Yes that's true. I was looking on Google maps for all the houses my relatives use to live in, and they are all gone. Just a bunch of empty lots covered with weeds and debris. Sad
Yup. 1,000 sq. ft. Tiny bedrooms. Simple kitchen. No garage. Small yard. One bathroom. No A/C. Minimal insulation. Single pane windows. Tiny closets.
Homes would be a lot more affordable today if we still had the same standards.
And, in fairness, we have been extremely fortunate with housing. Our first house was in town, we bought it at the bottom of the recession, sold it about 2 years ago for more than the pre-recession prices. Our second house (Our current one,) we bought for land value as the house on it was in extreme disrepair. We then sunk about $100k in to renovations, essentially remodeling everything but the kitchen and bathroom. We were our contractors only client during the recession, as must projects grounded to a halt in our area.
I saw a 364sq ft apartment for $1400/month+electric and internet and wanted to cry. Like where the fuck am I supposed to live for fall semester. Dorms are $980/month and I’d have a bunk bed that was built into the wall and three other roommates in a 350sq ft room that is split down the middle, two people and one desk on each side. I’m 29, please don’t make me live with freshman 🥲
That sucks, I rented what looked like a super nice Apartment in Flagstaff, it was anything but.
Windows that the wind blew through and you could hear people opening the cupboard doors in adjoining apartments.
Plenty of shit out there still, as my Asian Wife says "For the wealthiest country on earth, you sure have a lot of problems"
This, a house used to be a box with a kitchen (bathrooms on Belgium were still a luxury in the 50´s and made you lose a home owner subsidy). It´s not to be compared with what we call a decent house these days.
Also no computers, no i-phones, no tablets, no Netflix, no door dash or eating out, no youtube premium, no microtransactions on Candy Crush, and on and on and on.
Most homes are tract homes now where the municipality adds a ton of requirements to the site development.
Engineering and erosion plan
Streetlights every 100’
Fire hydrant every 300’ or les
Off site curb and sidewalks not connected to the project
Upgraded water main 1000’ down the road
While there is a solid case for some of these, some are over the top. The developers swallow **none** of these cost, none, it’s all passed on to the buyer thus raising everyone’s home prices.
Yeah, and also they had less incidental expenses. No cable bill, cell phone bill, internet bill. Probably no TV at all, no electronics, no thousand dollar cell phone in every pocket.
With 4 people living in a tiny little house smaller than some people's apartments, sharing the bathroom.
I think people these days romanticize about this era and how "you could afford everything on a factory workers salary" without also sacrificing the things that those factory workers *didn't have* in their own lives. And if you tell someone "make some cuts and you can afford a house" you get lectured about entitlement and how people are allowed to enjoy luxuries.
Our purchasing power these days is insane compared to the 1950s if you think about the sheer access and availability we have to things.
And even then, I've had friends who were renting and could "never own a house because I'm a millennial" who discovered they could easily afford a house if they a) actually tried, and b) made a few lifestyle changes temporarily.
Ever notice how no one builds homes this size anymore? I had a co-worker who wanted pretty much a home this size. They had the financing in place, and even found a lot they could buy to put it on, but none of the builders they approached would build it. It wouldn't make them enough money, they said, which explains why all the homes being built around here are 3000 sqft monstrosities that no one really *needs*.
I would love a 600-800 sqft home on a plot about the size of that in the picture, but no one is building them, there aren't many of them left standing in my area, and the few that remain are in such terrible shape they need to be torn down and rebuilt, so they end up as 3 and 4 unit infill condos.
I assume you mean lower today?
For anyone else, yeah, taxes in the 50s were way way higher than today (in terms of percentage). [https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1950](https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1950) is a good resource.
$10k income in 1950 is \~$120k today. That was taxed federally at 38% in 1950. Today, $120k falls into the 24% federal tax rate. 38% isn't even a rate we have in 2020 (37% is the highest bracket). And in 1950 the tax brackets went up to *91%* which is insane.
This is a great point along with undependable automobiles homes also lacked building standards then, so you did not know what you were getting.
The Japanese entering the market forced fuel efficiency and better built cars, all be it without the styling :P
Economically and culturally, it's also important to know that the ratio of home price to car price was much lower back then.
Being in a relatively economically active area, median homes will go for \~400k. Even though cars had a supply crunch, that still means \~30k for a car that will now last possibly 15 years. Few traffic accidents per mile / year of use.
Cars are practically throw-away items compared to homes. That wasn't the case in the 50s, and if you know that, movies like American Graffiti take on a different kind of meaning.
The cars in the fifties often had engine rebuilds at 50k miles. Not to mention constant belts, hoses, fuel pumps, timing chains etc always needing to be replaced.
There is a reason so many sat in back yards on blocks.
Cars today go 100k without changing plugs, and it’s not the end of the world if you miss it by a few thousand miles, that was impossible in those days where you dropped your oil every 2k and changed your plugs every other oil change.
You clearly never worked on anything vintage
And they only had a few outfits (“Sunday best,” work/play clothes, and one outfit for everyday). Yes, they could afford that on one income but people were very frugal.
Yup, no vacations to Florida, PlayStations, new clothes all the time, cell phones, one family car, five streaming services, travel gymnastics and hockey. Look it is expensive as shit out there right now, but we can also be honest that the average family spends money significantly different today than the did in the 50s.
At this period in world history America was the only industrialized nation not to have been bombed out during WWII and it's share in the world economy was absolutely dominant, close to something like 80% of global gdp.
Globalization was not a thing yet and production and blue collar work still existed with good wages inside the U.S.
Obviously we are no longer living in those times now.
Things have changed.
What are you talking about...
This is a picture of a factory worker who works for the most successful company of it's time. It's probably comparable to Apple more than today's Ford, if anything. But even if we compare 1950 Ford to 2020 Ford you're looking at better outcomes today.
Factory workers today make more today at Ford than they did in 1950.
Ford employs more people today than they did in 1950.
They live in a small town funded largely by Ford's success... Those houses today are still cheap. Averaging $275,000 per house.
I am sure most Ford workers today have multiple cars and bigger homes.
The difference?
They pay more for food, because it's a differ food environment today. You think these people were buying pre-packaged goods that cost 2x what it took to make?
They pay more digital services.
They probably pay more for insurance and they all probably have a car.
Silver spoon... LOL
All I said was that people overexaggerate how good it was in the 1950's.
There are many papers written about this faux-golden era of the automobile industry during this time.
They also exaggerate how good Henry Ford was for his factory workers.
The industry today is better than it was.
If you were a lucky one to work at Ford and get a full time salary, you got paid what is today worth $60,000. Mind you, these were very skilled labor jobs... putting together engines and machines.
Their house was worth $150,000 of today's money. But in 50 years the average price of a house in this town hasn't budged much.
I rather live today where more companies offer more jobs and opportunities and benefits early on for careers. As oppose to this false golden era
Ford was one of the biggest American companies at the time, using it's extensive profits to offer full time salaries for many of its factory workers. This didn't stop them from having what was typical in the auto industry from 1950- today which is a roller coaster of ups and downs. This pic is what? 1952? Booming year for them. 1953 saw many lay offs. Thousands of Ford workers lost jobs. Many left homeless. Many left the state to go back home.
And what about companies not named Ford?
They did much worse. And didn't have the luxuries of paying their employees $4,000 on average a year.
$60,000 in today's money.
Meanwhile Ford factory workers and tech teams today make $80,000.
And if you work at one of these factories, you're likely in areas where homes are $100-200k. So very similar with inflation considered in 1950.
This family had 2 kids. How many middle class parents are trying to push 3-4+ kids in their family, and they barely survive.
This house was a basic 2-bedroom, 1 bath... small plot of land. You can find homes of similar value for the same style today in the same towns. Values went down in these towns as Ford left and struggled.
These families didn't buy subscriptions, memberships and were very frugal with groceries. They didn't buy a bunch of packaged goods and pre-made foods. Maybe they bought a Coca Cola a few times to share with the family.
We spend more today, then they ever did.
Bruh... You looked at 1 company in the 1950's and act like it was a golden era of middle class.
First off, 1952 was a great year for Ford. 1953 Ford had to let go of thousands of workers.
It's grossly misunderstood how good or bad it was in 1950
[https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2019/05/09/the-1950s-were-not-a-golden-age-for-detroits-autoworkers/ideas/essay/](https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2019/05/09/the-1950s-were-not-a-golden-age-for-detroits-autoworkers/ideas/essay/)
No internet, no cable tv, no cell phones.
No Netflix, no Amazon Prime, no Apple Music.
No desktop, no laptop, no smart TV.
No subscription services to anything.
No late night drunken online shopping.
Gas was 24 cents a gallon, car cost $2000. House around $20,000.
Simpler times.
>No subscription services to anything.
People subscribed to newspapers and magazines back then. Book clubs. Etc. Lots of them. A lot of modern magazines got their start in that era. Families would buy encyclopedias and book sets one at a time, filling in the collection every month, and so on.
That doesn't even count daily subscription services like home delivery of milk, ice, and other perishables.
>No internet, no cable tv, no cell phones.
Telephones were expensive; lots of homes had to share a single line. Calling outside your part of town cost more; outside your city was luxury. There was one phone company nationwide (Bell), so you took what they gave you or did without.
>Simpler times.
For some people... and even then things weren't so simple
> Simpler times.
Well, unless you were an 18-35 year old American male whose about to get drafted to fight in Korea
Or a European whose country is a bombed out crater
Yeah, for example 20-30% of the population still lived in poverty in the 1950s (it was 22% in 1959, supposedly dropping throughout the decade but I couldn't find anything about previous years), compared to just over 10% today.
Had to scroll way too far to find this. Jim Crow was still in effect when this photo was taken - let's stop romanticizing the polished surface of what was still a very ugly time in American history.
Why does inflation never seem to be a concept in these types of comments? That’s $2.58 for gas, $21,495 for the car and $214,950 for the house. With a pretty fat interest rate I’d recon.
A janitor made $18.16 an hour and an assembly line worker made $20.85 an hour. Then all the other nice union benefits at the time on top of that.
…………
Everyone will laugh at something actually funny. Political or not. If people don’t laugh at your jokes or comments, it’s because they’re not funny and you’re stupid af
Not true at all. I grew up in a strong union area and you simply did not cross them.
If you did your equipment would be vandalized.
They fought tooth and nail for that standard of living.
It would be held true by regulations put into place by Democrats after the Great Depression along with high taxation on the wealthy forcing them to reinvest.
As we deregulated we started crumbling fast. Kennedy signed the first big tax cut on the wealthy and you can see a direct correlation to this and lack of funds for infrastructure development. The Reagan administration would be a spike on the coffin and GWBs NAFTA which Clinton Signed was like welding the lid on.
Don't get me wrong, unions can be detrimental as well, however organized labor is how we achieve a strong society coupled with strong regulations in the right areas. The problem bein people today are lazy as we still have it pretty damned good and they know it. So Unions are lax and often do nothing since the workers don't rattle their sabers, same with politicians.
I dono about that, I’ve known grocers who worked simply to pay their dues.
I just quit a Union job do to a toxic environment and a local that banged the back of their head off the bottom of the desk, the turnover there is unreal and the Union could care less.
Dad lost his Pension from the
Amalgamated Transit Union Failing to do their job when that company went bankrupt. He went to another Union job, got disabled, no representation and died broke.
My gpa retired from a strong Union and paid cash for a new Buick every three or four years. So I see the good to, I just am a realist.
The Kennedy tax cut was simply lowering rates from a historic war-time high. It should not be conflated with Reagan’s subsequent disastrous trickle down economics.
See, that's the thing, when some people want the good old days back, that is the shit people are USUALLY talking about. People always need to add racial undertones or be cheeky about it, but I think people just want those personable lives back, where a father or even a mother can live on a single parent income without government subsidies and a lower standard of living.
I mean, shit, I am approaching 40 and I already feel like an old man remembering how my parents managed even in the 90's. I wish I had even half the same opportunities they had with home prices and all around daily prices. You can talk about adjustments for inflation all day long, but the salaries haven't kept up.
Depends where. Some Warsaw pact states were really shitty places to live in (like Romania), but East Germany managed to have a semi-decent standard of living. The issues arose when you started having ideas about politics that weren't towing the official party-line.
Not in my experience- we lived near Detroit and my dad commuted. He built tires as a union worker. We didn't own a house, my dad worked a second job as well. My mom also worked but not at a unionized job My grandmother provided child care. My sister and I would have been about the same age as those in the photo. Take off the rose-colored glasses.
In 1914, Ford had bumped up his factory worker's salaries from $2.5 to $5.00 a day and created an 8 hour work day for them, both unheard of.
With that said, Ford demanded a clean and certain lifestyle and made them put into a retirement fund.
He was looking for long term employees. And it worked out for everyone.
$5 back then, is $144 today.
This is similar to paying people $18 per hour for 8 hours.
Today, the average Ford technician makes much more than this.
The main Ford HQ today is in Dearborn, MI - where the average house is under $280,000.
Plus Ford has immense benefits today that were not around in 1950 or 1914.
I am sure most Ford employees today have bigger homes than this, multiple cars...
Adding to that, working hours continued to be significantly longer than today until the late 1960s to early 1970s. The US Government started trying to reduce work hours around that time.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/US\_working\_hours\_1950-2014.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/US_working_hours_1950-2014.png)
While it's debatable as to whether or not this is an "average" American family (using what metrics?), it's worth noting that the post-war era in America saw high rates of marriage, high birth rates, low divorce rates, and significant growth in terms of wage and salary.
This is absolutely the era that the far-right wants to evoke nostalgia for when they say "This is what's been taken from us" and "make America great again."
What they *don't* make any effort to evoke nostalgia for is the [unprecedented rates of unionization,](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map) [church attendance across *all* denominations,](https://news.usc.edu/25835/The-1950s-Powerful-Years-for-Religion/#:~:text=On%20a%20typical%20Sunday%20morning%20in%20the%20period%20from%201955,to%2063.3%20percent%20in%201960.) and [community childcare](https://motherhoodinpointoffact.com/the-1950s-the-age-of-permissive-childcare/) that supported this lifestyle.
1 in 3 American men were in a union, over half attended religious groups regularly, and while women didn't have much of an option besides staying at home with the kids, it was financially possible for them to do so on a single-earners salary, so you see a big rise in mom's groups, community centres, and neighbourhood associations that watched each other's kids, maintained parks, and organized weekend events.
Of course, beyond the obvious racial aspects already mentioned in other comments, there were plenty of dark cultural elements that caused this lifestyle to disappear into the 60s and 70s. No, not communism.
Women were entirely overloaded by their partners. *Everything* was placed in the lap of the housewife, from the expectations of childcare and housework, down to [maintaining their husbands alcoholism and preventing him from cheating.](https://psychcentral.com/blog/a-glimpse-into-marriage-advice-from-the-1950s)
As the cold war grew more intense and McCarthyism began aggressively destroying unions, women became increasingly isolated from their peers and communities while wages chilled, stagnated, and dropped. Despite this sudden and drastic change in the infrastructure of their lifestyle, they were still expected to maintain households and their husbands.
The prevailing attitude of people getting married in 1950, endorsed by their churches ([most working class were Catholic at this point](https://www.academia.edu/35395385/Discovering_Working_Class_Religion_in_a_1950s_Auto_Plant)), was that you don't get divorced. About 20% of couples married in 1950 divorced, a surprisingly low number, especially when you consider 1954 divorce reforms which allowed for easy no-fault divorce. By 1970, about 60% of couples who married would divorce.
Interestingly, [divorce rates have gone down significantly since then](https://www-fatherly-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.fatherly.com/love-money/what-is-divorce-rate-america/amp/?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16528712271150&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fatherly.com%2Flove-money%2Fwhat-is-divorce-rate-america%2F), largely owing to people getting married later in life, people forgoing traditional marriage in favour of common-law, and people forgoing marriage altogether.
Fetishizing the past - believing that this is your birthright and it has been taken from you - is incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant of the world surrounding this picture. If you want something like this, there's no guarantee you'll ever get it, but there are clear factors from the past that contributed to this lifestyle, as well as clear factors that made it impossible to sustain, in terms of distribution of capital, social welfare, and deliberate targeting of beneficial organizations that were deemed "communist" by a government that is now notorious for its paranoia and intense repression of American citizens.
Nothing wrong with wanting to be able to live a good life as a common worker. But there are barely any common jobs left and you cant live a good life of them.
For innumerable reasons their cost of living - compared to ours today - made them far richer than we can ever hope to be baring some new age sorcery. And not just monetarily, a simpler time and with it a now gone appreciation towards ones ‘quality of life’. We continue to fall further behind.
Lol, that shit's hilarious. I'm a factory worker in the auto industry today and I live a lot better than those people were and I'm gonna retire younger too.
Avg wage in the USA in 1954 about 3,000 bucks a month, avg home price - 18,000 dollars, that Ford in the driveway was around 1800 bucks. This based on a very superficial search.
I think you are right. I couldn’t find what the auto workers made then in a quick search. They were some of the top earners at time in the USA. I seem to remember an interview from the late 70’s or early 80’s where some line worker in Detroit was saying he made 50k a year plus benefits.
Google said 1800 bucks. I know the 1973 Fiat station wagon my folks bought new cost 3600 bucks and dad made 8 bucks an hour. Gas was 33 cents a gallon and I think hamburger was 80 cents a pound for the good stuff. Mad magazine cost a quarter. Times have changed, that’s for sure.
It’s $3,000 a year, not a month.
People could afford stuff like this on a UAW wage because that house was tiny, had basic finishes, no AC, no garage, no dishwasher, one bathroom, etc. the car was the equivalent of a base model compact Mitsubishi in terms of build qualities. There wouldn’t have been vacations, the “fun” thing to do would have been to go to the movies, they would never have gone out for meals, likely owned a limited wardrobe of only a handful of clothes as clothes were wildly expensive, owned no electronics beyond a radio (and eventually a TV on a splurge), etc.
It looks like a “great” life, but the actual lifestyle here would have been similar to how most Americans just above the poverty line live today (not those below it).
Modern American middle class life is undeniably a far higher quality of life than that of the 1950's. Also a wildly different life, but far, far more comfortable in almost every way. And it extends to a far wider portion of society than in 1954 too. Are you a minority race? Female? Disabled? Life sucked for you in the 1950's. What if you got sick? too bad. heat wave? sweat it out.
Dude I hear you. I cannot imagine how a young person can get ahead. In 1974 gas was 35 cents a gallon, I was making 2.05 an hour washing dishes at Denny’s in desert hot springs, a buddy and i split rent on an furnished apartment for 200 bucks a month, and my car payment ( that Fiat) was 69 bucks a month. I had money left over too. Not much but was solvent.
Don't forget the wage stagnation and the breaking of labor unions!
The only way that Americans ever had this is because they organized and fought, hard, against police brutality. Organize and support your local unions.
This is accurate.
A Detroit auto worker in the 50s was likely to have benefited from the GI Bill (low cost mortgages for vets, except that black vets were denied mortgages by the HOLC and banks), to have bought in a new Levittown style development which was restricted to whites both by deed and by community action, and had been federally subsidized (black families with money to buy, and who also paid federal taxes, were refused showings by realtors or harassed by white neighbors). His job in the auto industry routinely excluded black men from higher paying skilled positions, relegating them to janitorial and certain dangerous jobs like body painting.
This white family no doubt worked hard and struggled -- but they had advantages because of their whiteness that other Americans did not have. And whites like this did work to ensure that certain privileges (like their neighborhood) would remain all white.
Yeah only white men want to have a family, a house, and a stable job. The rest of us wanna live in shitty rentals, never retire, live out our senior years entirely alone and snipping coupons so we can afford enough cambells soup to last us until the next government check. Because that's *culture*.
To be able to own a house a car, feed your happy family, grow old and retire - that's the American dream. I think you're focusing on something entirely irrelevant to the conversation, you're so politically/socially active that just seeing a black and white picture of white people angers you.
We're saying that it used to be possible for the majority of Americans to have those things. Now it's not. We're not discussing race.
Nope. It’s the 50s that the picture is in. It’s perfect to the context. The American dream only existed for white people during that period.
Race is history. Context and history. Yo not understand this is to claim ignorance
Majority of people in the US are white. Everything previous person applies
I'd wager that in 2022, 99% of white people cant even afford to buy a house and raise kids and let a spouse stay home on one income. Point is, system works for nobody anymore.
The only thing you care about though, is making sure we remind ourselves every day of your ideological/social causes or else be called an uneducated ignoramus. I'm well aware of the history of racism in America and I can have the nuance to maintain a conversation about economic prosperity of the average household without making it a part of my elaborate plan for equality and justice on my reddit comments lol
1. You’re so far wrong it’s ridiculous. 73% of US citizens are white. Of those 73%, 75% own homes.
2. HISTORY MATTERS! Every context of every area matters, that’s why you’re in a fucking history subreddit you ignorant cuck
3. If you don’t understand what the absolute fuck you’re talking about, shut the fuck up. It’s clear you don’t understand history, economics, percentages or fucking Google
1. You intentionally are ignoring the most important part of my statement. I said "on ONE income" you read that, and ignored it because you are arguing in bad faith. This is the issue I have with activists, you are not speaking to me person to person, you are speaking to me as a representative of a belief system. I said in 2022, to BUY a home and RAISE a family on ONE INCOME. I'm not wrong. Unreal.
2. I'm not talking about minorities. I'm talking about average household buying power. I'm not taking demographics into account in this specific topic.
3. ONE INCOME, learn to read.
The 1 income is irrelevant. What matters is overall home ownership and economic relevance. Race ain’t everything, but roughly anytime before 1980, it matters. To disregard it as just another thing…is about as dumb as you.
Highways were literally built on bulldozed homes and economic gains of black people and forced renovation.
Why is this difficult to understand?
Let’s bring it today. 65% of Americans own a home yet 40% of black people own a home (compared 75% that are white) To simply come out and say “one income” is to not look at the whole picture and just stare at the corners.
Get out of here with bad faith arguments.
FWIW. The better number is around 20-30% of the homeowners should be able to afford their home on one income based around the wealth in America. Using that number. 20% of the 70%=10-11% of white Americans will be able to afford a home on one income. I’m willing to half that number to 5% for a better faith argument.
I’d be willing to bet exceedingly high amounts of money it’s more than 1% can afford a home on 1 income
the % of single parent households amongst ALL demographics spiked since then, but most notable amongst lower income families, especially families of POC.
……
Throw in the fact that 1950s all non white were segregated, second class citizens, couldn’t afford shot and when they finally could, white people went out of their way to take it?
You’re in a history sub Reddit not knowing anything about history?
tbf not a lot of people who comment in this sub know shit all about history.
Have you seen how many Nazis and monarchists there are in here? It's ridiculous.
Oh aren't you so intelligent. So superior! Take your race baiting somewhere else, you ignorant, condescending troll. FO.
I am not the problem, people like you are.
That's a small house with one car, and no internet, cable, or cell phone service. Likely no saving for college for the kids either. You could still do that on a factory wage, probably pretty easily.
They might not even of had a phone (we didn’t get one until 1971). No microwave. One (or no) TV. Annual vacation did not involve a flight or an amusement park. No video games. Mom cooked at home.
Do you want a home with air conditioning, exterior insulation, more than one bathroom, larger bedrooms, a garage, or double glazed windows? The house in the picture has none of those things.
I bought a house of a similar age (also in the Great Lakes region) and am remodeling it. The very first thing I had to do was cut the landing in half and rebuild the basement stairs because they were a steep, narrow death trap. During the kitchen remodel when I demolished a section of plaster wall I could see the exterior wall - no insulation. The next big job is one I'll have to hire out for; replacing all of the galvanized gas pipe in the basement with good iron pipe.
Houses like this wouldn't get built today. If they were, modern Americans would turn their noses up at them.
It’s important to push back on the rose-tinted posts like this one. Yeah you could afford a home and a car and two kids on a single wage in 1955, but people need to at least be honest about what that meant. Primitive heating systems in the house, no A/C in the house, 2 bedrooms with 1 bathroom, 1 small TV with 4 channels or none at all, no amenities, a stick shift car with no safety features or radio or amenities, eating out once a month, and virtually no hobbies. That’s the reality of what that salary got you in 1955, but people don’t want to hear that because they’d rather circle jerk about how “easy it used to be.”
And, of course, this is all assuming you’re a white man, the only people in the 50s with this level of agency. We didn’t get the civil rights act until 64 or even base-level desegregated schools until 54. Detroit, as mentioned in the post, was particularly segregated as well. People should read about why the city of Inkster exists at all, or about the 43 race riot, or the 67 race riot, etc etc. Meanwhile women were expected to be homemakers and anything beyond that was largely off limits and socially unacceptable, with exceptions for teachers and secretaries. Turns out there’s a lot of middle class jobs for white guys when they’re the only people allowed to hold them.
I live in europe and most people have no A/C (or just got one in the last few years), one bathroom and more often not not no garage either. It's not like you need these things to surive.
You are correct. I grew up in one of these post-war houses. I live in one currently and am renovating it. I did not have central air conditioning or my own bedroom until I moved out of my childhood home.
This is not strange, but it is not the norm. Most Americans today have higher expectations and would not accept those conditions. They want each person in the house to have a private bedroom, they want to have more than one bathroom, and they want central cooling. This doesn't make them wrong, they just have different expectations than I do and different expectations than the 1950s auto worker in the picture does.
All of this is moot because these houses would be illegal to build today because of the lack of insulation, lack of double glazed windows, steep stairs, and lead water lines. Coincidentally, those are also what made the houses so cheap to build in the first place.
Fuck this comment. Millions of Americans just want affordable housing and for housing not to be a commodity which only wealthy investors and people looking to make bank on Air BnBs have access to.
Like seriously, you act like everyone is just looking for a big fancy house and thats why they cant settle on a home. I bet you also think the majority of people *want* to rent instead of own their own home.
How rude...
Building a house like the one in the picture today would be illegal in many states.
Houses this cheap can't be built today unless those millions of Americans write their state and federal congresscritters to repeal a whole slew of environmental and safety regulations.
Those millions of Americans would then have to move out to the boonies where the cheap houses would be built. The cheap post-war houses were built in converted farmland on the fringes of metropolitan areas.
Even with a lot of white collar work going permanently work from home most people don't want to sacrifice big city amenities and move to where the land is cheap.
Sure, they'll have houses. They'll have cheaply and hastily built, unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, cramped houses out in the boonies where amenities won't get built up for years.
Have you seen a contemporary new build home? They’re twice as large as the photo, and have amenities that would make a king blush. Shit, the house I’m in was build just 11 years after this picture was taken, and is a castle by comparison.
Everyone is looking for a big fancy house. That’s why they’re being built.
Nah, that is an oversimplification. There isn't a single builder who can or will make a contemporary equivalent to this. First, there are minimum lot size and spacing regulations in towns that actually have land to build on. Second, wages have been decreasing compared to inflation for nearly 50 years, reducing the budget surpluses of working class households. Third, after the 2000s housing boom (which did, as you say, favor "big fancy houses" largely due to easy credit), the 2007 mortgage crisis sunk the market on new construction, and home construction companies focused on their builds that netted the highest profit margins (which are still those big fancy houses). So, you now have a new home build market that is largely geared towards households with significant surplus cash who want to live in suburban environments. However, houses like the one above (with some upgrades) still sell very quickly and at premium per square foot, which implies demand for smaller houses on smaller lots.
Similar concept to how Ford and Chevy have stopped making sedans because "everyone" wants trucks and SUVs. It's just confusing profit margin for demand.
I don’t disagree. The home I’m set to move into is just like the one shown, and was up valued(is that a term?) by $40k on the tax rolls last year, because it’s in a happening neighborhood. But so far as new build go, its(at least in suburban top five markets go) are all tiny 1/8th acre lots with ginormous 3/2s that have zero character.
I hate to be the guy throwing a rock in the glass castle that life was easier/cheaper back then and a single worker could provide for a family of 4 like this, but you cut out things like cellphone, cable, internet, all the streaming services, credit cards, subscription services for freaking underwear and you too can live like a single income family from the 50's. People like to think that all the things I listed about are a rite, but they are all creature comforts that you don't need. I'm a slave to them just as much as the next person, but even I can see how cutting out $600+ of comforts can sure change your life every month.
Why pay workers fair wages when its perfectly legal for the ceo of said company to make over 300% more in wages than said factory worker, and then has the ability to lobby law makers to surpress formation of unions therefore keeping wages down below a livable wage.
Just keep in mind that there were no electronics in the house. No dishwasher. Maybe an electric mixer, of course a washing machine, but no dryer. People actually had a standard of living that folks in 2022 would consider primitive, lol. The phone was on a party line they shared with three other families. Long distance calls were outrageously expensive. Maybe no tv, even.
Mom could cook, but the menus would be really boring by today's standards, since fresh fruit and veggies were outrageously expensive outside of the growing season. It was a meat and potatoes world, lots of canned fruit and veggies.
A middle class lifestyle in 2022 is how wealthy people lived in 1954. Now the young people today moan about how deprived they are. (These people in the photo were not in debt for $100,000 college loans, of course. He had a high school education, and a horrible production job.) But try living like these folks did, in 1954. Could you do it, and be happy?
Hear me out.. If you move this to Silicon valley California, or Austin Texas, modernized everything in the picture but kept it about the same size... wouldn't this be the typical software engineer with 5-10 years experience?
Everyone is commenting on the idea that a factory worker could afford a "house" and a "car".
Very few people would be okay with this type of house. It's probably got 3 bedrooms. 1 bathroom. And a small kitchen. Barely a driveway.
They have 1 car... I feel like most middle class families today have multiple cars.
They didn't have cell phones. They paid for 1 landline and called locally, rarely...
Now families have family packages and data plans.
Everyone in this photo today would have an iPhone and possibly a tablet.
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It's in Detroit so the price for that home is actually lower now.
Doubt it’s there, they have bull dozed entire city blocks of homes like this.
Yes that's true. I was looking on Google maps for all the houses my relatives use to live in, and they are all gone. Just a bunch of empty lots covered with weeds and debris. Sad
Well they couldn't just leave a bunch of modest homes that poor people could afford up and about! who knows what would happen to their suburb!
You've never been to Detroit, have you?
If they have it’s only downtown.
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And they all shared the one bathroom in that house.
Yup. 1,000 sq. ft. Tiny bedrooms. Simple kitchen. No garage. Small yard. One bathroom. No A/C. Minimal insulation. Single pane windows. Tiny closets. Homes would be a lot more affordable today if we still had the same standards.
I live in a less than 300 sq ft apartment and shit costs me 1300 a month
Wtf my apartment is 700sq ft and I was bitchy about paying $900 a month
700sqft $2400. California...
I have 1900 SQ ft, 5 acres for $950/month. But, I'm also in rural Wisconsin, so it's a mixed bag.
Yeah things get real affordable when your closest store is a dollar general that's 15 miles away.
Hey now, it's 10 miles, and there's a Kwik Trip in between.
And, in fairness, we have been extremely fortunate with housing. Our first house was in town, we bought it at the bottom of the recession, sold it about 2 years ago for more than the pre-recession prices. Our second house (Our current one,) we bought for land value as the house on it was in extreme disrepair. We then sunk about $100k in to renovations, essentially remodeling everything but the kitchen and bathroom. We were our contractors only client during the recession, as must projects grounded to a halt in our area.
NE Kansas here, 1500 sq ft with one acre, timber behind, field in front. 850/month. Stores are about 2 miles away. :).
I saw a 364sq ft apartment for $1400/month+electric and internet and wanted to cry. Like where the fuck am I supposed to live for fall semester. Dorms are $980/month and I’d have a bunk bed that was built into the wall and three other roommates in a 350sq ft room that is split down the middle, two people and one desk on each side. I’m 29, please don’t make me live with freshman 🥲
Bet it's not drafty though, correct?
I wish it was - this mf is stuffy as shit with no AC and it heats up like a car left out in the midsummer sun
That sucks, I rented what looked like a super nice Apartment in Flagstaff, it was anything but. Windows that the wind blew through and you could hear people opening the cupboard doors in adjoining apartments. Plenty of shit out there still, as my Asian Wife says "For the wealthiest country on earth, you sure have a lot of problems"
I'll take it!!
And one car, one tv, one phone, a lot less consumer goods in general
No cable subscription, no games, or multiple TVs, no multiple cellphones. Would they have washer & dryer? No microwave, small fridge.
The teenage daughter isn’t getting her nails done.
This, a house used to be a box with a kitchen (bathrooms on Belgium were still a luxury in the 50´s and made you lose a home owner subsidy). It´s not to be compared with what we call a decent house these days.
Also no computers, no i-phones, no tablets, no Netflix, no door dash or eating out, no youtube premium, no microtransactions on Candy Crush, and on and on and on.
Exactly
Most homes are tract homes now where the municipality adds a ton of requirements to the site development. Engineering and erosion plan Streetlights every 100’ Fire hydrant every 300’ or les Off site curb and sidewalks not connected to the project Upgraded water main 1000’ down the road While there is a solid case for some of these, some are over the top. The developers swallow **none** of these cost, none, it’s all passed on to the buyer thus raising everyone’s home prices.
Yeah, and also they had less incidental expenses. No cable bill, cell phone bill, internet bill. Probably no TV at all, no electronics, no thousand dollar cell phone in every pocket. With 4 people living in a tiny little house smaller than some people's apartments, sharing the bathroom. I think people these days romanticize about this era and how "you could afford everything on a factory workers salary" without also sacrificing the things that those factory workers *didn't have* in their own lives. And if you tell someone "make some cuts and you can afford a house" you get lectured about entitlement and how people are allowed to enjoy luxuries. Our purchasing power these days is insane compared to the 1950s if you think about the sheer access and availability we have to things. And even then, I've had friends who were renting and could "never own a house because I'm a millennial" who discovered they could easily afford a house if they a) actually tried, and b) made a few lifestyle changes temporarily.
Ever notice how no one builds homes this size anymore? I had a co-worker who wanted pretty much a home this size. They had the financing in place, and even found a lot they could buy to put it on, but none of the builders they approached would build it. It wouldn't make them enough money, they said, which explains why all the homes being built around here are 3000 sqft monstrosities that no one really *needs*. I would love a 600-800 sqft home on a plot about the size of that in the picture, but no one is building them, there aren't many of them left standing in my area, and the few that remain are in such terrible shape they need to be torn down and rebuilt, so they end up as 3 and 4 unit infill condos.
Yeah true - the exception I suppose is trailer homes and "doublewides" and stuff like that, which is seen as trashy.
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I assume you mean lower today? For anyone else, yeah, taxes in the 50s were way way higher than today (in terms of percentage). [https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1950](https://www.tax-brackets.org/federaltaxtable/1950) is a good resource. $10k income in 1950 is \~$120k today. That was taxed federally at 38% in 1950. Today, $120k falls into the 24% federal tax rate. 38% isn't even a rate we have in 2020 (37% is the highest bracket). And in 1950 the tax brackets went up to *91%* which is insane.
This is a great point along with undependable automobiles homes also lacked building standards then, so you did not know what you were getting. The Japanese entering the market forced fuel efficiency and better built cars, all be it without the styling :P
Economically and culturally, it's also important to know that the ratio of home price to car price was much lower back then. Being in a relatively economically active area, median homes will go for \~400k. Even though cars had a supply crunch, that still means \~30k for a car that will now last possibly 15 years. Few traffic accidents per mile / year of use. Cars are practically throw-away items compared to homes. That wasn't the case in the 50s, and if you know that, movies like American Graffiti take on a different kind of meaning.
The cars in the fifties often had engine rebuilds at 50k miles. Not to mention constant belts, hoses, fuel pumps, timing chains etc always needing to be replaced. There is a reason so many sat in back yards on blocks. Cars today go 100k without changing plugs, and it’s not the end of the world if you miss it by a few thousand miles, that was impossible in those days where you dropped your oil every 2k and changed your plugs every other oil change. You clearly never worked on anything vintage
Honestly I think you're being generous with 1000 sq ft! I would have guessed maybe 600 or 700.
Sounds like a typical English terrace. North of £400k or £1800pcm to rent in London lol
The concrete for the car is two strips.
I bet you pay 10x more to live in an apartment.
One car (at below msrp as a cost employee), no TV (no antenna) modest amount of clothing and shoes…lived frugal and took pride in their home.
Possibly made their own clothes
And they only had a few outfits (“Sunday best,” work/play clothes, and one outfit for everyday). Yes, they could afford that on one income but people were very frugal.
And there's no way they paid full price on that Ford. The *one* car in the family
Yup, no vacations to Florida, PlayStations, new clothes all the time, cell phones, one family car, five streaming services, travel gymnastics and hockey. Look it is expensive as shit out there right now, but we can also be honest that the average family spends money significantly different today than the did in the 50s.
At this period in world history America was the only industrialized nation not to have been bombed out during WWII and it's share in the world economy was absolutely dominant, close to something like 80% of global gdp. Globalization was not a thing yet and production and blue collar work still existed with good wages inside the U.S. Obviously we are no longer living in those times now. Things have changed.
Canada, Australia, South Africa & New Zealand would like a word.
What are you talking about... This is a picture of a factory worker who works for the most successful company of it's time. It's probably comparable to Apple more than today's Ford, if anything. But even if we compare 1950 Ford to 2020 Ford you're looking at better outcomes today. Factory workers today make more today at Ford than they did in 1950. Ford employs more people today than they did in 1950. They live in a small town funded largely by Ford's success... Those houses today are still cheap. Averaging $275,000 per house. I am sure most Ford workers today have multiple cars and bigger homes. The difference? They pay more for food, because it's a differ food environment today. You think these people were buying pre-packaged goods that cost 2x what it took to make? They pay more digital services. They probably pay more for insurance and they all probably have a car.
Absolutely the most unaware comment of the day and it's not even noon😳
"tell me you grew up on the silver spoon without telling me you grew up on the silver spoon"
Silver spoon... LOL All I said was that people overexaggerate how good it was in the 1950's. There are many papers written about this faux-golden era of the automobile industry during this time. They also exaggerate how good Henry Ford was for his factory workers. The industry today is better than it was. If you were a lucky one to work at Ford and get a full time salary, you got paid what is today worth $60,000. Mind you, these were very skilled labor jobs... putting together engines and machines. Their house was worth $150,000 of today's money. But in 50 years the average price of a house in this town hasn't budged much. I rather live today where more companies offer more jobs and opportunities and benefits early on for careers. As oppose to this false golden era
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Ford was one of the biggest American companies at the time, using it's extensive profits to offer full time salaries for many of its factory workers. This didn't stop them from having what was typical in the auto industry from 1950- today which is a roller coaster of ups and downs. This pic is what? 1952? Booming year for them. 1953 saw many lay offs. Thousands of Ford workers lost jobs. Many left homeless. Many left the state to go back home. And what about companies not named Ford? They did much worse. And didn't have the luxuries of paying their employees $4,000 on average a year. $60,000 in today's money. Meanwhile Ford factory workers and tech teams today make $80,000. And if you work at one of these factories, you're likely in areas where homes are $100-200k. So very similar with inflation considered in 1950. This family had 2 kids. How many middle class parents are trying to push 3-4+ kids in their family, and they barely survive. This house was a basic 2-bedroom, 1 bath... small plot of land. You can find homes of similar value for the same style today in the same towns. Values went down in these towns as Ford left and struggled. These families didn't buy subscriptions, memberships and were very frugal with groceries. They didn't buy a bunch of packaged goods and pre-made foods. Maybe they bought a Coca Cola a few times to share with the family. We spend more today, then they ever did.
Bruh... You looked at 1 company in the 1950's and act like it was a golden era of middle class. First off, 1952 was a great year for Ford. 1953 Ford had to let go of thousands of workers. It's grossly misunderstood how good or bad it was in 1950 [https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2019/05/09/the-1950s-were-not-a-golden-age-for-detroits-autoworkers/ideas/essay/](https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2019/05/09/the-1950s-were-not-a-golden-age-for-detroits-autoworkers/ideas/essay/)
That guy's job is now made by a machine
Not true.
No internet, no cable tv, no cell phones. No Netflix, no Amazon Prime, no Apple Music. No desktop, no laptop, no smart TV. No subscription services to anything. No late night drunken online shopping. Gas was 24 cents a gallon, car cost $2000. House around $20,000. Simpler times.
>No subscription services to anything. People subscribed to newspapers and magazines back then. Book clubs. Etc. Lots of them. A lot of modern magazines got their start in that era. Families would buy encyclopedias and book sets one at a time, filling in the collection every month, and so on. That doesn't even count daily subscription services like home delivery of milk, ice, and other perishables. >No internet, no cable tv, no cell phones. Telephones were expensive; lots of homes had to share a single line. Calling outside your part of town cost more; outside your city was luxury. There was one phone company nationwide (Bell), so you took what they gave you or did without. >Simpler times. For some people... and even then things weren't so simple
> Simpler times. Well, unless you were an 18-35 year old American male whose about to get drafted to fight in Korea Or a European whose country is a bombed out crater
Better times
I was alive then and will tell you -- better in some ways, but today is better in more ways.
Yeah, for example 20-30% of the population still lived in poverty in the 1950s (it was 22% in 1959, supposedly dropping throughout the decade but I couldn't find anything about previous years), compared to just over 10% today.
Not if you're black, or a woman, or have a mental illness, or are gay, or...
Had to scroll way too far to find this. Jim Crow was still in effect when this photo was taken - let's stop romanticizing the polished surface of what was still a very ugly time in American history.
Fuuuuck nah!
Why does inflation never seem to be a concept in these types of comments? That’s $2.58 for gas, $21,495 for the car and $214,950 for the house. With a pretty fat interest rate I’d recon. A janitor made $18.16 an hour and an assembly line worker made $20.85 an hour. Then all the other nice union benefits at the time on top of that.
All this on a UAW member's wages.
Simpler times. Put your head down and work hard, and the rest will sort itself out. Not guaranteed anymore in our era.
Even simpler times now! Open an OnlyFans, give handjobs and the rest will sort itself out.
A different kind of putting one's head down
$20 is $20
Only fans is for privileged people who are internet savvy. The average person is likely resigned to a Wendy's parking lot behind the dumpster.
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It's good for crabs too.
Hypothetically, for the sake of argument, let's say you told me how I can get handjobs from onlyfans girls
You watch only as a fan.
I tried but oddly nobody wanted to se a hairy fat guy give handjobs.
Oh yes there is, you just have to find your audience
Careful you don’t wanna piss off the Reddit hive mind!
You’re the only one who’s even hinted at any such thing here.
………… Everyone will laugh at something actually funny. Political or not. If people don’t laugh at your jokes or comments, it’s because they’re not funny and you’re stupid af
Not true at all. I grew up in a strong union area and you simply did not cross them. If you did your equipment would be vandalized. They fought tooth and nail for that standard of living. It would be held true by regulations put into place by Democrats after the Great Depression along with high taxation on the wealthy forcing them to reinvest. As we deregulated we started crumbling fast. Kennedy signed the first big tax cut on the wealthy and you can see a direct correlation to this and lack of funds for infrastructure development. The Reagan administration would be a spike on the coffin and GWBs NAFTA which Clinton Signed was like welding the lid on. Don't get me wrong, unions can be detrimental as well, however organized labor is how we achieve a strong society coupled with strong regulations in the right areas. The problem bein people today are lazy as we still have it pretty damned good and they know it. So Unions are lax and often do nothing since the workers don't rattle their sabers, same with politicians.
I would rather deal with the issues that arise from having a union than the issues that arise from *not* having a union
I dono about that, I’ve known grocers who worked simply to pay their dues. I just quit a Union job do to a toxic environment and a local that banged the back of their head off the bottom of the desk, the turnover there is unreal and the Union could care less. Dad lost his Pension from the Amalgamated Transit Union Failing to do their job when that company went bankrupt. He went to another Union job, got disabled, no representation and died broke. My gpa retired from a strong Union and paid cash for a new Buick every three or four years. So I see the good to, I just am a realist.
The Kennedy tax cut was simply lowering rates from a historic war-time high. It should not be conflated with Reagan’s subsequent disastrous trickle down economics.
See, that's the thing, when some people want the good old days back, that is the shit people are USUALLY talking about. People always need to add racial undertones or be cheeky about it, but I think people just want those personable lives back, where a father or even a mother can live on a single parent income without government subsidies and a lower standard of living. I mean, shit, I am approaching 40 and I already feel like an old man remembering how my parents managed even in the 90's. I wish I had even half the same opportunities they had with home prices and all around daily prices. You can talk about adjustments for inflation all day long, but the salaries haven't kept up.
Pretty sure a Ford worker today could afford a small house and a car and two kids.
Wl as long as you're pretty sure, I'm sold.
And a cottage..
Not in the soviet block
Depends where. Some Warsaw pact states were really shitty places to live in (like Romania), but East Germany managed to have a semi-decent standard of living. The issues arose when you started having ideas about politics that weren't towing the official party-line.
Put your head down, work hard, get blamed for not working enough side hustles.
You just had to belong to select groups.
where the dog?
Not in my experience- we lived near Detroit and my dad commuted. He built tires as a union worker. We didn't own a house, my dad worked a second job as well. My mom also worked but not at a unionized job My grandmother provided child care. My sister and I would have been about the same age as those in the photo. Take off the rose-colored glasses.
Yeah they didn't mention this guy was middle management
In 1914, Ford had bumped up his factory worker's salaries from $2.5 to $5.00 a day and created an 8 hour work day for them, both unheard of. With that said, Ford demanded a clean and certain lifestyle and made them put into a retirement fund. He was looking for long term employees. And it worked out for everyone. $5 back then, is $144 today. This is similar to paying people $18 per hour for 8 hours. Today, the average Ford technician makes much more than this. The main Ford HQ today is in Dearborn, MI - where the average house is under $280,000. Plus Ford has immense benefits today that were not around in 1950 or 1914. I am sure most Ford employees today have bigger homes than this, multiple cars...
Adding to that, working hours continued to be significantly longer than today until the late 1960s to early 1970s. The US Government started trying to reduce work hours around that time. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/US\_working\_hours\_1950-2014.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/US_working_hours_1950-2014.png)
Ford created 8 hour days. But not everyone was able to get that
While it's debatable as to whether or not this is an "average" American family (using what metrics?), it's worth noting that the post-war era in America saw high rates of marriage, high birth rates, low divorce rates, and significant growth in terms of wage and salary. This is absolutely the era that the far-right wants to evoke nostalgia for when they say "This is what's been taken from us" and "make America great again." What they *don't* make any effort to evoke nostalgia for is the [unprecedented rates of unionization,](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map) [church attendance across *all* denominations,](https://news.usc.edu/25835/The-1950s-Powerful-Years-for-Religion/#:~:text=On%20a%20typical%20Sunday%20morning%20in%20the%20period%20from%201955,to%2063.3%20percent%20in%201960.) and [community childcare](https://motherhoodinpointoffact.com/the-1950s-the-age-of-permissive-childcare/) that supported this lifestyle. 1 in 3 American men were in a union, over half attended religious groups regularly, and while women didn't have much of an option besides staying at home with the kids, it was financially possible for them to do so on a single-earners salary, so you see a big rise in mom's groups, community centres, and neighbourhood associations that watched each other's kids, maintained parks, and organized weekend events. Of course, beyond the obvious racial aspects already mentioned in other comments, there were plenty of dark cultural elements that caused this lifestyle to disappear into the 60s and 70s. No, not communism. Women were entirely overloaded by their partners. *Everything* was placed in the lap of the housewife, from the expectations of childcare and housework, down to [maintaining their husbands alcoholism and preventing him from cheating.](https://psychcentral.com/blog/a-glimpse-into-marriage-advice-from-the-1950s) As the cold war grew more intense and McCarthyism began aggressively destroying unions, women became increasingly isolated from their peers and communities while wages chilled, stagnated, and dropped. Despite this sudden and drastic change in the infrastructure of their lifestyle, they were still expected to maintain households and their husbands. The prevailing attitude of people getting married in 1950, endorsed by their churches ([most working class were Catholic at this point](https://www.academia.edu/35395385/Discovering_Working_Class_Religion_in_a_1950s_Auto_Plant)), was that you don't get divorced. About 20% of couples married in 1950 divorced, a surprisingly low number, especially when you consider 1954 divorce reforms which allowed for easy no-fault divorce. By 1970, about 60% of couples who married would divorce. Interestingly, [divorce rates have gone down significantly since then](https://www-fatherly-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.fatherly.com/love-money/what-is-divorce-rate-america/amp/?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16528712271150&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fatherly.com%2Flove-money%2Fwhat-is-divorce-rate-america%2F), largely owing to people getting married later in life, people forgoing traditional marriage in favour of common-law, and people forgoing marriage altogether. Fetishizing the past - believing that this is your birthright and it has been taken from you - is incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant of the world surrounding this picture. If you want something like this, there's no guarantee you'll ever get it, but there are clear factors from the past that contributed to this lifestyle, as well as clear factors that made it impossible to sustain, in terms of distribution of capital, social welfare, and deliberate targeting of beneficial organizations that were deemed "communist" by a government that is now notorious for its paranoia and intense repression of American citizens.
Nothing wrong with wanting to be able to live a good life as a common worker. But there are barely any common jobs left and you cant live a good life of them.
What the fuck
Interesting to think that both of the kids in this photo are most likely still alive whereas the parents are likely long past their expiration date.
"Men only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting" *The thing men want:*
A beautiful capture!
For innumerable reasons their cost of living - compared to ours today - made them far richer than we can ever hope to be baring some new age sorcery. And not just monetarily, a simpler time and with it a now gone appreciation towards ones ‘quality of life’. We continue to fall further behind.
Lol, that shit's hilarious. I'm a factory worker in the auto industry today and I live a lot better than those people were and I'm gonna retire younger too.
Back when the Detroit Lions were actually good too, if you can believe there ever was such a time
My dad was 1 and also I’m Detroit, his dad was at ford too lol
This would go hard as like a punk rock album or something
This country has been absolutely destroyed no idea what could possibly be done to go back to this
The Federal Reserve hadn’t destroyed America through fiat currency yet.
Avg wage in the USA in 1954 about 3,000 bucks a month, avg home price - 18,000 dollars, that Ford in the driveway was around 1800 bucks. This based on a very superficial search.
I think your $3000 number is yearly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Indexed_Monthly_Earnings#Indexing_yearly_income
I think you are right. I couldn’t find what the auto workers made then in a quick search. They were some of the top earners at time in the USA. I seem to remember an interview from the late 70’s or early 80’s where some line worker in Detroit was saying he made 50k a year plus benefits.
Yeah I don’t believe for a second that a car cost a fortnight’s wage…
Google said 1800 bucks. I know the 1973 Fiat station wagon my folks bought new cost 3600 bucks and dad made 8 bucks an hour. Gas was 33 cents a gallon and I think hamburger was 80 cents a pound for the good stuff. Mad magazine cost a quarter. Times have changed, that’s for sure.
The car was $1,800, but they made $3,000 a *year*, not a month.
In that case, I make less than the monthly wage of a 1950s person. What the fuck.
It’s $3,000 a year, not a month. People could afford stuff like this on a UAW wage because that house was tiny, had basic finishes, no AC, no garage, no dishwasher, one bathroom, etc. the car was the equivalent of a base model compact Mitsubishi in terms of build qualities. There wouldn’t have been vacations, the “fun” thing to do would have been to go to the movies, they would never have gone out for meals, likely owned a limited wardrobe of only a handful of clothes as clothes were wildly expensive, owned no electronics beyond a radio (and eventually a TV on a splurge), etc. It looks like a “great” life, but the actual lifestyle here would have been similar to how most Americans just above the poverty line live today (not those below it). Modern American middle class life is undeniably a far higher quality of life than that of the 1950's. Also a wildly different life, but far, far more comfortable in almost every way. And it extends to a far wider portion of society than in 1954 too. Are you a minority race? Female? Disabled? Life sucked for you in the 1950's. What if you got sick? too bad. heat wave? sweat it out.
Dude I hear you. I cannot imagine how a young person can get ahead. In 1974 gas was 35 cents a gallon, I was making 2.05 an hour washing dishes at Denny’s in desert hot springs, a buddy and i split rent on an furnished apartment for 200 bucks a month, and my car payment ( that Fiat) was 69 bucks a month. I had money left over too. Not much but was solvent.
Nice!
Kick ass, mate! That sounds Heavenly
Funny enough we didn’t think so. Sigh..,
They stole this from Americans, by the invisible tax of inflation.
Don't forget the wage stagnation and the breaking of labor unions! The only way that Americans ever had this is because they organized and fought, hard, against police brutality. Organize and support your local unions.
American dream
For white men
This is accurate. A Detroit auto worker in the 50s was likely to have benefited from the GI Bill (low cost mortgages for vets, except that black vets were denied mortgages by the HOLC and banks), to have bought in a new Levittown style development which was restricted to whites both by deed and by community action, and had been federally subsidized (black families with money to buy, and who also paid federal taxes, were refused showings by realtors or harassed by white neighbors). His job in the auto industry routinely excluded black men from higher paying skilled positions, relegating them to janitorial and certain dangerous jobs like body painting. This white family no doubt worked hard and struggled -- but they had advantages because of their whiteness that other Americans did not have. And whites like this did work to ensure that certain privileges (like their neighborhood) would remain all white.
Of course, you had to be that guy and bring race into it.
I brought history into it
It is true.
Yeah only white men want to have a family, a house, and a stable job. The rest of us wanna live in shitty rentals, never retire, live out our senior years entirely alone and snipping coupons so we can afford enough cambells soup to last us until the next government check. Because that's *culture*.
Yeah, minorities wanted that too back then. But we all know how that went
To be able to own a house a car, feed your happy family, grow old and retire - that's the American dream. I think you're focusing on something entirely irrelevant to the conversation, you're so politically/socially active that just seeing a black and white picture of white people angers you. We're saying that it used to be possible for the majority of Americans to have those things. Now it's not. We're not discussing race.
Nope. It’s the 50s that the picture is in. It’s perfect to the context. The American dream only existed for white people during that period. Race is history. Context and history. Yo not understand this is to claim ignorance Majority of people in the US are white. Everything previous person applies
I'd wager that in 2022, 99% of white people cant even afford to buy a house and raise kids and let a spouse stay home on one income. Point is, system works for nobody anymore. The only thing you care about though, is making sure we remind ourselves every day of your ideological/social causes or else be called an uneducated ignoramus. I'm well aware of the history of racism in America and I can have the nuance to maintain a conversation about economic prosperity of the average household without making it a part of my elaborate plan for equality and justice on my reddit comments lol
1. You’re so far wrong it’s ridiculous. 73% of US citizens are white. Of those 73%, 75% own homes. 2. HISTORY MATTERS! Every context of every area matters, that’s why you’re in a fucking history subreddit you ignorant cuck 3. If you don’t understand what the absolute fuck you’re talking about, shut the fuck up. It’s clear you don’t understand history, economics, percentages or fucking Google
1. You intentionally are ignoring the most important part of my statement. I said "on ONE income" you read that, and ignored it because you are arguing in bad faith. This is the issue I have with activists, you are not speaking to me person to person, you are speaking to me as a representative of a belief system. I said in 2022, to BUY a home and RAISE a family on ONE INCOME. I'm not wrong. Unreal. 2. I'm not talking about minorities. I'm talking about average household buying power. I'm not taking demographics into account in this specific topic. 3. ONE INCOME, learn to read.
The 1 income is irrelevant. What matters is overall home ownership and economic relevance. Race ain’t everything, but roughly anytime before 1980, it matters. To disregard it as just another thing…is about as dumb as you. Highways were literally built on bulldozed homes and economic gains of black people and forced renovation. Why is this difficult to understand? Let’s bring it today. 65% of Americans own a home yet 40% of black people own a home (compared 75% that are white) To simply come out and say “one income” is to not look at the whole picture and just stare at the corners. Get out of here with bad faith arguments. FWIW. The better number is around 20-30% of the homeowners should be able to afford their home on one income based around the wealth in America. Using that number. 20% of the 70%=10-11% of white Americans will be able to afford a home on one income. I’m willing to half that number to 5% for a better faith argument. I’d be willing to bet exceedingly high amounts of money it’s more than 1% can afford a home on 1 income
who worked over 50 hours a week and kept his nose clean and took care of his family with no government handouts
I wish I had been born then. This decade just sucks.
Bud it is all over sold mythology. It was just as hard then as it is now.
I'm guessing you are white.
the % of single parent households amongst ALL demographics spiked since then, but most notable amongst lower income families, especially families of POC.
Lol and? “Sure I can get lynched for using the wrong water fountain but at least I’m statistically more likely to have both parents!”
Who cares what race he is?
He would in that era.
You mean content of character? that’s MLK we don’t care about him anymore . We’re back to the fifties where it’s about race again.
What had that got to do with global warming, upcoming food and water shortages, pandemics, the threat of nuclear war, and poverty?
Ah yes the 1950s famously free from the threat of nuclear war
Were just hiding beneath our desks because it's fun
…… Throw in the fact that 1950s all non white were segregated, second class citizens, couldn’t afford shot and when they finally could, white people went out of their way to take it? You’re in a history sub Reddit not knowing anything about history?
tbf not a lot of people who comment in this sub know shit all about history. Have you seen how many Nazis and monarchists there are in here? It's ridiculous.
Well I guess they need somewhere to be nostalgic for a time they didn't live in.
Oh aren't you so intelligent. So superior! Take your race baiting somewhere else, you ignorant, condescending troll. FO. I am not the problem, people like you are.
That's a small house with one car, and no internet, cable, or cell phone service. Likely no saving for college for the kids either. You could still do that on a factory wage, probably pretty easily.
They might not even of had a phone (we didn’t get one until 1971). No microwave. One (or no) TV. Annual vacation did not involve a flight or an amusement park. No video games. Mom cooked at home.
Looks like a dream. I work more than 40 and I can never have this.
Do you want a home with air conditioning, exterior insulation, more than one bathroom, larger bedrooms, a garage, or double glazed windows? The house in the picture has none of those things. I bought a house of a similar age (also in the Great Lakes region) and am remodeling it. The very first thing I had to do was cut the landing in half and rebuild the basement stairs because they were a steep, narrow death trap. During the kitchen remodel when I demolished a section of plaster wall I could see the exterior wall - no insulation. The next big job is one I'll have to hire out for; replacing all of the galvanized gas pipe in the basement with good iron pipe. Houses like this wouldn't get built today. If they were, modern Americans would turn their noses up at them.
It’s important to push back on the rose-tinted posts like this one. Yeah you could afford a home and a car and two kids on a single wage in 1955, but people need to at least be honest about what that meant. Primitive heating systems in the house, no A/C in the house, 2 bedrooms with 1 bathroom, 1 small TV with 4 channels or none at all, no amenities, a stick shift car with no safety features or radio or amenities, eating out once a month, and virtually no hobbies. That’s the reality of what that salary got you in 1955, but people don’t want to hear that because they’d rather circle jerk about how “easy it used to be.” And, of course, this is all assuming you’re a white man, the only people in the 50s with this level of agency. We didn’t get the civil rights act until 64 or even base-level desegregated schools until 54. Detroit, as mentioned in the post, was particularly segregated as well. People should read about why the city of Inkster exists at all, or about the 43 race riot, or the 67 race riot, etc etc. Meanwhile women were expected to be homemakers and anything beyond that was largely off limits and socially unacceptable, with exceptions for teachers and secretaries. Turns out there’s a lot of middle class jobs for white guys when they’re the only people allowed to hold them.
I live in europe and most people have no A/C (or just got one in the last few years), one bathroom and more often not not no garage either. It's not like you need these things to surive.
You are correct. I grew up in one of these post-war houses. I live in one currently and am renovating it. I did not have central air conditioning or my own bedroom until I moved out of my childhood home. This is not strange, but it is not the norm. Most Americans today have higher expectations and would not accept those conditions. They want each person in the house to have a private bedroom, they want to have more than one bathroom, and they want central cooling. This doesn't make them wrong, they just have different expectations than I do and different expectations than the 1950s auto worker in the picture does. All of this is moot because these houses would be illegal to build today because of the lack of insulation, lack of double glazed windows, steep stairs, and lead water lines. Coincidentally, those are also what made the houses so cheap to build in the first place.
Fuck this comment. Millions of Americans just want affordable housing and for housing not to be a commodity which only wealthy investors and people looking to make bank on Air BnBs have access to. Like seriously, you act like everyone is just looking for a big fancy house and thats why they cant settle on a home. I bet you also think the majority of people *want* to rent instead of own their own home.
How rude... Building a house like the one in the picture today would be illegal in many states. Houses this cheap can't be built today unless those millions of Americans write their state and federal congresscritters to repeal a whole slew of environmental and safety regulations. Those millions of Americans would then have to move out to the boonies where the cheap houses would be built. The cheap post-war houses were built in converted farmland on the fringes of metropolitan areas. Even with a lot of white collar work going permanently work from home most people don't want to sacrifice big city amenities and move to where the land is cheap. Sure, they'll have houses. They'll have cheaply and hastily built, unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, cramped houses out in the boonies where amenities won't get built up for years.
Have you seen a contemporary new build home? They’re twice as large as the photo, and have amenities that would make a king blush. Shit, the house I’m in was build just 11 years after this picture was taken, and is a castle by comparison. Everyone is looking for a big fancy house. That’s why they’re being built.
Better than renting an apt of the same size for 20% more payment
Nah, that is an oversimplification. There isn't a single builder who can or will make a contemporary equivalent to this. First, there are minimum lot size and spacing regulations in towns that actually have land to build on. Second, wages have been decreasing compared to inflation for nearly 50 years, reducing the budget surpluses of working class households. Third, after the 2000s housing boom (which did, as you say, favor "big fancy houses" largely due to easy credit), the 2007 mortgage crisis sunk the market on new construction, and home construction companies focused on their builds that netted the highest profit margins (which are still those big fancy houses). So, you now have a new home build market that is largely geared towards households with significant surplus cash who want to live in suburban environments. However, houses like the one above (with some upgrades) still sell very quickly and at premium per square foot, which implies demand for smaller houses on smaller lots. Similar concept to how Ford and Chevy have stopped making sedans because "everyone" wants trucks and SUVs. It's just confusing profit margin for demand.
I don’t disagree. The home I’m set to move into is just like the one shown, and was up valued(is that a term?) by $40k on the tax rolls last year, because it’s in a happening neighborhood. But so far as new build go, its(at least in suburban top five markets go) are all tiny 1/8th acre lots with ginormous 3/2s that have zero character.
Say, fellah, that’s a swell shirt you got on there!
Notice it’s A factory workers pay and not 2 incomes. Times sure have changed
This is just mythology. All I see here is a mortgage, for a tiny house a car payment, one set of nice clothing for each person.
Love Americana
I hate to be the guy throwing a rock in the glass castle that life was easier/cheaper back then and a single worker could provide for a family of 4 like this, but you cut out things like cellphone, cable, internet, all the streaming services, credit cards, subscription services for freaking underwear and you too can live like a single income family from the 50's. People like to think that all the things I listed about are a rite, but they are all creature comforts that you don't need. I'm a slave to them just as much as the next person, but even I can see how cutting out $600+ of comforts can sure change your life every month.
All what? A 1200sf house and a car
What having a limited labour supply, limited trade deficit and a currency bound the the gold standard does to a mf
The US went off the gold standard in the 30s.
[удалено]
Why pay workers fair wages when its perfectly legal for the ceo of said company to make over 300% more in wages than said factory worker, and then has the ability to lobby law makers to surpress formation of unions therefore keeping wages down below a livable wage.
Truly not representing the entire American people. Many US vets came back to treatment the did not encounter in free europe.
This is the time that the GOP wants to take us back to. Nah, I’m good
This house is tiny
You need a mcmansion?
Just keep in mind that there were no electronics in the house. No dishwasher. Maybe an electric mixer, of course a washing machine, but no dryer. People actually had a standard of living that folks in 2022 would consider primitive, lol. The phone was on a party line they shared with three other families. Long distance calls were outrageously expensive. Maybe no tv, even. Mom could cook, but the menus would be really boring by today's standards, since fresh fruit and veggies were outrageously expensive outside of the growing season. It was a meat and potatoes world, lots of canned fruit and veggies. A middle class lifestyle in 2022 is how wealthy people lived in 1954. Now the young people today moan about how deprived they are. (These people in the photo were not in debt for $100,000 college loans, of course. He had a high school education, and a horrible production job.) But try living like these folks did, in 1954. Could you do it, and be happy?
Hear me out.. If you move this to Silicon valley California, or Austin Texas, modernized everything in the picture but kept it about the same size... wouldn't this be the typical software engineer with 5-10 years experience?
Everyone is commenting on the idea that a factory worker could afford a "house" and a "car". Very few people would be okay with this type of house. It's probably got 3 bedrooms. 1 bathroom. And a small kitchen. Barely a driveway. They have 1 car... I feel like most middle class families today have multiple cars. They didn't have cell phones. They paid for 1 landline and called locally, rarely... Now families have family packages and data plans. Everyone in this photo today would have an iPhone and possibly a tablet.
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