyone else, and it's not there.

Teabaggers and the like are just delusional. But they are usually white.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. Also had 90% upper tax rates

during the Eisenhower years. I am reading a book on Eisenhower now "The Ordeal of Power", and it reads far to the left of even today's Democratic Party. It was written in '62.

[treestar]

13. Proves they don't even care about taxes

So long as they are dominant socially.

[Angry Dragon]

3. ....

:thumbsdown:

[TheWraith]

6. Care to elaborate on that? nt

[Angry Dragon]

12. I feel you are leaving a lot of things out of the equation

One worker families, cost of products now compared to 50's.
I am not questioning that minorities have it better today in some regards.

This country is in worse shape today than in the fifties.

[TheWraith]

14. I cited figures that are adjusted for inflation.

In other words, that adjust $18,000 median for a 1950s white male would buy you exactly what $18,000 would today.

One worker families make it worse, not better. Today you could have a married couple bringing home $50,000 to $60,000 easily; compared to a family of the same size in 1950 being closer to $20,000 inflation adjusted.

This country is certainly not in worse shape today by any reasonable standard.

[Angry Dragon]

15. I guess you and I will not see things the same way

[elias49]

21. So much is unsaid here. And the numbers seem strange.

I was born in '52 in Boston, the third of five kids. My dad was a draftsman for a company called Mason-Neilen.(SP). My mother never worked...it wasn't acceptable at the time and they were both immigrants, my mother born in Albania and my father a first gen Albanian.
She worked occasionally when I was in high school.
But the point is, given our circumstances and a single income and a mid-level salary we seemed to have what we needed.

[Xicano]

23. Indeed.

I don't know what the OP is talking about. Today two income families don't afford what a single income family could back then.

[hifiguy]

39. Correct, and that is the most salient point

in this discussion.

[spanone]

4. the fifites were stiff and caucasian

[Stinky The Clown]

5. You're making a black and white comparison of shades of gray

Some things were better, some things were worse, and some things were sorta similar

[TheWraith]

8. I'm comparing apples to apples.

Yes, employment security was higher and if you were lucky enough to work an office job, you might get a pension. I don't think that makes the 1950s automatically better except through the nostalgia filter.

[Armstead]

17. Bingo

[bluestateguy]

7. Lefties are as bad at this as are the righties

Thank you.

Although I do miss Lassie.

[TheWraith]

9. The "nostalgia filter" is a natural human impulse, unfortunately.

The bad parts of something tend to fade away with age, leaving it looking better than it was.

[eridani]

35. Left and right nostalgia filters are different, though

Lefties like to remember 90% top tax rates, greater gains in income by average people than at the top, 25% union membership, etc. Rightis like to remember that no one ever raised a big stink about Jim Crow, domestic violence, or the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name.

[Ian David]

10. Sit on it, Wraith.

Happy Days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMxkMy9JvXI




Actually, I agree with you.


Happy Days-Southern Crossing Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuWVt3N-o1w

[MadHound]

11. What's your source for this info?

Do you have a link? Because from what I'm seeing, your figures on median incomes is wrong.

Oh, and another thing that you're not factoring in is cost of living, it makes a huge difference in quality of life.

[TheWraith]

16. US Census Bureau, via Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

Cost of living isn't too far away from inflation. For instance, the cost of a new home back then was around $14,500. Adjusted for inflation, that's $96,000.

People forget the fact that the STANDARD of living back then was vastly lower. In the early 1950s, 40% of American households didn't have a car, a third didn't have a private telephone, and a third were either dilapidated and/or without full running water.

[madinmaryland]

18. I was wondering the same thing. Thx!

[Armstead]

19. There's nothiung wrong with trying to preserve (or restore) the things that were better

They were far from perfect. Some things were worse -- but some things were better.

Some common social morality today has been shot to shit, compared to the past.

There are bits of conventional wisdom -- or fatalistic acceptance of realities -- today that would have seemed outrageous when I was growiung up (oh I hate that phrase but...)....For example, the notion that sending all of our jobs overseas is "good for the economy" would have been laughed at.

Back then the average difference between the line worker and tghe upper management was somewhere between 10-to-1 to 5-to-one...Today it's like 50 to one and higher.

No it wasn't perfect and there's a lot about the "good old days" that are best gone. But there are also things that we ought to reclaim.

[Xicano]

20. How many people today can afford on two incomes

what they could on one income back then? In my grandparents day it was typical for a one income family to buy a home, a car, go on vacation and put away a savings account. Today its typical for two income families not to be able to do that.

But lets not talk anecdotal. How about lets look at some statistical charts. As you can see from the charts below your argument is incorrect. In fact by quite a bit.




Here's an income chart:

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2008/05/04/average-income-in-the-united-states-1913-2006/








And here's a house pricing chart:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html

[Elwood P Dowd]

22. When I was a kid in the 1950s, a Coke cost 5 cents. People threw a fit when it went to 6 cents.

You could buy music for a dollar an album. You could build a decent new home for less than $10,000. You could rent a small apartment for less than $50.00 a month. College tuition at a Land Grant institution was less than $100.00 a semester. My father would complain when the electricity bill was over $10.00 a month. Gas was about 23-cents a gallon. New cars were less than $2,000. Inflation was about .2%. Tokens for lunch at the school cafeteria cost a dime, but increased to a quarter in the early 1960s. The rich had a 90% top tax rate. Tickets to a college football game cost $3.00 - high school games were 50 cents.

Of course, all this depended on where you were living. It certainly wasn't that cheap in LA or NYC.

Edit: I forgot to say that my parent's mortgage payment on our house and small farm was a whopping $50.00 a month for 20 years. My 93-year-old mother still lives there, and the county has it appraised at over $400,000.

[hayu_lol]

25. LA was just about what you showed Elwood...

gas in Hollywood 1950, 18/21 cents/gal. New Studebaker Starlight coupe(V8)2300. Average middle class house(3 bdrm,2000 sq.ft., one bath, detached 2 car garage, 15,000). Students could easily make tuition/books costs in summertime part time work(boxboy at market for example). Such jobs were plentiful and most were fun.

Friday night date: movie(2 pics), snacks, burgers after(Bob's Big Boy)and some gas for the car=$5.00. Proms(hs), girls mostly made their own formals--8-10 $for materials. Ticket--5.00 including live music(3 piece combo or 5-6 piece band. Boys already had blue suits. No hotel/afterparties were tolerated.

The actual buying power of one dollar was tremendous. University costs in CA: Tuition: free to residents...books were very inexpensive.

Odd trivia: Alexander French Horn from Mainz, Germany: $500/today: $4500. Lessons from top ranked teacher(working pro): $5.00 or less/hr.

You got your money's worth back then.

[RegieRocker]

24. Well I knew something was askew so.....

A good paying blue collar job in 1955 was around $ 3500 a year. A home could be bought for $ 7000.
For link http://kerbsideappeal.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/in-1955-7000-bought-a-house-now-its-not-even-a-deposit-on-a-dream/

I know first hand in 1976 I bought a 3 bedroom home for $ 25600 . Going back the wages today would need to be around $ 100,000 for a blue collar worker to be equivalent to 1955. There is a big clincher, the unions created great wages for people. Now we are infested with scabs and every person for themselves.

[PassingFair]

26. But, but the FURNITURE was so COOL!

Can't I like PARTS of the 50's?

[frazzled]

27. We had Ovaltine and Howdy Doody

and Winky Dink and You. I thought it was pretty great.

[grilled onions]

28. It Depended A Lot On Where You Lived

When I was very young I lived in Chicago. I thought nothing of sitting next to anyone of any race on a city bus,the el or eating in any of the dime stores in the Loop. We rented and while most ethnic groups did not always mingle when they were in a public place like Riverview Park they paid no attention of who was sitting next to them on a ride.
Later I moved to a white suburb and I saw a big difference. It was a novelty to see a student with olive or darker skin. At that time they had to be exchange students. There was more money here as well and those who moved there who had little money and no local roots was as much an outcast as some minorities could be today in some areas. So the fifties had its good points and bad points but most thought the world would be better as years passed--not the mess we are in today.

[hunter]

29. How about the 'seventies?

My college tuition was essentially nothing, and my fees were often paid for by state and federal grants. My rent was $80 a month. I could easily find work for $5 an hour an often got paid $8. I graduated from college with no loans. When I was a kid my dad, with an ordinary union job, had a health plan that covered everything, he was paid enough to buy a nice house, a car, and my mom could be a "housewife." They are retired with good pensions.

Such was the good fortune of a middle class white kid.

My own kids live in an entirely different world. They are going to be in debt when they graduate from college, even though they work. I am going to be in debt too. It seems unlikely anyone is ever going to have a stable job with a good health plan ever again, not me, not my wife, not my kids.

It's fairly obvious to me that the "middle class" isn't what it used to be. Certainly technological advances have made up for some of the deficit, but not entirely. I'm quite pleased with the super-computer on my desk, the internet, and my modern meds, but it's clear my kids are not going to graduate from college into a world that's anything like the one I did.

[Elwood P Dowd]

31. In 1971 I rented an apartment just outside of Washington, DC for $120.00 a month.

I was drafted in 1970 and assigned to Ft Myer (Arlington, VA) in early 1971. With a roommate to share expenses and E-4 and later E-5 pay in the $300 to $350 a month range (along with rations/quarters allowance), I was actually close to what is middle income today. Had a decent little car with payments of about $40.00 a month. Gas at the PX was 29 cents a gallon. My cheap TV picked up 3-4 free stations on an antenna. The Kenwood stereo and plenty of record albums along with a few bong hits (if you know what I mean) made life tolerable. Just had to keep my visits to The Cellar Door in Georgetown to a minimum of twice a month.

[luv_mykatz]

30. Was born in the '50s. NOT nostalgic for them!

Some things were better then: smaller population, less crowding in cities. Economy was getting better, after the 30's Depression, and rationing, etc, of the WW2. That about covers the good stuff.

Many people seem to forget how oppressive the social atmosphere was then, and how discrimnatory to women, non-whites, foreigners, the poor, and anyone who was a non-conformist.

My nostalgia, is for the late '60's - early '70's. It was a crazy rockin-and-rollin' time of change...but we had hope, ya know? Yes, we were over-optimistic, but it sure beats the sense of hopelessness and feelings of being beaten down, which seems kind of endemic at the current time.

I keep hoping the pendulum will swing back into the powerful current for change that we had going in the late '60's.

[reformist2]

32. You rnumbers assume the inflation rate hasn't been fiddled with, a false ssumption.

Don't kid yourself. Today's families need to have two workers to make ends meet, whereas in the 1950s most families only needed one worker. Maybe we have more stuff now and bigger houses than they did then. Whoop-de-doo.

[seabeyond]

33. what percentage of income did they pay on insrances? that is just one

off the top of the head

[Hannah Bell]

34. The 50s were a period of rising income & general optimism, & that went for

minorities as well as white people.

One example would be Detroit, which once housed a large, thriving black middle class.

Median household income basically peaked in the 60s; individual median income in the 70s.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median%20Household%20Income.pdf


Capital has taken almost all income gains since, which have been significant.

Not to mention the shift of taxation downward.


Your picture is just as distorted as the "rosy" picture you disparage.

There were good things about the good old days; there are good things about the present.

Income-wise, I'd rather live in a period of general upswing than general downswing like the present.

[JTFrog]

36. How much were women making in the 50's? n/t

[Hannah Bell]

37. Which has nothing to do with my claim: incomes were rising. That includes women's incomes.

In contrast, the last 30 years have been a period of decling income for men & families at or below the median.

The gains women have made don't outweigh the losses.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

38. Thank you.

What people don't realize is that we had a strong middle class and high employment back then partly due to the fact that women and minorities were essentially kept out of the equation. It was a horrible trade-off.