General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
True Dough
(21,120 posts)
Bmoboy
(416 posts)Otherwise you were as screwed as a share cropper.
My ancestors were indentured servants. The first one that could own his house was my grandfather. He drove a jack hammer for Bethlehem Steel. Proud USW member.
malaise
(279,235 posts)White people
That is all
RainCaster
(11,688 posts)An important change to your statement.
mdbl
(5,551 posts)Which is why all the internet fraudsters have such big paydays.
doc03
(37,053 posts)black workers in our mill. The blacks were confined to the dirtiest hardest jobs up until
the late 70s. Around 1977 the Company and Union were charged with discrimination.
The federal government forced them to agree with a consent decree breaking up that practice.
That also applied to women had previously been confined to clerical work. I have a picture of
the blast furnace crew my dad worked with in 1937 around 20% of the crew were black.
timms139
(189 posts)planted the seeds of hate for unions in the 1960's with they won't work they refuse to do a job because they know they can't be fired etc. It's the same now with everything they don't like or want , they start a line of bull and feed it to the gullible who spread it far and wide. We as Democrats need to start answering these things as soon as they are started by the Republicans. Anytime something isn't answered with a strong rebuttal it will grow like a cancer and destroy you .The same with they are going to take your guns started in the 60's and allowed to grow and look where it has got us with the Republicans refusing to do anything to stop school shootings and getting voted into office because of it. Democrats brushing off the idea of people will know better is entirely wrong and certainly helped to put the New Republican Taliban party led by Trump in control .
Tickle
(3,190 posts)My Floridian brother thinks, tRump is going to bring this all back. I shit you not. He thinks I'm either a liar or confused when it comes to orange man
Johnny2X2X
(21,928 posts)Last edited Sun Jan 5, 2025, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Trump and Musk think working people have it too easy and don’t work hard enough. They think things like days off on the weekend, vacations, and retirement are what’s wrong with America. They want to take away from working people. That’s what they’re going to spend 4 years trying to do.
LastDemocratInSC
(3,876 posts)9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. Sounds like life in a West Virginia coal town during the 1930s.
Johnny2X2X
(21,928 posts)People are about to find out. This group of Republicans thinks working people are lazy and need to work longer for less pay.
Unladen Swallow
(371 posts)My paychecks would jump quite a bit
johnnyfins
(1,509 posts)
Unladen Swallow
(371 posts)premium pays (including overtime) after the 8 hour mark.
raising2moredems
(719 posts)My mammaw said that is the driving force of she and my pappaw (and many others) moving north. The song Sixteen Tons is blatantly true.
Iris
(16,184 posts)
enigmania
(237 posts)the "Molly Maguires".
paleotn
(19,635 posts)My question is, when does your brother give up hope and finally comes to the conclusion he's been had? Reality WILL slap him in the face eventually. The question is when.
Easy, simple answers to complex problems with limited to zero personal effort always get them, hook, line and sinker. Humans are suckers for such things. The fact that it's going to be a tough fight against an established monied class that won't take reversing things lying down is just too hard I guess. 
Skittles
(160,560 posts)that was THE ENTIRE POINT of "REAGANOMICS", that TRICKLE DOWN nonsense
Kaleva
(38,670 posts)No a/c and the sheets stuck to you from the sweat. In winter, you could see your breath in the unheated bedrooms. One bathroom for a family of 8. We didn't have a dryer so the clothes were dried using the clothesline. We didn't have outlets in the bedrooms till I was older and lighting was provided by a single light hanging from the ceiling operated by a pull chain.
I could go on but I'd rather much have today then yesteryear.
Wifes husband
(129 posts)We had air conditioning in our house in Florida. Cold in winter and hot in summer.
Upthevibe
(9,299 posts)
Dem4life1970
(601 posts)
slightlv
(4,541 posts)that the majority of Americans have been living third world status, while residing in one of the richest countries in the world. trump wants to take us back down to 3rd world, for all the world to see? Well, most of us have been living that life for decades now. Americans are just too gullible, too soft, and too apathetic to do anything about it. And if anyone points it out to them, they scream "America exceptionalism".... yeah, we're exceptional alright... we're the exception to every 1st world country on earth in the way they treat their citizens, IMO.
IbogaProject
(3,867 posts)But yes our economic potential has been killed by the myth of the Wealthy being "job creators". The income velocity of the bottom 60% vs the top 10% is dramatic.
crud
(854 posts)technology have gone to the wealthy. They call it trickle-down economics. Reagan started it. Check out graphs that plot worker productivity against worker wages and it will become obvious what has happened to the working class of America. I lived it and witnessed it in real time.
Jughead
(51 posts)My dad worked, mom stayed home with 5 kids. We owned an home and a decent car. My dad was a Forman.
It did happen.
valleyrogue
(1,244 posts)Last edited Sun Jan 5, 2025, 07:31 PM - Edit history (3)
Discrimination against women in the workforce was rampant, birth control was either not available or not that reliable. The big families existed then not necessarily because women enjoyed a house full of screaming kids and little adult contact. In fact, the reason women were "in the home" in the fifties wasn't really a matter of "choice," but rather they were FIRED wholesale from factory jobs at the end of WW II to make room for the returning servicemen. Read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which younger people like the person in the OP quoted clearly hasn't read and clearly doesn't understand that era AT ALL. It was also aided and abetted by the federal government giving preferential treatment to married people in taxation and of course, the GI Bill. For women of that era, it sucked for them because they had very few options if they were not born into privilege. Teenage marriages, shotgun marriages, forced marriages, all that other crap, were the rule and not the exception.
This "great lifestyle," which put millions of women at risk for poverty should the man die or leave, was made possible at women's expense. Unionization, which is a good thing, unfortunately peddled the "family wage" concept designed to force women OUT of the labor force. It undergirded and continues to undergird the wage gap between the sexes. Divorce was not easy to get, either, and domestic violence was rampant. Gays and lesbians could be thrown in jail, single adults, especially women, were heavily stigmatized, and discrimination against racial minorities was also rampant. NOT a great era if you were NOT a white male.
Some of us DO remember those days, and we DON'T have rose-colored glasses on to claim that it was such a "great" era. The lifestyle was made possible on the backs of others. It frankly SUCKED.
True Dough
(21,120 posts)was in no way claiming that life back then was idyllic in every possible way. The point is about the claw back of compensation and benefits over decades.
Kaleva
(38,670 posts)brush
(58,213 posts)after WWll. And if you were a woman Poc, multiply the hardships even more.
paleotn
(19,635 posts)Granted, a lot was left to do. But then again, not recognizing the improvement is just as short sighted. That's one of the main problems with Americans today. And why many have been lured away by an orange pompous ass. They want Nirvana instantly. That's foolish. It's not magic. Improvement takes time. You still have to defeat those who want to stick with the status quo. If you're looking for perfect, you won't find it, ever. Better to work on improving what we have instead of whining that the world isn't already perfect.
Wifes husband
(129 posts)This is the reason I hated "Happy Days". It wasn't that way at all
moondust
(20,542 posts)In 2023, CEOs were paid 290 times as much as a typical worker—in contrast to 1965, when they were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.
That CEOs were paid nearly 10 times as much as the top 0.1% of U.S. wage earners in 2022 illustrates just how distorted CEO pay increases have become.
CEO pay is linked strongly to the stock market—but in 2023, the stock market held fairly steady, while there was an uncharacteristic dip in CEO pay.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2023/
Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865. Unfortunately, it didn't abolish other types of supergreedy predation. Maybe the 13th Amendment should have included something like the 2013 Swiss 1:12 Initiative that would have limited executive pay to 12 times that of their lowest paid employees.
Kablooie
(18,804 posts)They just say it was all caused by Democrats.
Vote for Republicans and it will all be fixed.
Easypeasy.
Bluetus
(356 posts)It is not enough to complain. WE NEED TO PRESENT REAL PROPOSALS FOR MAKING LIVES BETTER !!!
Let's say everybody agrees that it used to be possible for one earner with a HS diploma to provide for a family without any big government assistance programs. And let's say everybody agrees now that same family would be in poverty today.
OK. So what? What is our solution?
I get really sick of all this whining about the stupid public voting against their self-interest when we don't provide any clear proposals that will change their lives for the better in a big way. More often than not, the only person actually making tangible proposals is Bernie Sanders and many Democrats hate him. Well, what are the Democratic proposals? What can we do better for people?
OK, I get we'll fight for abortions and LGBT rights. That helps some slices of the population, but not the majority, and not many of the 75 million who just voted against us. What will Democrats fight for that will improve the lives of ALL regular, non-billionaire Americans?
PedroXimenez
(639 posts)PedroXimenez
(639 posts)paleotn
(19,635 posts)Lots of blame to go around. Including American workers who lined up behind Reagan in 1980. We forgot that business, if left unchecked, would reduce American workers to the squalor of pre-WW2, pre-FDR America. Maybe that's due to American culture where business and labor always consider themselves advisories, instead of the European and Japanese model where they view each other as equal partners. A lot of blame to go around.
paleotn
(19,635 posts)Mom stayed home. Dad worked and was a proud member of the CWA for 30+. We weren't rich but the thought of where our next meal was coming from or the roof over our heads was alien to our minds. In the summer, we went on vacation, usually off to see relatives. Seemingly endless hours on Ike's interstates, in the back seat, annoying my older sister. Not everyone lived like that back then, certainly, but a lot of Americans did. A whole hell of a lot more Americans than pre-WW2.
We had little overseas competition as the rest of the world recovered from the devastation of WW2. We were an economic monster the world had never seen, primed by gigantic WW2 stimulus spending. We were in a golden age for America. We were granted a unique opportunity as a people. We remade American society post WW2 to 1970. We had the resources and economic power to go even further in living up to our nation's creed, but then we stopped and then we squandered it.
And then Reagan came along. And then it was over. Wages stagnated. American industry had become complacent and bloated, losing it's edge. Greed became good. Taxes were "reformed." US industry was hollowed out for a quick buck. The golden age ended with whiny Americans, spouting Reagan's simple, stupid mantras, and caring only for themselves. And voting in ways diametrically opposed to their own interests. And here we are.
Emile
(31,140 posts)raised three children and bought a home.
Kaleva
(38,670 posts)Raised a family but did his own dental work
DetlefK
(16,513 posts)That used to be considered normal.
MichMan
(13,664 posts) DetlefK
(16,513 posts)When The Simpsons came out in the 1990s, was there EVEN ONE critic who mocked the show for giving this everyman-character a lifestyle he cannot possibly afford.
Nobody has ever raised an eyebrow over Homer Simpson feeding a family of 5 AND having 2 cars AND paying off a house on a high-school diploma job.
What is their house worth? Some $300k to $500k?
What does Homer earn? Some $30k to $40k?
OldBaldy1701E
(6,737 posts)I cannot find it at the moment, but they did one.
raising2moredems
(719 posts)True Dough
(21,120 posts)And Don the Con is determined to lower those rates again.
Nululu
(969 posts)We need better in the future
Self Esteem
(1,806 posts)It was not normal. This is fantasy.
Why do you think slums were built in the 1950s, 60s and 70s? They weren't built because economically, the US was awash in success for everyone. They were built because for A LOT of Americans, they weren't making it.
But people also forget history. From 1945 into the 1970s, the US was a global economic power because Europe (and Japan) was decimated by the war. They didn't have the capacity to compete with the US on a manufacturing level. At no level could they because whole cities were demolished and needed to be rebuilt. So, the US essentially had a monopoly on a lot of manufacturing and yes, if you had a job in that, you were probably golden.
But even at the height of manufacturing coming out of WWII, 60% of laborers in the US did not have manufacturing jobs.
The US is never going to be the lone super power and economic power again. Not unless another war breaks out in Europe and Asia and 30% or so of the continent is destroyed in warfare.
Kaleva
(38,670 posts)It appears that some feel the economy was much better yesteryear then it is today
applegrove
(123,762 posts)whenever they got into power.
True Dough
(21,120 posts)Thanks for posting it.
Self Esteem
(1,806 posts)It's a near-20 year old graph that was done at the height of the Great Recession. In fact, more years have passed since this graph's last data point (16 years) than the whole time frame it was showcasing (10 years).
It's not 2009 anymore.
oldmanlynn
(522 posts)Misinformation has them all believing that dems are the reason their futures are not as bright.
forthemiddle
(1,441 posts)When there were one income families, siblings shared a room, there was one car per family, one family vacation per year, no cell phone bill, no cable bill, etc. etc.
Things have changed so much, that we can’t, and don’t want to go back.
If families want to go back to 900 sq foot homes (our first home), and if one parent wants to be confined to the house while the other parent takes the car to work, they could probably still make it on one income. Also let’s not forget, going out to eat was a very special occasion.
alarimer
(16,669 posts)Sorry, I am not nostalgic for a time when women could not have credit cards in their own names.
I do think people in all jobs should be paid a living wage.
Mr.Bee
(441 posts)Not only a high school diploma, but if you took some electives, auto shop, electronics, drafting, you were ahead of the game.
Personal note; I took drafting which opened me up to a career in engineering. That's really when America was great, but Drn Old Drumpf will never know that, never having to actually work for a living or fight for a job. 