Fifties were a better time. We need to return to a better Democratic Party.

[snowy owl]

Last edited Fri May 27, 2016, 07:54 PM - Edit history (2)

Edit: I agree with all who take social issues and throw them back at me. However, my post clearly correlates to the extract. If you choose to make it a personal attack, you've done well. If you wish to address the whole point, you might reconsider. One poster did did sunlight a good point about the seventies and I agreed with him that probably saying "the seventies" might have been better. They wer the best for me personally. But I'm not disavowing the fifties as a better time economically for everybody. It was, afterall, the beginning of the revolution for working women. Thanks to Rosie the Riveter. It took time as everything does. Lowest unemployment and GI bill for those returning soldiers. And some writers do make a case that it was even a better time for blacks. That's not my opinion and I never said it was. DU has a healthy number of people who attack first. I can take it.

No one is say it was better for blacks, Native Americans, or even religion - Catholics were regarded a lot differently. But those were social issues, not ecoonomic. Yes, everyone's economics were affected by social issues but all things being equal, it was a better time.

The Koch Brothers are buying professors and changing educational policy. Look at Texas for textbook editing. Surveillance of television content is censorshiop. The pulpit - it's become a political arm of the Republican Party. And who ever hears anything on radio that is even slightly left - some places but very few. A cosmopolitan city like Seattle? None. Lewis Powell won. And look what we've got.

We need to get back the Party of Bernie. If you think Clinton will do it, fine.

Powell Memorandum from Wiki:

On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting President Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell sent the "Confidential Memorandum" titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System" to a friend at the US Chamber of Commerce.[13] It was based in part on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and as a representative for the tobacco industry with the Virginia legislature. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding politics and law in the US and may have sparked the formation of several influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as well as inspiring the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.[14][15] Marxist academic David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.[16][17]

Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.[18]

[jamese777]

1. Conservatives look back

Progressives look forward.

[snowy owl]

2. And conservatives don't learn from the past so repeat mistakes over and over and over

And that makes no sense to me who votes Green frequently.

[denverbill]

19. Conservatives look back to the 1850s, not the 1950s.

They not only want to undo all the progress made since the 1950s, progressive things such as Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights laws, the EPA, etc, they want to undo Social Security, child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, the minimum wage, national parks, and everything else progressive done since Roosevelt, Teddy, not Franklin.

They've succeeded in partially privatizing education, crushing the power of unions, destroying pensions, giving enormous tax cuts to the super wealthy, and destroying the power of government to regulate business.

The 1950's might not have been a great time for minorities in America, but it was the progressive values that most Americans shared at that time that finally broke the barriers of racial segregation, gave women equal rights, and at least attempted to end racism and sexism in America. None of those things would have been done without a progressive population. Racism and sexism were certainly much worse in the 1950s than today, but it was the voters during the 1950s and 1960s that were responsible for putting people into power that passed laws and, when necessary, sent in troops to enforce the laws.

There is no progressive that wants to undo the progress made in those areas, but the 1950s and 1960s were among the most progressive times in our history. Back then, Eisenhower warned of the industrial-military complex and Nixon implemented the EPA. Good luck finding more than a handful of people that progressive among elected Democrats today.

[snowy owl]

63. A lot of people sure don't understand the post, do they?

I think they didn't read very far. That's a problem on this site. Too many reactive responses. That's a problem with out democracy today. I wonder if we will ever get it back?

[PeaceNikki]

74. We read the whole thing. We disagree with you.

People who disagree with you are not stupid or ignorant.

[Duval]

141. "We need to return to a better Democratic Party"

The Progressives as well as the younger generation are working on that.

[CorkySt.Clair]

3. The 50's were a better time?

Do tell....

On edit: I overlooked your throwaway line about it being worse for blacks but really, shouldn't that be enough to say it wasn't a better time?

[workinclasszero]

9. Hey the "good old days"

Map of 73 Years of Lynchings
The most recent data on lynching, compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative, shows premeditated murders carried out by at least three people from 1877 to 1950 in 12 Southern states. The killers claimed to be enforcing some form of social justice. The alleged offenses that prompted the lynchings included political activism and testifying in court.

FEB. 9, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/10/us/map-of-73-years-of-lynching.html

[CorkySt.Clair]

10. The more I think about it.

The more the original post sounds fucking moronic, among other things.

[workinclasszero]

12. The good old days of the fifties or earlier were only for the dominant race, culture and sex.

It was pretty much hell for everybody else.

[CorkySt.Clair]

57. The OP doubles down later in the thread

Said it was even better for "black people".

Dog whistle this isn't. It's overt.

[snowy owl]

115. Cite post number.

[RichVRichV]

212. You do realize we can go back to the economic justice of the 50's (equalized for all)

while still maintaining the social justice gains of today?



The economics of the 50's didn't work because it excluded blacks and others, in worked in spite of excluding them. High union memberships doesn't work just for whites. High pay with good benefits doesn't work for just men. The more people included in a fair economy the more prosperous the economy is. You combine the past economics before trickle down took hold, that created the most wealthy, powerful country and middle class the world has ever seen for people of all race, gender, etc. You then add in the social justice we've gained to date including more to come, and expanded social protections such as a guarantee for quality work, health care, and education (what FDR pushed for in his second bill of rights). That is a society worth striving for. That is a government worth believing in.

[CorkySt.Clair]

260. There was no economic justice in the 50's.

You are delusional.

[RichVRichV]

262. Yep, the middle class didn't exist then.

It was all an illusion until trickle down economics showed up to create it for us. right back at ya!

[1StrongBlackMan]

285. If you equalize the economic justice while still maintaining the social justice gains of today ...

then, we're not talking about the 50s ... that's the point being made.

[RichVRichV]

297. Well of course we don't want to go back to the 50's.

What we want is to reapply the economic model that built the middle class from the 40s to the 70s, and expand it for everyone. Then combine that with social gains and try to implement FDRs second bill of rights for everyone. I'm talking high union membership, high minimum wage and median wage, high top marginal tax rate, high infrastructure spending, peace time military spending, ending the war on drugs, demilitirizing the police force, applying proper citizen oversight on the police, ending for profit prisons, continuing social gains, eliminating pay inequality, etc.


If you want to call us on the left dreamers, or naive, or trying to do the impossible then that's a fair critisicm (at least until we succeed). But we're not evil, we're not the enemy. We don't want to go back to white men prospering at the cost of everyone else. That would be the right you're thinking of. We want to see everyone succeed. And there is nothing preventing it from happening except the will of people. Peoples minds can be changed given time. Progress happens when enough minds change their point of view.


Only looking forward is pointless. If we never look to our past then we have no way to measure what we did right, what we did wrong, and where we can improve ourselves.

[Hoyt]

4. The 50s were better -- excepting minorities -- because America was building houses, corporations

were expanding with high paying jobs, etc.

Unfortunately, I think we expanded too quickly and now we are learning what other nations found out long ago.

There's a reason most European nations have smaller houses, smaller cars, less junk and waste, etc. Europeans are satisfied with that and collective benefits. People here weren't and probably aren't now. People here were stupid and it'll take a few decades to learn for ourselves.

Our politicians need to start standing up and telling people that for the upper 50 - 65%ers, it's not likely to get better until we become satisfied with less. The other 35 - 50% deserves a chance.

[snowy owl]

15. Yes, and if we became more local, we could do it again.

Which is why I disagree with you about globalization on another thread. The European economy isn't doing too well thanks to our influences and banking corruption. As long as our wealth is in the hands of a few billionaires, we will not prosper. I don't know where you get your percentages, but you can't have a decent piece of the pie if the pie is already eaten.

[Hoyt]

78. If you took every penny from the upper 10% -- which would include many of your doctors, lawyers,

Last edited Fri May 27, 2016, 04:35 PM - Edit history (1)

etc. -- it wouldn't be enough to make 50% of the people happy for a year or two. And that is assuming all the "wealth" they supposedly have doesn't evaporate the moment we take it since most of it is on paper, not real.

We would perish trading primarily among ourselves, not to mention the fights we'd have internally and externally. Second, it's damn greedy and selfish since we have taken more of our share or the world's potential wealth and resources for decades. Foreigners are right when they refer to us as "greedy Americans," and posts such as yours shows it not just the upper income people who are greedy.

[snowy owl]

116. See below. You don't know taht. Just a meme that gets repeated.

History of income tax rates adjusted for inflation (1913–2010)[69][70]
Number of First Bracket Top Bracket
Year Brackets Rate Rate Income Adj. 2015[62][71] Comment
1913 7 1% 7% $500,000 $12 million First permanent income tax
1917 21 2% 67% $2,000,000 $36.9 million World War I financing
1925 23 1.5% 25% $100,000 $1.35 million Post war reductions
1932 55 4% 63% $1,000,000 $17.3 million Depression era
1936 31 4% 79% $5,000,000 $85.3 million -
1941 32 10% 81% $5,000,000 $80.4 million World War II
1942 24 19% 88% $200,000 $2.9 million Revenue Act of 1942
1944 24 23% 94% $200,000 $2.69 million Individual Income Tax Act of 1944
1946 24 20% 91% $200,000 $2.43 million -
1964 26 16% 77% $400,000 $3.05 million Tax reduction during Vietnam war
1965 25 14% 70% $200,000 $1.5 million -
1981 16 14% 70% $215,400 $561 thousand Reagan era tax cuts
1982 14 12% 50% $85,600 $210 thousand Reagan era tax cuts
1987 5 11% 38.5% $90,000 $187 thousand Reagan era tax cuts
1988 2 15% 28% $29,750 $59.5 thousand Reagan era tax cuts
1991 3 15% 31% $82,150 $143 thousand Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990
1993 5 15% 39.6% $250,000 $410 thousand Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993
2003 6 10% 35% $311,950 $401 thousand Bush tax cuts
2011 6 10% 35% $379,150 $399 thousand -
2013 7 10% 39.6% $400,000 $406 thousand American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012

And yes we would have catch up. Is that surprising?

[msanthrope]

292. Excepting minorities....and women. So basically, over half the population. nt

[scscholar]

5. That dog whistle is so loud...

it makes me want to die.

[Txbluedog]

14. That's what the Trump and to a much lesser extent yet he Sanders campaign all about

White men are furious that they are rapidly losing their top dog status and that's where all the anger and resentment comes in. It's clear as day in the Trump campaign

[snowy owl]

64. Thanks for not reading the post Too many words fo ya?

[barrow-wight]

275. Play as innocent as you want.

You knew exactly what kinda dog whistle you were blowing with this and you knew exactly what kinda response you were going to get also.

[mcar]

187. This OP makes me sad

Is this what we've become as "liberals?" A return to an era of legalized and socialized oppression and bigotry?

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. I remember the 1950s.

It was better for a few only, certainly not minorities and that includes women.

[onyourleft]

8. This. It was...

...an ugly time, as were the 1960s.

[snowy owl]

17. That was addressed in the post.

[PeaceNikki]

30. no, you didn't mention women

[greatauntoftriplets]

59. At my college orientation in 1967

we were told that any women hoping to go to medical school should forget about it. We'd only be taking the place of a male who would finish, while any women would likely get married and/or pregnant and drop out, so we shouldn't was the university's time and resources. While I had no interest in going to medical school (my talents lay in other directions), that pissed me off no end. They had no effing business telling us what we should/could or should not/could not do.

The glass ceiling was moved firmly into place above us because it was evident that any woman who had the will would have had great difficulty getting into that university's medical school.

It was bullshit.

[Hekate]

170. OH HELL YES.

[greatauntoftriplets]

216. I'll never forget that day.

[mcar]

190. One of my first jobs

In the mid-80s, I worked with a very interesting older (50s to my 20s) woman who told me that she was a teacher in the 60s, in a public school system in TX. She was married; as soon as her pregnancy became apparent, she was fired. No recourse. No legal protections.

Yeah, them were the days, for sure.

[greatauntoftriplets]

193. That happpened to my sister in the Chicago Public Schools.

It was in 1971. The "good old days" ha ha.

[mcar]

203. Right?

Mid-80s, I'm making at least 50% less then my male counterparts. I didn't even know till I left that company and my boss told me. I still don't know how to negotiate for what I'm really worth.

[greatauntoftriplets]

211. Same here.

My male supervisor before I retired was hired after I was, but he was the one who got promoted. Of course, he sucked up to the president of the company, so much so that many coworkers mocked him. The chairman (who founded the company and was the president's father) gave him a very funny nickname that I won't repeat. He even called him that to his fast.

This supervisor started our "relationship" (work only, I might add, I am 19 years older than this guy) by trying to palm me off with his scut work like I was his secretary or something. When I didn't go for it, he developed an attitude towards me that never went away though we were forced to get along in a very chilly but polite manner. The pay raises went to the female coworker with whom it was rumored he was having an affair. I never figured out if they did or not.

So, I hear you. And it stinks.

[tammywammy]

204. My mother lied about her due date with my older brother

They couldn't afford to go without the paycheck, so he was an early birth but just happened to look full term in 1974.

And I'm supposed to yearn for the 50s? Fuck that.

[mcar]

206. Well said!

My grandmother died in 1957, year before I was born. My grandfather died when my mother was 14, many years earlier. My grandmother had no other recourse but to go from grown child to child, all 13 of them, on a several month rotation.

She had no Social Security. No retirement or annuity.

Good times for sure.

WTF is this thread still here?

[greatauntoftriplets]

219. My father's mother also died in 1957 when I was 8.

My grandfather had died in 1918 when my father was 8. She was fortunate to live with her parents and taught music at home and was a bookkeeper at a department store. She was very lucky and also had only three children. When I was young, she lived in a small apartment in a Victorian house in their town (now a Chicago suburb). Yet I have no idea what she lived on and I doubt that there's anyone left alive who could tell me.

And that's another thing, she died at age 73 following a stroke. Today, they probably could have operated on her and she might have had some good years ahead of her.

[Hekate]

221. Our neighbors across the street were both in the LAPD. She stuck it out till her 7th month...

...by wearing the world's most heavy-duty girdle, according to my mother. I don't know how early she went back to work, but pretty early.

My mother in law came to New York City with her husband and 3 little boys around 1953. After they got fired from a "couples" job (cook and handyman for a little school) for being Jewish instead of French, she took a job as a bookkeeper someplace where she lied about her marital and maternal status. Her co-workers were always trying to fix this charming woman up with dates. Once her husband got steady work, she put her wedding ring back on and brought in a pile of photos of her kids to show to her friends on the same day she resigned.

So yes, you definitely could get fired or laid off for being pregnant, and certainly you could get fired for being Jewish.

[greatauntoftriplets]

44. No, you didn't mention that women were expected to stay home barefoot and pregnant.

For example:

[Amaril]

98. Ugh!

I can remember my mom catering to my dad like this when I was growing up (in the 60's). She didn't work outside the home, but she took care of EVERYthing having to do with the house (cleaning, laundry, yardwork, minor repairs, cooked all meals, took care of me, etc.), and would then wait on him hand & foot when he came home. Used to piss me off -- his job was 8 hours a day, 5 days a week while hers was 24/7. One of the hardest slaps across the mouth I ever received was when -- after a family holiday dinner (that my mom cooked, cleaned & did all the preparation for) -- she was in the kitchen with a couple of her sisters cleaning up, and my dad -- who was sitting in his recliner in the living room talking to the "menfolk" yelled across the house that they wanted coffee........and I yelled back "Make it yourself. Mom is busy."

[greatauntoftriplets]

100. Good for you!

[Number23]

238. You are awesome.

Truly.

[Agschmid]

244. Nice!

[mcar]

201. ...

[auntpurl]

33. +100000

People who want to go back to the dark ages - I find it abhorrent.

[Dem2]

47. My dad said it was a horrible time

People were conservative, jerks and bigots.

It's true and why conservatives want to go back to that time.

I do wonder who are these white males supporting Bernie and now espousing these right-wing talking points. I actually feel very confused right now - what's going on here?

[denverbill]

144. So if you believe that, why did civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid, and other things get passed?

Did this huge mass of conversative jerks get had by a bunch of liberals who pretended to be conservatives? Sorry, there were pockets of conservatives especially in the South but it was liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats of this era who passed Civil Rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid, and a host of other policies 100X more liberal than anything done since Reagan. If not for that generation, we might still have Jim Crow.

You somehow think the people of the generation that passed civil rights laws and sent federal troops to force school integration was a bunch of bigoted assholes compared to today when 40% of the population wants Trump to be President?

[Dem2]

147. .

I feel like I've entered right-wing world.

[denverbill]

150. I don't think you ever left.

[Dem2]

151. That's a personal attack

I called your theory right-wing, you made it personal.

[denverbill]

164. That's pretty funny.

How is it a personal attack? The words "I don't think you ever left" are completely benign. They only take on some semblance of a personal attack if taken in context with you saying you fell into a right wing world reference my comment to you. If you had said you felt like you fell into a left-wing world and I said the same thing, nobody would have been crying.

[Dem2]

168. OK

I see you're here to argue for the sake of arguing.

[snowy owl]

192. You called the people that did all that good stuff "jerks" -right?

[blue neen]

283. That was done in the 1960's, not the 1950's.

It helps to keep your decades straight.

[denverbill]

295. Are you suggesting the turn of the decade from 1959-1960 marked some miraculous turning point?

It didn't. I was born in the 50's and remember the 60's perfectly well thank you. I remember MLK's speech and assassination. I remember Bobby Kennedy's assassination. I remember George Wallace and the race riots and the anti-war protests.

There was not some great die-off of bigoted jerks on 12/31/59. The same people who voted for Truman and Eisenhower, men who were far more progressive than any candidate in this election with the exception of Bernie Sanders, were largely the same people voting for Kennedy and Johnson. Truman proposed national health insurance and equal rights for all in 1945 and integrated the military by executive order in 1948. Eisenhower kept the top tax rate at over 70% and warned about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

And today were are witnessing a race in which a misogynistic, racist know-nothing asshole has about a 50-50 chance of becoming President and this person says people in the 50's were conservative, jerks and bigots? I've got news for you. This country is way more conservative and bigoted than it was in the 1950's and there are way more jerks as well.

[blue neen]

298. You said, "civil rights laws, Medicare, Medicaid" got passed in the 1950's.

They got passed in the 1960's. Period.

I didn't say a word about any of the other things you replied about; you really don't need to put words in my mouth. I, too, was born in the 1950's and also remember the 60's perfectly well, thank you.

Also, even though Truman served as President during the early 50's, he wasn't elected during the 50's.

[snowy owl]

66. Social issue. You didn't read did you?

[Agschmid]

124. Yup.

[snowy owl]

194. LOL.

[jwirr]

188. Wasn't so hot for small farm families either. They were

going broke.

[HereSince1628]

289. The 50's included some pretty awful years of drought

That had pretty important impacts on farming, as did restructuring small farms using philosophies of economies of scale (and its matching mechanization) and specialization.

One of the things about nostalgia threads is that nostalgia is often an oversimplification of what is already pretty selective.

I lived the 50's and don't trust my own memories of it to be honest and complete.

Many people who think of farming in the 50s are just remembering Lassie and The Real McCoys, just as many people who remember school remember Our Miss Brooks and The Blackboard Jungle.

[jwirr]

296. Agreed. My memories are pretty good about the poverty and

I have been working with my children to recreate the small farm idea for our family. We have a huge garden, have an orchard, planted berry bushes, have chickens for eggs and meat and raise other small animals for food. I and my brothers have taught them all how to butcher their own animals and we preserve most of what we grow. The rest is given away to other families. We also hunt and fish to supplement the food. We are trying to have bees but as most know that is not easy with the pollution we face.

We basically work together on all aspects of life. However, we have not given up our day jobs. The small farmer back then usually did not have that day job to add to his income.

We also use new ideas - greenhouse, etc. Many of our neighbors are following along with us. Today I think there is a new form of small farming going on.

[workinclasszero]

7. I don't want to go back to the times of AA segregation, sit at the back of the

bus, separate water fountains, lunch counters, etc etc. Not to mention the lynchings.

Gays violently suppressed and women confined to the kitchen, I'll pass thanks all the same.

"Yes, everyone's economics were affected by social issues but all things being equal, it was a better time".(for straight white males)

[snowy owl]

21. You can't change the truth of the post by skewing it your way.

I address minorities. And there are black writers who do think it was a better time for blacks as well. Black families were in tact and black communities held together offering services to each other. They were actually pretty good models for what locals can do for each other without globalization.

If you think the black family is better off today, I respect your opinion. I don't have a single mind on that. I can see benefits to both sides. That takes some reflection rather than easy answers to which too many people resort.

[dsc]

56. and gays went to jail or worse for being gay

but you sure don't give a flying fuck about that.

[snowy owl]

67. Bad time for gays. But you didn't read either. Gays = social issue.

[PeaceNikki]

75. We read the whole thing. We disagree with you. Stop implying that people who disagree with you are

stupid.

[greatauntoftriplets]

96. We certainly did and do.

[Number23]

235. ANY black person that tells you the 1950s are better than today is trying to sell you something

And anyone dumb enough to fall for it deserves whatever garbage it is they're selling.

[msanthrope]

293. I can't hear your post over the dog whistles in the OP. nt

[heaven05]

255. your address to "minorities"

leaves out the fact that the back of the bus was total reality for hundreds of thousands, getting off the sidewalkc when a white man was on it walking toward you, no vote and certain death if you spoke up about that right and tried to vote, end of rope having some 'strange fruit' hanging from a tree because they might have eyeballed a white woman or spoke back to an ignorant low life redneck. No, you DID NOT adddress minorities. The 50's were great for entitled, privileged white people only, male usually. NO ONE ELSE! I''m saying unequivocally, this post is an insult to all massacred, hung, burned and castrated black men, women and children. AN INSULT!!!!! I remeber those times because I lived them. This center right post is an insult!!!!!!!!!

[barrow-wight]

277. Omg.

The last person I saw try to argue that blacks had it better back in the day was that weirdo from Duck Dynasty.

Are you for real? This is appalling.

[denverbill]

11. In the 1950's, the US led the world in virtually everything.

Education, per capita income, standard of living, GDP, etc. That was when the top tax rate was at least 70% and unions were very strong. Almost all workers had pensions. Important things like schools, bus services, road construction, prisons, etc were done by the government. Instead of the primary motivation for these services being a profit, the primary motivation was doing the best job possible for the people. Now instead of the primary motivation for schools to be getting every student the best education possible, the primary motivation is to privatize as many schools as possible so that someone can make a profit on those education dollars, regardless of the quality of education. Whereas prisons used to exist to actually try to rehabilitate offenders and try to keep them from returning to prison, now the goal is to keep them imprisoned as long as possible so that profits will be maximized and get them back in as soon as possible after they are released. We used to regulate TV and radio to be balanced and required them to operate in the public interest, not just to maximize their profits by running popular but harmful drivel. No station ran hate-filled right-wing propagandists 24 hours a day. We didn't appoint drug company executives to regulate the drug companies or chemical company executives to man the USDA. Government agencies actually did their jobs regulated.

Frankly I don't see much hope of ever getting back to that state. The wealthy and their minions have completely usurped government in America and with the media on their side, I don't think we will ever get it back.

[Raastan]

29. Learn from the past, plan for the future

[philosslayer]

121. Racism, Jim Crow, Systematic oppression of minorities...

Yep, we were da bomb!! Oh for the good ol' days.

[heaven05]

256. all you say is true

for white folks. Black people were NOT allowed in unions much less the trades. And you're right and I pray so, that we never return to those times of gross inequality. Something trumpchumps would like to see happen.

[Cheese Sandwich]

13. You can't be serious. If this post is sincere, it is very racially tone deaf.

I can hardly believe that anyone would say something like this unless they were just being sarcastic or something.

Maybe you forgot the sarcasm tag.

[snowy owl]

22. I addressed minorities very clearly. Do you read posts or headlines?

[Cheese Sandwich]

50. I think you are deliberately trying to alienate black people

If you start out by saying the fifties were better, it's like you are deliberately trying to alienate black people.

I can't tell if you're serious. It's hard for me to believe anybody could be so racially insensitive

The headline is hurting you the most in this case.

By the way I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter. But this OP is just wrong. I have a hard time believing this is real. It has to be either sarcasm or some kind of act. If it is real, it's very sad. But it reads like a caricature of everything the Hillary people have been claiming Bernie Sanders supporters think.

[snowy owl]

69. Blacks? You don't care about women, gays, Native Americans? Not so good for them

But you react for yourself. You need to be less reactive and think. It is about economic policy and I said that. Respond intelligently and less emotionally.

[barrow-wight]

279. Wow.

Cheese Sandwich is one of Bernie's biggest troopers here. If he (I can't see from his profile if it's he or she so I apologize if I got that wrong) is dressing you down for this, you've really gone over the edge. This thread and your myriad attempts to justify it reek of white privilege so clearly snowy is a great name for you.

And not for nothing, one of the great areas of disagreement I have with Bernie is that racism comes from economic injustice. They are two different things and the former impacts the latter as much as the other way around. How accurately can we assess the so called economic golden years of the 1950's without also assessing the fact that it came on the backs of oppressed minorities? You may also want to check just how much that prosperity was the product of war. I don't want economic justice for one group at the expense of the social justice of others and I am hardly what anyone I know what call a social justice warrior but your post really set me off. This belief that Bernie and others push that a stronger economic balance will fix other social ills falls flat just on your example of the 1950's. Whites had plenty.

And finally, anyone who things money fixes racial issues needs to google the time Orprah tried to buy that purse in Switzerland. She is one of the wealthiest women in the world and almost certainly the wealthiest black woman. It didn't stop her from being treated like crap.

[bravenak]

272. Thank you!

[barrow-wight]

278. You are one of Bernie's most vociferous supporters here.

And if this is pissing you off, it's clearly over the edge. I appreciate you taking the time to say it.

[pnwmom]

16. It wasn't better for minorities ECONOMICALLY -- except there were more jobs as maids.

And it wasn't better for single or divorced women ECONOMICALLY.

It wasn't better for elderly or disabled people ECONOMICALLY -- no Medicare or Medicaid.

It was better for white working men economically, yes. Relatively speaking, they were doing better than everyone else.

All things were not equal and it wasn't a better time. Just different.

[snowy owl]

24. All of which are social issues and I said the same thing.

Do you people read posts or headlines?

[pnwmom]

27. No, they aren't social issues. They are ECONOMIC issues. The only people doing

better then economically were white working men.

[snowy owl]

70. No, they are social issues and yes are affected by ecoonomis as I said.

But fixing economic issues will help us fix social issues even today. Your post reactibe. Think about it.

[pnwmom]

132. Wrong. The rising economic wealth of the 50's only lifted the boats of working white men.

Not people of color, or poor elderly people, or single or divorced women.

And that wealth was created in large parts on the backs of these invisible people.

[snowy owl]

174. Believe what you want to believe. Yes, for whites much better. Social prog. yet to evolve.

[pnwmom]

176. For white men but not white women -- unless they were happily married to successful men. n/t

[heaven05]

257. I've thought about it

nope won't help as long as race is a factor in decisions that affect people economically, as it has since your 'golden times' of the 50's. Economically and asocially, one group overall benefitted and still benefits from unions, college admissions, good paying jobs where all applicants bring the same qualifications. That's the real world from the 50's all the way up to today and tomorrow especially if that RW clown somehowc stumbles into the Oval Office.

[barrow-wight]

280. I am just floored.

How can you be this blind?

[PeaceNikki]

31. In other words, it was better for white males.

yipee?

[Duval]

142. It's tunnel vision again.

Try to ignore.

[Hekate]

200. None so blind as they who will not see.

[cali]

18. Bullshit. Not better for minorities.

And the dem party of the fifties was a party littered with dixiecrats.

[snowy owl]

25. You read the headline, right? Now go back and read the post.

[cali]

35. I read it. All things being equal is a phrase that minimizes

those who were oppressed. And that was most of the population.

[barrow-wight]

281. This is the second Bernie supporter to call you out.

Do you get it yet? We all read what you wrote and people on all sides are disgusted by it.

I may dislike Bernie but I will support his candidacy should he take this nomination (by whatever means aliens from Mars might actually make that happen) but yours are not the kind of ideas that should be defining our party no matter who gets the nom.

[mcar]

205. I'm gobsmacked to see this crap here

[Waiting For Everyman]

20. We have lost track of so many things we did right.

It's a classic case of "throwing the baby out with the bath water".

If the quality of life the middle class had then was widened to include all, and it easily could be done, that would really astonish a lot of people today who never got a chance to see it.

[pnwmom]

26. No, it couldn't easily have been done. For instance, many middle class people then

had household "help." That was dependent on there being a large group of people willing to work in their houses for little pay.

[Waiting For Everyman]

32. That was not the norm and was not necessary to most.

And I had a working mom. People believe stereotypes too much.

[pnwmom]

39. It was much more common than today, among middle class white people.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/decline-domestic-help-maid/406798/

The fact that servants used to be a fixture of domestic life and are now reserved for the wealthy is one of the key, but little discussed, reasons why contemporary middle-class men and women feel overwhelmed by responsibilities. The receding presence of hired help has been accompanied by tremendous and long overdue boosts in the rights of domestic workers. At the same time, it means that fewer families today can afford the household support that was available to previous generations; paying even a part-time nanny on the books can be a time-consuming and expensive bureaucratic procedure.

Only a generation before middle-class housewives entered the workforce en masse, they enjoyed the assistance of nannies, cooks, and cleaners. The drop-off in domestic workers—whose absence today is felt disproportionately by women, who still are the ones typically tasked with homemaking—goes a long way toward explaining why women in 1965 spent the same amount of time on childcare and only about 10 more hours on housework a week than women in 2011. Nowadays, many working parents need more help and have access to less.

Today’s arrangement is a historical anomaly. Consider the genteel poverty of protagonists in novels by chroniclers of class such as Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Austen. Regardless of their reduced circumstances, these characters would have been shocked by the idea that they should be responsible for sweeping, let alone mopping, their own floors. In perhaps literature’s most extreme example, even the eternally optimistic but penniless Micawber family from Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield can’t imagine giving up its servant.

This situation remained the status quo for so long because it relied on a cheap and abundant supply of labor from unskilled workers, most of them easily exploited women and children who had few, if any, other options, and no employee protections. A 2013 Mother Jones examination of the history of domestic workers reports that, according to the 1870 census, “52 percent of employed women worked in ‘domestic and personal service.’”

SNIP

[snowy owl]

172. Jane Austen? Bit silly. Waiting correct: it was not the norm. I lived it.

I lived in a lower middle class neighborhood that included some wealthy and some very poor. No one had a maid. My best friend in 4th gr had a maid. Her dad was architect (one you'd know so I won't say but it is tempting...) and she had in 1958 a black maid that wore a black dress with a white apron and cap, That was a contiguous ultra-wealthy area due to the views. I was a top of the hill kid. In those days, the poor lived among us more often that not. As a previous poster said, almost everyone worked. White families of course. We had not maids and my family couldn't afford to hire a cleaner.

Regional differences - the south? Maybe. Also, as Waiting said, "middle class" constituted a large cross section of incomes. We had a real middle class then. The top and the bottom much thinner.

So, in reading the article(your excerpts) I didn't find any support or evidence for author's opinion. The excerpts seem a little biased. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I had context. Also, picture not from fifties. But the comments were pretty interesting and varied and you might be interested in these which range from appliances to higher pay for women working elsewhere to range of middle class to onset of fast food and its employment of the new domestic worker working for minimum wage. Nothing is simple. But it was not common to have servants in the fifties for many, many middle class families and none that I know of. The very last comment mimicks mine.

MintDragon • 8 months ago
This is interesting from an economic and social perspective. To paraphrase, the unskilled worker we will always have with us. Today, they work fast food. Yesterday, they would have been someone's hired help. The question is, what happens tomorrow?


registered_with_discus MintDragon • 8 months ago
Well, the question is, how would total robotization (which is coming fairly soon) will change the work loads. Robots are already taking over manufacturing (the US manufacturing is on the rise... the jobs aren't). Fast food would be simple to take over as well. Household maintenance - might be trickier, but definitely doable too.

Thomas registered_with_discus • 8 months ago
Dishwashers, washing machines, Roombas? Machines may not pick up after us (yet) but they're already doing a ton of household chores, or at least making them simpler, easier and less time-consuming.

marketkarma MintDragon • 8 months ago
also missing (noticably) from the article above -- but hinted at by this: "Foreign girls do not go into housework for this reason. They prefer the fixed hours of factory and shop work."

the biggest reason why domestic help dissapeared: the rise in wages. People had better paying alternatives, often with better hours.

the creation of household work saving appliances was a reaction to the high cost of domestic help --- not the cause of domestic help jobs going away.


Mark Jackson veerkg_23 • 8 months ago
In Hong Kong, even the lower middle class often has live in domestic helpers-- and it can do so because the helpers come from developing countries. In Hong Kong it's much easier to afford a domestic helper than it is to afford a place to put her-- which is why a lot of domestic helpers sleep in the kitchen or living room.

Atheissimo marketkarma • 8 months ago
And the disappearance of the social stigma around women doing factory and shop work. Until the end of the first world war and acute manpower shortages, it was often the only work that it was socially acceptable for a woman to do.

Bizarrely, my great grandmother (who had a maid) was herself a maid at a bigger house (think Downton) and only left to have children.


ducky_1374 Frank • 8 months ago
But remember that middle class stretches from $30,000 to $100,000. P

John Wellington Wells • 8 months ago
"Only a generation before middle-class housewives entered the workforce en masse, they enjoyed the assistance of nannies, cooks, and cleaners."

So there was at least one underclass family for every middle-class family that employed them. Being middle-class was somewhat of an elite status.

The prevalence of domestic help has undoubtedly changed, but so has our definition of middle-class. People now view middle-class as average or typical - what working class would have been a couple generations ago. The doctors, lawyers, business owners, scientists and politicians that used to make up the middle-class would now be called upper class, or at least upper middle class (a term which had to be invented since the definition of middle class became so watered down).

west_coast_ange John Wellington Wells • 8 months ago
The definition of middle class wasn't diluted, it changed. What it meant to be middle class (employment, homeownership, savings, etc.) no longer fit, thus we needed a new term (upper middle class) to describe folks who still met those standards.

cxt • 8 months ago
Interesting read.

Not sure I fully agree with how widespread it was to have a maid etc. Might have been a more regional thing.

But interesting read.

[Starry Messenger]

23. Given all of your caveats, for whom was it a better time?

https://www.facebook.com/motherjones/videos/10153777810687144/

Watch this.

[snowy owl]

45. For everybody. Rich and poor alike. Just like Burlington VT it was a better place

for everybody. That's why Bernie so successful as mayor. He improved the lot for poor, middle and rich. Our country was like that then. We were the model for other countries. Now they have what we don't and more. That's the thing. You can learn from the past and make the future better.

BTW, you can make a case either way. Some writers do agree fifties better for blacks because family unity, small local businesses (blacks businesses serving black communities, religious unity). It is not my place to speak for blacks at all. And people who didn't live it may not totally understand it. There was good as well as bad. We should keep the good and move on from the bad. Is today so much better for poor blacks? You have to look at it wholistically. That's sometimes the advantage of age. We've seen it all.

[Starry Messenger]

102. Burlington is a town of 40,000 people, mostly white.

They used to have a college too. I wonder what the students who used to go to it think now?

Incomes for African Americans rose sharply in the 1990s Due to policies by the Clinton administration: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2008/04/29/4283/the-state-of-minorities/

Life was not better for anyone in the 1950's except for white males. You seem to be arguing that Jim Crow led to some kind of social betterment for African Americans. Sometimes the effect of being old and having lived in it is that it got good to you, and you miss it. The rest of us don't.

[Agschmid]

126. They still have three major colleges in the area, they won't miss Burlington College too much.

[Starry Messenger]

128. I hope that is exactly what Jane Sanders uses as her answer

when the media finally asks her about it.

[Agschmid]

129. Most likely.

When I lived in Burlington, MA the college was basically run out of a shack under my friends apartment.

[GulfCoast66]

249. Are you really this obtuse?

Everybody was better off? All the things you call 'social issues' we're in fact economic issues. Blacks were oppressed so they could be exploited for cheap labor. I I grew up in the south in a community of 2-3 bedroom houses. At least a third of the families had part time African American housekeepers. That area is still middle class but most owners are blue collar where back in the day they were white collar. White collar now live in 4-5 bedroom homes. Same thing with other races and all women. Remember when out schools were so good? My wife's aunt in her 80's finally explained why they were so good. Women had three career choices; secretary, teacher or nurse. And they were paid about what they are today. If you force half the talent in America to work in those three professions you can bet you're gonna have some fucking good secretaries, teachers and nurses. Much of that incredible talent has fled to better paying professions. I will be the first to say we need to pay our teachers more, but don't pretend we put more into our schools then than now. We just used depressed wage labor.

Finally, you leave out the state of the rest of the world. Europe and Asia have been bomb to the Stone Age a decade before and if they wanted something they had to buy it from the United States. Hopefully I do not need to expound on what this meant for labor in the United States.

Looking to the past is a conservative trait. Liberals work for a better future. I agree there were some policies in the 50's that were better. But your thesis is threadbare.

And finally, when you use an example a small, all white city in New England as an example you tip your hand. You say it is not your place to speak for blacks but then do just that. Try using Birmingham or Little Rock.

[Hekate]

268. You are absolutely right about women's 3 career choices forcing the best & brightest women into them

QUOTE Remember when our schools were so good? My wife's aunt in her 80's finally explained why they were so good. Women had three career choices; secretary, teacher or nurse. And they were paid about what they are today. If you force half the talent in America to work in those three professions you can bet you're gonna have some fucking good secretaries, teachers and nurses. Much of that incredible talent has fled to better paying professions. I will be the first to say we need to pay our teachers more, but don't pretend we put more into our schools then than now. We just used depressed wage labor.

THANK YOU.

[GulfCoast66]

271. Why, thank you

I have been reading here for a good bit longer than posting and a compliment from you is nice. I hope Snowy Owl responds because I like healthy debate, but I doubt that happens. Someone who is willing to state that the 50's were better for people of color because, you know, they had intact families and all, really might feel more comfortable on right wing web sites. When I first start reading here that would have been a hide worthy post. But you know...progressives. When I started reading it here it was, you know, Democrats!

[Hekate]

273. That guy needs to rethink his assumptions, but since he's had two posts hidden in this thread ...

...he can't come back to it. Also, someone pointed out he just got Flagged For Review, so he won't be posting at DU for awhile, if ever. Other info in post #261. Tsk tsk.

Anyway, nice to have you chime in with an important fact I forgot to add in my own posts. I'm encouraged that only a small handful of people have recced this wreck, and that most others are piling on to the OP.

See you around.

[msanthrope]

294. Post more. nt

[barrow-wight]

282. Here's the last person I saw say that blacks had it better pre civil rights:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/phil-robertson-black-people_n_4473474.html

[cali]

286. Bullshit

Burlington was awful in the fifties.

[One_Life_To_Give]

28. The pendulum between business and labor was in a better place

The reforms which started under Teddy Roosevelt reached their Zenith under Franklin Roosevelt. They have been in steady decline since that time. Thus IMO we need something to move the pendulum back to more favor Main Street over Wall Street. But that is only one issue of many. Don't think most of us want the air and water pollution of that era. (If we did could just move to Beijing) Nor did we have Seat Belts and 5mph bumpers, and hosts of other safety advances.

There are individual items which would like to have ala carte, but the package is best left as something to learn from.

[Hekate]

195. Union membership was at an all-time high, iirc. That meant blue-collar wage-earners could get ahead

...like never before or since. I think that has a lot to do with the nostalgia. When Trump et al. bellow "bring back the jobs!" and refer to manufacturing, what they skip over -- every time -- is that what they are referring to are unionized jobs, not necessarily factory jobs.

Bring back the unions. Women and men fought, bled, and died to form the great labor unions -- and that includes Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. We won't get unions back without a horrible struggle, but it must be done.

[One_Life_To_Give]

290. Unions are Part of the balance

However it took Teddy Roosevelt's threat to Federalize the Coal mines to bring the mine owners to the negotiating table with the Union. The relative strength of all the pieces must be in balance else you have a chair with only one or two legs.

[PeaceNikki]

34. Ri-fucking-diculous

[snowy owl]

48. So you're a headline reader as well. Too many like that on this site.

[PeaceNikki]

54. No, chief. You dismiss too many to be taken seriously. And you forgot women.

You know, half the fucking population.

[snowy owl]

87. So, it's all about women? Social issue. Progress would have been made.

Why are you so angry? Too much emotionalism affects reason. You might work on that.

[PeaceNikki]

90. Angry? No, I am disgusted that you romanticize a time when so many were treated so much worse...

because the average straight white guy had it so much better.

It's shitty as hell.

[Agschmid]

127. Watch out your being an "angry woman"... Men don't like that.

...

just in case.

[PeaceNikki]

145. I know. It's so unladylike.

[pnwmom]

133. Women are a "social issue"? They're also half of the economy. And they weren't all lifted

in the boats owned by white working men.

[Hekate]

173. I am literally laughing out loud. After all my efforts to write reasoned history-based responses...

...to your OP and it's revisions, I now see THIS is what it comes down to for you.

I'm not angry at you, snowy. I see that you are young, male, white, and lacking in understanding of history and sociology. I hope that you will mature in time.

Best wishes.

[PeaceNikki]

177. It's crazy. I guess men write with passion, women with angry emotionalism.

Thank you for your well written reply below.

[Hekate]

197. No question about it. Men also have hearty laughs, but women cackle. Men boom out...

...their passionate positions, but women alas are shrill.

I dunno how we're ever going to overcome our innate disabilities.

[PeaceNikki]

199. Men have convictions, women are stubborn.

This thread is insane.

[Hekate]

202. It is seriously nuts.

[mcar]

208. And why do we have to keep pointing this out?

Cause it's so freaking obvious. But no, then we're playing the woman card.

Excuse me while I bash my head against a wall.

[Hekate]

214. Hey, I sent away for my woman card because -- well, we ALL know after a certain age.

[PeaceNikki]

220. Wow.

[zappaman]

225. wow?

More like...Holy Shit!
What a train wreck of an OP and subsequent thread.
Time to let it die ungracefully.

[PeaceNikki]

226. The OP is flagged for review now. Bye, Felicia.

[Number23]

248. But what about the five mouth breathers that rec'd this crap? Who I'm sure are the FIRST ones to

scream anytime someone so much as dares to try to discuss Sanders' shortcomings with minority communities as well as the now WELL DOCUMENTED propensity for large swaths of his supporters to resort to racist and/or misogynistic language at the drop of a hat?

[Agschmid]

299. Up to 7 now.

[cali]

288. I wish I could respond to that hidden post with a hearty GFY

[PeaceNikki]

291. That would certainly be an appropriate response.

[Agschmid]

300. +1

That's not a supporter of either candidate that much is clear.

[mcar]

223. I did too

I can't believe we are arguing this crap again.

[PeaceNikki]

224. The OP is flagged for review now so...

[mcar]

232. Hallelujah!

[Hekate]

229. Ain't that the Goddess's own truth.

[Number23]

243. You are such a darling, sweet person.

I'm spitting nails right now after reading this shit. Mainly because I have seen this bullshit or some stupid assed variation of it EVERY SINGLE MOTHER FUCKING DAY on this damned web site.

This is just an extension of the "identity politics BAAADDDD!!1" bullshit from the ignorant, the dumb, and the privileged. The ones that think that racism and sexism and discrimination based on sexual orientation are just fucking social issues. Oblivious (and THRILLED to remain so) to the fact that these ills are the reasons that women and minorities and gays have been at the bottom of every goddamned totem pole, INCLUDING economically as well as politically.

I am so fucking sick of this. And like I said, we see it every day in the howls from white men about "social justice warriors" and "reverse racists" or bemoaning the "race card" being played as people consume themselves in "identity politics" without understanding that if everyone just pretended that they were a white guy, there would be no fucking problems. SOO sick of this shit.

[Hekate]

252. Tell us how you really feel. I perceive you are holding back and bottling it all up.

Now take a break from Shit Creek and paddle on back to the clear cool waters of the Hillary Group. At least the OP is on an enforced break from this thread, and a couple people have reported he is Flagged for Review. Seriously, last I looked almost no one had Recced it either, so it's all good.

[heaven05]

259. yep, me too

but I will keep throwing the swill back in their face till they have to swallow some.

[Number23]

274. heaven!!

but I will keep throwing the swill back in their face till they have to swallow some.

Doing that means one thing alone -- that black folks will AGAIN be the ones run off this board and silenced. We've all seen that shitty little show before and nothing is going to change as long as people who think like the OP are such a strong majority here. And it's been proven time and again that they run this place.

[cali]

287. What the ever loving fuck????

Social issue? Hardly just that.

[Sheepshank]

36. As a whole, the Left has NEVER been as progressive as they are today

...no going back...ever!!!!

[snowy owl]

49. I don't think you can prove that. Read about Henry Wallace if you want to learn.

[forjusticethunders]

37. I get what you're trying to say, racially insensitive as it is

You want what white people (specifically white males) had in the 50s, except presumably extended to everyone. And that's a nice ideal. That was as close to socialism as we were going to get and we tried to build on it in the 60s. That is a laudable goal. BUT you are ignoring the fact that white people themselves threw it away. They killed the goose laying the golden egg because they would have to share the eggs with non-whites, non-males, non-straights, as well as peaceniks and other non-conformists and they couldn't get over their own bigotry because they traded the real wages to feed their children for the psychological wage of feeling high, mighty and superior over "those people".

We must defeat and destroy racism and oppression in this country before we can ever have socialism. Socialism cannot win until the white working class and black working class and the Hispanic working class and the gay and the straight and the trans and the working class of every single identity join hands to remake society, and that won't happen as long as white workers are willing to trade real wages for psychological ones.

[PeaceNikki]

40. White males, you mean.

[snowy owl]

52. Did you read post? I don't think so but...

Yes, whites did throw it away esp. due to Southern Strategy. So do you know about that? Between Southern Strategy and Lewis Powell, Repubicans took over and money trumped social safety net.

[workinclasszero]

131. Thats a powerful statement

I thank you for it.

[Number23]

250. Fantastic post.

We must defeat and destroy racism and oppression in this country before we can ever have socialism...and that won't happen as long as white workers are willing to trade real wages for psychological ones.

Yes.

[KingFlorez]

38. It was better for white men and white men only

Back then there was more prosperity because the system was rigged to work for whites. If you were not white, then there were few job opportunities and the ones that did exist paid the poor wages. When segregation was phased out, it opened the door for more people which meant that jobs and education became far more competitive. Of course things will be better if you have a smaller percentage of people eligible to participate. Social issues were tied directly to economic issues for minorities back then. Many minorities didn't reach the middle class until long after the 50s.

If you look at another country as an example, look at South Africa. When Apartheid was done away with, a lot of whites lost everything because of unfair advantages no longer being built into the law. A socially rigged economic system is always going to be better prosperity wise.

[PeaceNikki]

41. White males, you mean.

[forjusticethunders]

42. Yes, of course, my mistake.

[KingFlorez]

43. You're right about that

I should have made that clear in that post. There are a great deal of women who worked for almost nothing in that era who are struggling now to get by on social security alone. Why? Because the jobs that women were allowed to have back then came with no pension or retirement.

[snowy owl]

53. So did it work for Native Americans? Why only blacks?

I addressed NA, Blacks, Catholics - you might reread opinion.

[KingFlorez]

55. You know damn well it didn't work for anyone but white men

Don't act like you don't know.

[snowy owl]

79. No, I don't. I grew up working class and both parents worked. Nice slogan.

After the war, women did enter the workforce. They had been Rosy Riveters and they like it. That is a social change that started in the fifties. Why didn't have to work but they wanted to work. It was a choice that finally became a reality for all women. Except now it is no longer a choice, it is a requirement. Our economy has become so skewed to the rich that everyone now has to work to make it. With no family leave, no healthcare, and no kidcare. That's better?

And before you react to healthcare, everybody I knew - rich or poor - had healthcare. Doctors made house visits and costs were much lower. In agricultural areas, sometimes payment not in money. But healthcare didn't mean what it does today so it was different. And schools - at least in my city - had nurses in schools daily and vaccinations were given at school. And why? Because we had the money.

[Corporate666]

46. ECONOMICALLY it wasn't better in the 50's - not even close!

People had a lot less because everything cost a lot more.

Today, the average person has a laptop, iPad, smart phone, high speed internet, Netflix. In the 50's, entertainment meant the whole family gathered around the radio to listen because they couldn't afford a TV and more than one radio would be a luxury. Going to the movies was a special occasion.

In the 50's, a family would have one car if they were doing pretty well, and people would carpool because it was expensive buying gas to drive to work. Today, we drive everywhere without even thinking about it.

In the 50's, you took the family on vacation by driving the family car a couple of states away to some national park or monument. You drove because it was what you could afford. Today, people fly on vacation to the furthest parts of the USA and the world, and they take cruises to the Caribbean. Such trips would be lavishly expensive in the 50's and only the very wealthy could have afforded them.

In the 50's, you worked until you were 65, and you died before you were 70. You hopefully had enough to live on in retirement, but to achieve that you had to save all your working life and not spend much. Today, people expect to live until 80 or longer, and to have 15-20 years to enjoy retirement. That would be an unthinkable luxury in the 50's.

There is so, so, so much more that is better about life today than the 1950's.

I think if each of us had a button we could press that would teleport us back to the 50's... we would come back in about a day or two and never go back. It is human nature to romanticize the past and to believe it was all happiness and care free living. The reality is totally different. People who pine for the past aren't thinking very well.

[snowy owl]

58. So for you it's all about "consumerism." You think tech woud not have progressed?

One car is enough. Choosing to work instead of having to work is better. I was lower middle class and we had a tv in the fifties. We took more road trips than families today because we didn't have freeways and we'd visit towns instead of fly through them. Take long trips because less traffic, low prices and no one in a hurry. I don't understand your paragraph and flying and cars. That makes my point. More relaxed time. People could fly in the fifties you know.

Healthcare isn't about the fifties or 2000s. It is about progress and that would happen anyway.

Nobody is asking to go back to fifties. It was a better time for most people - esp. lower and middle class - than today. But if it's all about stuff and money for you. If you can't discern how it was different economically, so be it.

[bettyellen]

61. Funny that you can exclude women and POC and still imagine that "most people"

Are better off. Nope- men were not most people- they I were the most rewarded people.

[snowy owl]

103. Your opinion. I disagree.

Times always have hardships. Women did work. Both my parents worked. I was home alone with a brother younger than me. I get that. But is today better?

Also, the entire post was correlated with the Powell extract. Did you read it?

[bettyellen]

118. Having fewer to no rights at all was not better.... Only

People who don't give a shit about basic human rights could make that argument. Nope.

[suffragette]

148. Women and POC were restricted in choices and options, at work as well as in society.

Was there change? Yes, because people rebelled against the restrictions in that prejudiced, xenophobic, conformity ridden time.

[Corporate666]

83. No, it's about standard of living. For you it's all about incorrect romanticism.

If people wanted to have one car, drive on vacations, have one TV, give up all the conveniences of modern life, they are perfectly free to do so.

Except they do not want to do that.

If people want to live well below their means and work less, they are free to do that. But they do not want to do that.

Life is unquestionably better now. Standard of living is unquestionably better now.

Nobody forces us to embrace technology and change - we do so willingly. And even the people who incorrectly romanticize the past also embrace the technology and convenience that modern life brings.

It's all just "back when I was a kid....." reminiscing.

[snowy owl]

104. Life much better for some. Much worse for others. That's the point.

[PeaceNikki]

114. The poor oppressed straight white males.

[Corporate666]

159. Wrong

Life is overwhelmingly better for the vast, vast majority of Americans.

Clinging to exceptions does not prove the rule. The groups you think are worse of are so, so much better off today than they were 65 years ago, it's not even worthy of debate because to suggest otherwise is pure lunacy.

[barrow-wight]

284. Life was better for some at the extreme expense of others.

I am only grateful to have discovered that you are FFR. This thread is so disappointed and I look forward to a respite from more like them.

[Armstead]

68. It pit us on a treadmill

Things like the Internet, cellphones...etc. are great. However, they also add one more expensive necessity to the burdens on individuals. Netflix may be a "luxury" but the ability to pay bills, buy things and do otehr basic business is increasingly being shifted to the web and mobile, etc. And when that adds another $1---$200 month in bills and fees....that puts more pressure on people.

Likewise with cars. When you have two parents having to work, it makes a second car more necessary. Plus we have designed cities and suburbs where walking is increasingly less of an option.

These and otehr things have put us into much more of a rat race -- We have to work harder to keep up, while businesses slash jobs and cut wages and benefits...etc.

And morality and integrity become less of a basic value and more of a "luxury" because everyone screws everyone else to stay even and/or get ahead.

At some point we're headed for a collective nervous breakdown.

[Waiting For Everyman]

76. That's not even true.

For one thing, gas was 20 cents a gallon then, although most cars were gas guzzlers. And lots of families had two cars.

Flying "student" fare as late as the early 1970s cost $98 for non-stop coast-to-coast flights, which you can't even do now. That included a steak dinner (which was actually good) and a movie, and half the cabin was empty so there was plenty of room to be comfortable.

There was a ton of consumerism going on with the middle class, and most of our products were made here, and made to last. And yes, they were very affordable.

An average new car cost about $2,000 when I graduated from high school in 1968.

Did I mention I went to the excellent state university for free? All one had to do is have a "B" average.

If I could teleport back in time? Even though there was lots of civil unrest, I would relive 1965 to 1967 in a heartbeat. That was our high-water mark, as far as widespread quality of life is concerned.

[snowy owl]

111. Agree. Post notes Powell's initiation of corporatism. Should have said Seventies!

I'm laughing because it was still a better time economically in the fifties. For me personally, the seventies were the best. And I think you said it perfectly including "quality of life" for all. Post King and civil rights legislation. That would have been a better post probably.

[Mnpaul]

137. I would settle for pre Reagan

the country really went of the rails and it continued downward from there. The national debt went in the other direction.

Did someone actually suggest going back to the 50's?

[mcar]

209. The OP you are responding to

It's the whole purpose of this thread.

[KT2000]

51. post war economy

and Cold War. The federal government was pouring money into the economy, vets were graduating with college degrees and no need for loan repayment. Research and development was booming in preparation for the next war - being a war fought with air power. Universities were getting research grants to work in conjunction with manufacturers. Nuclear research was taking off with government dollars.

There were air raid drills for the kids and escape plans for the potential nuclear war. People were building shelters in their homes to survive the nuclear blast. Nuclear testing contaminated the earth with some communities suffering terrible consequences (ex. downwinders).

Also in the 50's - divorce was difficult, even when abuse was present. Wives could be sent to mental hospitals for standing up to their husbands - drugs and electroshock therapy would do the trick. Gaining employment for women was difficult and the wage gap was greater.

Back to the 50's? No thanks.

[snowy owl]

60. Yes, the feds poured money into the economy. Why not? That's the point

We took care of our people. What is wrong with that? The rich paid 90% back so we had a middle class. Our country was based on a middle class. But Lewis Powell absolutely wanted corporations to make the money at the expense of our common good.

And women did get divorces in the fifties. Strong women who could make it because of social safety nets. Their kids were playmates of mine.

You know, there are problems in every decade. Some get resolved and others turn up. But for the average person, it was a better time. There is no utopia. All things considered, it was a better time for all of us. And I'm incuding blacks only because Martin's dream was never fulfilled and if he came back today, I'm not sure what he would say. Thinking about lynchings and southern justice, that's still a problem except guns and bully clubs have taken over. But that again is not our economy.

[PeaceNikki]

77. No, for the average straight white man, it was better. Everyone else was fucked.

[raging moderate]

186. Or if you had sickness in the family, or catastrophe, or addiction.

A few people had trust funds, or money in the extended family which they could tap into, but most people did not have it so good. Not even all white people. And it was horrible what happened to various people of color. I think what was good about the fifties was the enlightenment that was starting to happen, with white men like Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Rockefeller talking respectfully about the needs of all people and the responsibility of rich people to take care of the society from which they had derived their wealth. During the Depression, there had been movies made by Cuckor and others, showing Black people as the real human beings they are, not just the slanderous caricatures of earlier movies. I think the Nazis had demonstrated how horrible a society could get in which it was okay to trashcan whole bunches of people while deifying whole other bunches of people. I think a lot of goodhearted intelligent white men felt a little ashamed of the selfish basis of their own prosperity and the slander they had heaped on many groups of people and newly aware of how much they owed their fellow human beings. Black writers like James Baldwin and WEB DuBois gained more listeners, and then of course people like Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King gained more respect. More white people realized that these guys were right about a lot of things, and things started to change. Some of the successful corporations began to give Black people a chance to show what they could do, to use their power to encourage social progress. That is what was good about the fifties, especially the late fifties. There was a sense of hope, a belief that things could get better for everybody, and that even the advantages the little clique of successful white men had might eventually seem petty compared to the splendor we could achieve if we all worked together.

[KT2000]

107. nothing wrong with federal money

in fact when republican retired people tell me what their occupations were I like to remind them that their jobs were largely funded by the federal government if that was the case. They are always shocked to have that called to their attention. Turning off the federal money has had a role in the destruction of the middle class.

Yes - divorce was possible but it carried with it a social stigma. Usually a case had to made in court for a fault which was often humiliating and destructive to the family.
In areas of the south a divorced woman could not be a teacher. Nurses were required to walk behind the male doctor, if he came into the nurses station, nurses were required to stand up and give him her seat. A woman made much less than men in similar occupations.

Point being - it is worth doing a thorough analysis before idealizing any period in history. As children of the 50's. 60's our viewpoint is skewed especially since it was common then to protect children from the realities of life.

Yes - Powell was an ass.

[gollygee]

62. "The 50s were a better time, except for all those people for whom it was a bad time."

"But all things being equal, it was a better time."

I hope everyone claiming white privilege isn't a real thing reads this post because it's a really good illustration. You acknowledge that it was a horrible time for a huge bunch of people, but then casually sweep that aside and say, "But all things being equal, it was a better time."

[Quayblue]

72. Seriously wtf.

I shouldn't even had read this OP knowing it would piss me off.

It was not better because there was no equality. Period.

[snowy owl]

80. Is tthere equality now?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

84. The seminal poster said black folk were better off too...

[snowy owl]

95. I did not say that. Again, read more than headline. The point was Powell.

[gollygee]

143. The 50s were not a better time ECONOMICALLY for everyone either.

Only white men, and I suppose wives of white men.


Edit: having found a chart, it doesn't look like it really was better for white people either.

[CorkySt.Clair]

157. Look at the recs

All 4 of them.

Interesting indeed.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

163. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and just believe he didn't think it through.

[mcar]

213. Except that he keeps replying and defending his "position"

I have no words for this. The seminal poster should binge watch "Mad Men" to gain a clue.

[Sheepshank]

65. Know who else constantly harped on the desire, "I want my country back"?

and we could never figure out "back to what, back to when"? OP sounds very much the same.

[Orangepeel]

71. All things were not equal, so it wasn't a better time

In any case, I just saw a production of Death of a Salesman. Even for white men, it wasn't that great a time.

[snowy owl]

85. Are things equal now? Greatest disparity between rich and poor ever.

And wealth disparity increases social disparity and anger. Which is what we are living. Thank you very much.

[jwirr]

207. As the daughter of a white small farmer I would have a hard

time saying it was a good era. My dad had an 8th grade education - he quit school to help his father farm. He and many others like him did not ever come out of the poverty that they were dumped into by the bigger, better and more ideas.

But because of white privilege his daughters ended up graduating from college thanks to LBJ and at least having a chance.

I would like to say that I do not think that there has ever been a real time of equality for most minorities and I have my doubts that there ever will be. I really do not see the road to equality - there should be one but I do not have a lot of faith in human nature.

[Hoyt]

245. Death of a Salesman is quite depressing for those who knew people caught in that trap.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

73. The fifties weren't a better time for women, for people of color, for gays, and for Mexicans.

[snowy owl]

81. Addressed. Read it. Too many words?

[PeaceNikki]

82. No, you poo-pooed it.

[snowy owl]

86. Sorry. Does not compute.

[PeaceNikki]

88. Yeah, we see that. You're dismissing everyone who's not a straight white male.

That's not addressing, that's supercilious.

[snowy owl]

92. yes, I'm a straight white mail in disquise. Take a breath.

[PeaceNikki]

94. WTF? I am breathing just fine, sparky.

[snowy owl]

106. Now namecalling?

[PeaceNikki]

108. Lol, that's adorable.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

89. Your patronizing attitude can not camouflage

Your patronizing attitude can not camouflage your yearning for an era when homosexuals were considered mentally ill, people of color were relegated to second class citizen status, and women were treated as appendage of their husband.

I would have expected this essay at Free Republic, at the Conservative Cave, at Discussionist, but not at DU,

[snowy owl]

91. So, did you read the Powell piece? Doesn't that explain the difference?

Why be so reactive. think about it. If asking people to think makes me condescending, then we are going to be stuck with what we have for a very, very long time.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

93. I have seen the argument in this thread we were better off than most of the world.

How much of a function was us keeping the rest of the world down?

[snowy owl]

99. I agree with that completely. We've raped the entire third world.

And that happened during the fifties just as the overthrown of Mosaddegh happened under Eisenhower. I hate that. Understanding the fifties is more complex than I realized for most people.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

101. Don't forget WW ll left much of Asia, Europe, and parts of Africa in ruin.

[snowy owl]

105. What's your point?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

109. The 50s were a great time for American straight white males.

Their success was predicated on keeping women, p o c, gays, and most of the rest of the world down.

[snowy owl]

97. Problem is education: post correlated with Powell Piece. People no longer read nor comprehend

Instead of relating post to Powell piece, it is easier to be reactive, take points out of context, and read halfway. No wonder our elections and politicians keep the rich in power. We have a lot of work to do if this country is ever going to be great again. Honestly, this is dismaying to me. Perhaps this site attracts people who think so narrowly. That may be my misunderstanding.

It is time to reduce schools of business and enhance the humanities once again.

[PeaceNikki]

110. Holy shit, you are thick and arrogant as hell. People don't agree with you. deal with it.

[snowy owl]

112. Get over yourself. You sound like someone here for shock value.

[PeaceNikki]

113. You absolutely should, for sure.

[bravenak]

135. Maybe you should stop dismissing how fucked up it was for everybody EXCEPT white men

Aint no time in history better for blacks economically AND socially for blacks than right now. And there aint no 'all things being equal'! That is a way to dismiss the horrors that people who were not white straight men faced day in day out.
Women were paid way less.
Black folks too. Separate hospitals meant we could die because the colored hospital did not get funded or was too far, no going to the white hospital.
Segregation kept us poor as did policy.

Speak for yourself and say it was better for you. The rest of us have no fucking nostalgia for YOUR personal golden days.

[PeaceNikki]

146. This ^

[mcar]

231. Sing it!

Bravenak!

How completely bonkers is this?

[heaven05]

263. +1000

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

117. I was 6 years old in 1950. 16 in 1960.

Better times? We were hungry poor. Occasionally homeless. The society was repressive, racist, and banal. We had a brief respite in the early '60s and then there was a war. Now we have more wars, more corporate dominance, more government spying, and more economic inequality.

Maybe it's time we just start over.

[snowy owl]

122. I totally agree with your statement. Hungry poor?

I didn't know about hunger. I am sorry for that. I knew very poor kids but never realized they went hungry. Schools fed kids good lunches with fully staffed cooking lunchrooms. But I was not among the poorest class. Or among minority kids. You have something to teach me.

[snowy owl]

125. I was five years old in 1950.

[Fresh_Start]

119. women were stuck in abusive relationship

wife beating was accepted behavior...neightbors and police turned a blind eye.

[snowy owl]

120. Divorce was possible and happened. Social mores against divorce.

It took a strong woman which my own mother was not. But a lot of women did divorce. Social mores against it I agree.

[Fresh_Start]

149. My mother divorced

she was used to being beaten and accepted it...
but when my father started wailing on my brother and myself, my mom had the strength to walk away.
she was shunned by her family because divorce is against the church.
she was shunned by her priest

[snowy owl]

162. I forgot to mention women but I did mention religion. It was hard for women.

Catholics lived across the street We never played with them. I don't know exactly but I think it partly had to do with the fact they went to a different school called a "parochial school." I put that in quotes because it was not our norm at that time. Ten years later we were all friends. Times change. Pres. Kennedy may have helped on that one.

I'm sorry about your mom's situation. Wife beating was prevalent in those days I believe. Mine too. if left scars for me that I still feel. Mine stayed. She lived to regret it. She began to see the repercussions of all that warfare.

[Fresh_Start]

218. I'm sorry for you too

its difficult to live in that type of warzone.

We went to parochial school until my mother separated from my father.
Then we were no longer welcome...

There was no golden age in the past.
Every age had its problems.

We can't go backward...we must look forward.
And try everyday to make tomorrow a little better than yesterday.

Peace.

[Warren DeMontague]

123. That leaded gasoline sure tasted better than the crap we've got now!

Mmmmm. Lead.

[snowy owl]

136. And in paint. Thanks for not reading post.

Thanks for not reading post.

[Warren DeMontague]

140. I can't think of jack shit that was "better" in the 1950s.

Even the vaunted manufacturing jobs (leaving aside, again, totally valid criticisms that the great plethora of jobs for straight white dudes was also predicated on the workforce being only open to, again, straight white dudes)... that were so prevalent back then were in part due to the fact that World War II had left Europe a rubble heap what needed desperately to buy our shit.

It was a unique historical era and it's not "coming back". So your fairly light on content post- which I did read- is kind of silly.

But it's typical of the sort of cranky duffer-tude we see around here all too often. "Surveillance of television content is censorship"- are you suggesting that the days of the Hayes Code and separate beds for married couples on sitcoms - not to mention the HUAC- was somehow an era of greater artistic expression?

My kids have to deal with THIS century, and that's where my focus lies. I'm not all that interested in figuring out how to bring back the buggy whip market.

[zappaman]

154. Music was better!

Until those long-haired Beatles hippies ruined it for everybody.

[Warren DeMontague]

160. Thank God that Hipster Frank Sinatra fetishization seems to have abated a bit

He did some good work, but fuck... It was like the swing dancing fad, or mutton chops.. For a while, there, you couldn't walk into a bar without having to step over 50 pompous martini-drinking idiots.

[zappaman]

166. Ugh.

Don't get me started on that crap.

[mcar]

236. Those crazy kids!

[greatauntoftriplets]

222. And it was fun bouncing around in the car with no seatbelts...

when you father had to brake suddenly and you almost flew into the windshield.

[Warren DeMontague]

228. I grew up in the 70s, and I really miss not being able to go anywhere without being choked by

thick clouds of cigarette smoke.

[greatauntoftriplets]

230. Yeah, that was so much fun!

I remember my godmother being on oxygen for emphysema and taking the things out of her nose so she could smoke. It was a miracle that her apartment didn't explode from the combination. Ah, the good old days!

[ffr]

130. You mean the 1950s?

The World population was 40% of what it is today. If you can imagine a classroom and everywhere you were to go, less than half of the overcrowding you see now, the World overall was a better place regardless of politics.

[snowy owl]

134. Agree. Two biggest problems: population; depleting resources (land,water,food,etc)

And depleting resources is partially responsible for climate change. Deforesting the planet.

[senz]

138. FDR Democrats vs. Reagan Democrats.

We've got both here on DU.

[oasis]

139. Congresswoman, Sheila Jackson Lee (D) Texas, once said, "Republicans

are always talking about America going back to the 'good old days'". Her response was, "good for who?".

[pampango]

152. Our government was progressive. The industrialized world was recovering from WWII devastation.

Our factories had little competition anywhere in the world. It was a good, if atypical, time for the US. We encouraged the rest of the world to recover from the war. When they did we resumed our role as one country among many.

[snowy owl]

156. I don't disagree. But post points out influence of Powell.

Do you disagree? The fifties were better for all those reasons.

[WhiteTara]

153. The beginning of Ralph Nadir

In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.

[Tarc]

155. The 50's Democratic Party was the high-water mark of Strom Thurmond

[snowy owl]

158. Yes. It was. Are minorities overall doing better now?

Question - not state of belief. I'm asking you, I think they are but now it is a matter of class. Still, when jobs go, minorities are the first to be displaced. So what is the answer to my question?

[PeaceNikki]

161. Yes.

[snowy owl]

165. Proof please. Explain if you can.

I don't disagree but you've do seem to know how to support your opinions. Until you can post something of substance, my last response to you.

[PeaceNikki]

171. Civil rights, desegregation, same sex marriage, Lilly Ledbetter...

Life was better in the 1950s for racists. It was better in the 1950s for people who felt a woman's primary purpose was to stay in the home and rear children. It's not that EVERYONE in the 1950s liked those ideas by a long shot, but it was considerably more socially acceptable to believe in them; or to put it more accurately, believing in them was not as taboo as it is in American society today.[

People seem to forget there were recessions in 1953, 1958 and 1960. They weren't fun. There was a reason Richard Nixon in 1960 ran on his foreign affairs experience and Cold War hawkishness. That was because many people were frustrated with the economy and thought Eisenhower and the Republicans were poor stewards of it. The end of a robust U.S. manufacturing sector that provided good jobs to white men without a college degree can be traced to what happened in the steel industry in 1959. The end of unions and the end of American low and mid-range manufacturing started there (we still lead the world in advanced manufacturing, quite nicely too, but you need fancy college degrees for that). Ironically, conservative white men blamed every possible social change that came later for their relative economic decline instead of the real problem that DID start in the 1950s.

https://www.quora.com/Was-America-better-in-the-1950s

Discrimination was open and savage; in some places, state terrorism was rampant.

Jim Crow was in full swing during the 1950's and it was not quite the charmed life for blacks like it was for whites during that time.

I think you feel way because the problems of the country during that time were not YOUR problems.

A large portion of the country had a form of legal Apartheid. Lynching was still mostly legal. State sanctioned terrorism against Black Americans in the South and Latinos in the SW was unpunished. Voting for many people was impossible. Open discrimination of almost any group you can think of was socially acceptable. Women had few property rights or employment rights. Domestic abuse was unpunished. The environment was being destroyed. Culture, except for underground subcultures, was insipid. Many kinds of private sexual activity was illegal. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. Police departments and the FBI did despicable things with impunity.The nuclear arms race and cold war was in full swing. Movies and books were censored, including great works of literature. Many creative workers had their careers ruined by blacklisting from the McCarthy craze. The Korean war was wasting lives. 1 in 20 Americans were regularly prescribed Milton a tranquilizer. 21% of women had taken if the previous year in one study.

In all, a rather disgusting time period.

Was America better in the 1950s? No. Just different.

[heaven05]

265. casting pearls.......

Last edited Sat May 28, 2016, 09:35 AM - Edit history (1)

great that you offered up"proof", yet I fear, the blind arrogance of the author of this OP cannot be reasoned with. Better if he/she lives in a fantasy world and hopefully it won't end up biting them in the a**.

[Tarc]

251. That you have to ask such a silly question shows how little you understand

What minorities went through until the Civil Rights Act. Not to mention dozens of other societal ills of the time, such as homosexuality being classified as a mental disorder in 50's. Straight, white, Christian men loved the 50s; every step removed from those 4 qualities ,the worse off one was.

Then again, you just got juried out of your own thread, so...

[Hekate]

167. I see you modified a few things. But let me point out that after WW II "Rosie the Riveter" was fired

WW II solved the unemployment problem by putting everyone to work fighting the Axis. The men were drafted, and a lot of women went to work at "men's jobs" and became highly skilled at them. Factories were adapted to accommodate the needs of a female 24/7 workforce -- and there were childcare centers available.

Then the war ended, the men came home, and all the women were fired without notice. Childcare centers vanished as though they had never been. Women who had built skills -- gone. Women who had been widowed by the war -- gone. Women who had families to support -- gone. Seriously, those jobs belonged to men, and the men were home.

By the time I was a child in the 1950s women's contributions to the war effort had been forgotten except as an iconic instance of how our plucky women bravely helped in a crisis, but how it was well outside the norm of how women's lives should be. (I only found out that my mother's best friend had been a WASP flying military aircraft from the factory to military bases after she died in the early part of this century. I grew up believing that almost the only female pilot in existence had been Amelia Earhart.)

LIFE magazine (an outstanding visual resource, btw) portrayed working women as either unmarried "career girls" in big cities in the US or drudging peasants in impoverished countries. The contrast between America and the Soviet Union was drawn starkly. In the USSR wives and mothers were forced to work, and their children were forced to enter collectivized daycare centers from infancy on.

By the time I was a young mother in the 1970s, our history had been expunged so thoroughly that I had no idea that there had ever been subsidized or workplace childcare in the United States. In the 1980s as a working mother I scrambled for daycare -- at one point I started a committee to promote subsidized affordable workplace sites for childcare. It was about that time I learned about that little piece of US history.

I'm not trying to be mean to you, snowy owl. I admire your persistence and willingness to rethink some things. But history gets forgotten. And history that has been forgotten means laboriously trying to recreate things we should have built upon.

[MerryBlooms]

169. Absolute truth. Outstanding.

[snowy owl]

179. Did not modify. Added edit. Life Magazine? C'mon. Depictions. Not reality.

Rosie the Riveter absolutely seeded the revolution for women. And for people in my economic class, lower middle class, women worked. That's simple truth. Factual. And men who went to war should have gotten their jobs back. Why not? Was Rosie supposed to be kept and the soldiers told go home - your wife has taken your job? Think beyond what you're saying here. Rosie's experience made possible what came after. That and our sixties fight for civil rights that started with black rights and became rights for everybody eventually: gays, women, the disabled. You have to see a bigger picture.

Life magazine was a wonderful publication for pictures. I still have many. But Life didn't reflect real life. If that is your only source, how sad. Life took pockets of our society and shined a light on them. It was an early progenitor of People Magazine. And it did a disservice if your understanding of real life comes from Life Magazine. Maybe I don't understand your point about Life Magazine. It makes no sense to me.

Not mean. Uninformed. And what does subsidized/workplace childcare to do with my post?
http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/programs/child-care-the-american-history/

And my point is that history should not be forgotten. We should learn from the past. But the past shouldn't be stereotyped nor taken out of context/misunderstood either. Nor should beliefs be generalized over regions. It was a better time for those of us in the majority and that is my one alteration. And it was better because we had a more just economy that raised all boats. Even the poorest.

Unemployment has never been lower than the fifties and almost full employment fifties through seventies.

Truthfully, I'm not sure what your point is really. Is your point that for women it was worse? Is that your thesis?

[Hekate]

210. LIFE magazine was the visual history of the time in part as we wanted to see ourselves...

...but also provided visual depictions of crises of the time. I think LIFE is where I first saw photos of Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors, but not totally sure; same with Nazi concentration camps, not sure if that was my first exposure to those photos, just that it was very early in my life. It was certainly LIFE that brought us photos of polio victims and Thalidomide victims, and photos of the violence against Civil Rights protestors. Still photography is a very powerful medium.

I know the difference between text and photos or art as sources of information. As a person with a doctorate I know I always reflexively privilege the text, and being aware of that always makes me pause a bit in my evaluations, for which I am glad to use multiple sources. I lived through the times I write about, learned, and observed. The opportunities presented to my mother were quite constricted; mine somewhat less so, but still very constricted. My mother, it has to be said, had rigorous ideas about thinking and learning. My first degree was in history, which gives one a certain point of view about facts and perceptions.

My point is that for women times were quite different than you depict in your nostalgia, and that you should read and consider what the women in this thread are trying to tell you. In fact, my thesis, as you call it, is that you should take a day off from this thread and simply take in what our experiences have been and allow them the validation they deserve.

[beachbumbob]

175. I'm trying to think what 1950's the op is talking about....

Minorities were screwed, women were screwed....middle class was still screwed...

[snowy owl]

180. How about the 1950s which had lowest unemployment? For starters.

[senz]

178. The 1950s gave birth to the Civil Rights movement.

The growth of the middle class during the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s due to FDR's policies, strong labor unions, and affordable college educations gave the American people the vision and confidence to elect good Democratic Presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter.

The Civil Rights movement that started in the 1950s flourished in the 1960s, and then the second wave of feminism got started. The culture itself changed for the better.

All of it stemming from good, progressive leadership and a strong, confident middle class.

[snowy owl]

181. Thanks for saying it better! And GI Bill!

[senz]

183. Yep. The Third Way/DLC Reagan lovers feared the rising American middle class

and clamped down hard on our uppity-ness.

They did not want a repeat of the Sixties.

And they still don't.

[MineralMan]

182. Were you even alive then?

I grew up in the '50s. It was only good for white men. Nobody else. Women had limited rights. Ethnic minorities had limited rights. Birth control was illegal. Abortion was a crime. Most high school graduates had no access to college at all. Native American children were punished for speaking their own language. I hid under desks during atomic bomb drills and innocent black men were lynched with impunity. Rape victims had almost no legal recourse against their rapists.

Republican men are nostalgic for that era. Are you one of those?

[snowy owl]

184. Born in '45. More than you need to know to make your case. Yes, I lived it.

Now, did you read my post or just the headline. I spoke clearly that i was talking economics. You list a lot of good points socially. Frankly, a few I'd forgotten about and I won't argue. But as I said in my edit. I should have said seventies, shouldn't I? Because that's when the Powell influence really began. But done is done.

BTW, birth control and abortion are on the skids. Haven't you noticed? High school graduates and college? Not sure I'd agree with that. Why do you say that. For me it was '64 but easily affordable and very possible. First to go in my family. I now laugh at the atomic bomb stuff. How was that bad? More comedic to me. And minorities I covered under social issues. Agree there has been much social progress. Glad for it. But regarding fifties: low unemployment and more economic justice. Unions worked.

Finally, if you read the excerpt I posted, you might have actually understood my point better. It was my failing to say fifties - should have correlated seventies with it.

[PeaceNikki]

196. In the fifties you were a kid. None of the problems were yours.

Not polio, Jim Crowe, McCarthyism, J. Edgar Hoover, domestic violence, segregation, inequality, lynchings, poll taxes, none of it. You were a kid.

It wasn't better, you just had it better. Nostalgia is romantic fantasy, not reality.

[okasha]

261. This jackalope is a full-time poster,

2000+ posts since Feb 1.

I do not for a single nanosecond believe he lived tbrough the '50's and '60's. His present address, I suspect, is under a bridge.

[Hekate]

270. Well-spotted. As of this thread he is Flagged for Review....

Shortly he can change his name, move his address to another bridge, and rejoin us.

[heaven05]

266. well you may have lived it

Last edited Sat May 28, 2016, 09:32 AM - Edit history (2)

yet you lived it as a white person. You have no idea of how it was and is to live as a minority in the american racial, cultural and political pecking order. And it seems, to me, you haven't learned anything but what you need for your skewed perspective on how great america was then, for all.

[KK9]

185. What is going on here?

I'm pretty new here, but I was under the impression that this board was oriented toward Democrats.

I guess I was mistaken, because you (OP) sound just like Donald Trump: "In the good old days..."

Maybe they change the title of this board, so people aren't mislead.

[snowy owl]

189. Yes, the point was suppose dto be getting our party back.

But that requires reading the whole post which apparently you did not do.

[KK9]

191. I did...

...read the whole thing. Your having thrown in random disclaimers about minorities doesn't change my opinion.

[Hekate]

227. Welcome to DU. Sometimes the going gets weird.

[dsc]

215. this is how more than a few people remember the 1950's

https://www.facebook.com/motherjones/videos/10153777810687144/

[Number23]

233. The most ignorant, tone deaf and embarassing thing I've seen in a long time here

And that is TRULY saying something.

No one is say it was better for blacks, Native Americans, or even religion - Catholics were regarded a lot differently. But those were social issues, not ecoonomic.

What in God's name is wrong with you guys? Seriously? Do yourself (and everyone else) a favor... get off of DU for a while and read some history. About ANYTHING.

[PeaceNikki]

234. He's flagged for review so he gets a break.

[Number23]

237. I hope that all of the folks that brayed like mules when someone posted an opinon piece from a black

female author that talked about the racism and privilege coming from so many in the Sanders camp take a look at this shit. I really do.

[PeaceNikki]

239. It sails right over their heads.

[mcar]

240. And amen for that

I'm reluctantly glad that this OP survived a jury just so we can all seen the batshit crazy that has been drawn here.

[Agschmid]

242. Well they got locked out of their own thread so we may never understand...

[Number23]

246. I'll never understand anyway. This is just an extension of the screaming about "identity politics,"

the calling card of clueless, white dudes EVERYWHERE along with "race card" and hollering about "social justice warriors," that blankets this web site every goddamned day.

[Hekate]

247. I urged him to get off this thread and read what the women have been saying...

I suggested a whole day. Heh. My wish has come true. He's had at least two of his post hidden, so he has to take a lil break.

[Bluenorthwest]

241. You are out of your ever loving mind. The 50's sucked so bad that the 60's was a giant

revolt against it in every aspect of the culture. Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, LGBT, Latinos, and just It's an era of very limited and censored media, witch hunting and Red baiting used to control artists which you present as preferable to today? Blacklisting?

And Bernie? He'd be the last one to want a return to the 1950's, in any way at all. I mean, the 50's was chock full of anti-Jewish discrimination, restricted clubs, mortgage redlining and a whole raft of lovely things.

You seem deeply confused.

[onenote]

253. If the 50s were so wonderful, why did we need the Great Society programs in the 60s

War on Poverty?
Medicare
Medicaid
Head Start and various educational programs

As someone who grew up in the 60s, life was good for a privileged group -- but the other side of the tracks was never far away.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

254. lol

yeah the fifties were wonderful (for white men), but we all know those are the only lives that actually matter to some.

[onenote]

258. I've got a slogan for you: Make America Great Again

Oh, wait. That's the slogan of the other guy who thinks that going back to the 50s would be peachy-keen.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

264. +1

[barrow-wight]

267. This is appalling.

That you had to qualify it regarding blacks just demonstrates how wrong you actually know you are.

[Sparkly]

269. "We need to get back the Party of Bernie."

We've never had a "Party of Bernie," and yet we've always imagined a "Party of Bernie." Who hasn't? It's called UTOPIA! We just blow up "the system" and get back to working off the land. Nobody owns anything, we all own everything, commerce is fair, labor is rewarded! This works because everybody understands the truth, tells the truth, and wants to do the right thing.

If not -- if human nature has any part in it -- there has to be a way to protect the people by and large. That would involve enforcement by some group of people -- let's elect them. They will then ensure nobody gets deluded, by prohibiting the publication of misinformation. If the system isn't working for someone and they try to sell a loaf of bread outside the overseeing enforcement's rules, they must be punished or the whole thing falls apart.

And then, if that overseeing enforcement -- which is to say, the government -- shows its own self-centered human nature at the expense of the majority, there must be a higher authority to ensure that doesn't happen... And now we have a totalitarian government. A dictator.

Now, I am as socialist as anyone, at heart -- but I know that it's an ideal that doesn't take into account human nature in a tribal sense let alone in this mosaic of a country. We aren't even a "melting pot," because we can't "melt."

Democracy is the best we can do. There is no "Democratic Socialism" unless or until there is overwhelming popular support for an overthrow of capitalism not just here, but worldwide at this point. Sorry! Democracy is the best we can do.

And sorry! A president who understands that -- and who has the cajones to fight for what's right, despite being hit on all sides for 30 years -- has my vote over the opposition, and the idealism that people imagine is "left" of her (purer, more caring, more bold, more heartfelt) is a TOOL of the RIGHTWING.

THEY are the people manipulating our democratic republic via capitalism. THEY are the people who have attacked both Bill and Hillary Clinton with every bit of nonsense they could come up with. Multi-millions of dollars and decades later, they got an affair (how shocking is that!? Ask all the people involved in the inquisition!!) and possible use of the wrong kind of email server that allowed rightwing Judicial Watch to get ALL of Hillary Clinton's emails to spill out into the public domain -- and STILL no scandal.

If you think SHE is the "establishment," take your pious self-congratulations to the Republicans. You're already on their team.

[JTFrog]

276. Yeah, when nobody had rights except white men.

That's the ticket!!!