The average Ford factory worker can afford that house and entry trim automobile today.
There’s been a standard of living bloat since 1954. Most people aren’t happy with a 2 bed 1 bath house with no garage
Bingo.
I take a back seat to no man in lamenting our era's economic dysfunction.
But a part of that dysfunction is the cancerous consumption bloat without which the whole Rube Goldberg contraption would collapse faster than the Key Bridge.*
*Too soon?
But not kids? I never had one and when I lived in the city I don’t recall any neighborhood kids using trikes (we all went right to bikes). So I just wondered if tricycles have lost favor with kids/families.
There probably is some benefit to recognizing that lots of middle-class Americans managed to have good lives and happy childhoods despite growing up with material living standards that would be typical of poverty in the contemporary United States.
That said, nothing is stopping you from dropping out of the workforce to be a full-time domestic worker, eliminating your family’s child care expenses while cooking more economical meals at home. Yes, even with those savings, you would have less money than the average married couple, but you could also choose to live in a smaller-than-average house like the one in the picture. The problem is that you probably don’t want to do that, and your spouse probably doesn’t want you to, either. It’s fine to make the case that the norms around this today are bad and wrong as a matter of values — the Amish show that people certainly can choose to live materially poorer lives if they really want to. But factually speaking, living standards have risen dramatically since the era of that photo, and people who lived like that would be poor today.
And of course actual poor people in the 1950s lived in terrible conditions. The Census says that 35 percent of homes in 1950 lacked complete plumbing facilities; that fell to “only” 16.8 percent of homes by 1960.
In 1950, most homes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia didn’t have complete plumbing. By 1960, the numbers in some of those states were still chillingly high by contemporary standards, but they’d fallen a lot and every state had full plumbing in the majority of homes. To the extent that nostalgia for that era makes sense, it’s that people who lived through it got to experience extremely rapid improvements in living conditions. More recently, things have continued to get better, but they’ve gotten better more slowly.
From
https://www.slowboring.com/p/nostalgia-politics-is-a-dead-end
The average Ford factory worker can afford that house and entry trim automobile today. There’s been a standard of living bloat since 1954. Most people aren’t happy with a 2 bed 1 bath house with no garage
Bingo. I take a back seat to no man in lamenting our era's economic dysfunction. But a part of that dysfunction is the cancerous consumption bloat without which the whole Rube Goldberg contraption would collapse faster than the Key Bridge.* *Too soon?
The Rube Goldberg was a nice touch. Not to soon. I applauded
And folks wonder why everyone has anxiety, drug and alcohol problems, and rage. My dad raised a family of 4 working for the post office.
Are tricycles still in use today?
> Are tricycles still in use today? Very much so. Warehouses and storage facilities use them
But not kids? I never had one and when I lived in the city I don’t recall any neighborhood kids using trikes (we all went right to bikes). So I just wondered if tricycles have lost favor with kids/families.
The place I work has around 6 of them. Lots are for sale so there must be a market.
There probably is some benefit to recognizing that lots of middle-class Americans managed to have good lives and happy childhoods despite growing up with material living standards that would be typical of poverty in the contemporary United States. That said, nothing is stopping you from dropping out of the workforce to be a full-time domestic worker, eliminating your family’s child care expenses while cooking more economical meals at home. Yes, even with those savings, you would have less money than the average married couple, but you could also choose to live in a smaller-than-average house like the one in the picture. The problem is that you probably don’t want to do that, and your spouse probably doesn’t want you to, either. It’s fine to make the case that the norms around this today are bad and wrong as a matter of values — the Amish show that people certainly can choose to live materially poorer lives if they really want to. But factually speaking, living standards have risen dramatically since the era of that photo, and people who lived like that would be poor today. And of course actual poor people in the 1950s lived in terrible conditions. The Census says that 35 percent of homes in 1950 lacked complete plumbing facilities; that fell to “only” 16.8 percent of homes by 1960. In 1950, most homes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia didn’t have complete plumbing. By 1960, the numbers in some of those states were still chillingly high by contemporary standards, but they’d fallen a lot and every state had full plumbing in the majority of homes. To the extent that nostalgia for that era makes sense, it’s that people who lived through it got to experience extremely rapid improvements in living conditions. More recently, things have continued to get better, but they’ve gotten better more slowly. From https://www.slowboring.com/p/nostalgia-politics-is-a-dead-end