General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Over all - was life better 50 years go today - or was it worse? [View all]Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)like Food Stamps and Medicaid had not even started yet. College education was still pretty much class stratified although it was starting to improve - But the explosion of community junior colleges and the availability of grants and low interest student loans was still very limited. Of course today the skyrocketing cost of tuition is turning graduates into long term debtors on a scale that did not exist back then.
I suppose I can think of a few things that might make that era seem nicer than our current world. There was more of a sense of community back then. But also those communities were extremely judgmental by current standards. The upper 70% were probably less economically stressed than the upper 70% are today with fewer debts and more likelihood of savings. But at the bottom of the scale - there were not the programs that cam in with the Great Society to help see that people could actually eat and have minimal medical care.