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| 1956: "America Peaked Back Then and We've Been In Decline Ever Since" |
| 2016-04-07 |
| h/t Gates of Vienna Is America a better place today than it was back in 1956? Of course many Americans living right now couldn’t even imagine a world without cell phones, Facebook or cable television, but was life really so bad back then? 60 years ago, families would actually spend time on their front porches and people would actually have dinner with their neighbors. 60 years ago, cars were still cars, football was still football and it still meant something to be an American. In our country today, it is considered odd to greet someone as they are walking down the street, and if someone tries to be helpful it is usually because they want something from you. But things were very different in the middle of the last century. Men aspired to be gentlemen and women aspired to be ladies, and nobody had ever heard of "bling", "sexting" or "twerking". Of course life was far from perfect, but people actually had standards and they tried to live up to them. So how did it all go so wrong? Could it be possible that life in America peaked back then and we have been in decline ever since? Before you answer, I want to share with you a list of comparisons between life in America in 1956 and life in America in 2016... |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #14 Libbers say all the women were on Valium then. Good times and a great hardworking people. |
| Posted by: Dale 2016-04-07 20:22 |
| #13 A number of events made it too hard to overcome the cynical manipulation of LBJ and his cohort. LBJ...The whole country went nuts after JFK was shot. Then we got Vietnam, the Great Society, taxes, inflation, hippies, Affirmative Action. Dunno if we ever recovered from that. Wilson and FDR might have been bad but LBJ really got us sliding down that slippery slope. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2016-04-07 16:53 |
| #12 The biggest difference between then and now was in the pervasive sense of endless optimism for most of the population. That was the year we moved out of NYC to NJ because my parents hated the public schools in the city and wanted us kids to have a better life. A lot of good things were around. The biggest cliff off which we fell was base in civil rights, or lack thereof. After the desegregation of the Army in WWII there was a chance to get it right. It was tricky but doable. A number of events made it too hard to overcome the cynical manipulation of LBJ and his cohort. Now, the rampant optimism is cynicism and pessimism. Material products are much better but does that mean anything important? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2016-04-07 16:18 |
| #11 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing. Y'know, if that analysis were entirely true, they wouldn't need to pass laws to shut down coal plants, coal mines, and fracking, it would just dry up on its own. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2016-04-07 16:17 |
| #10 Pining for the past through rose colored glasses. Happy days was a movie, not a reality for most Americans. In the city housing was cramped, and not very safe. in rural America outhouses were still in use. People were not as healthy as today. And cars were cars? Really? They looked cool but 40,000 miles was the end of its life. Today 40k is when we change tires. When folks restore a 50s era car they replace the entire drivetrain. But then I do love a girl in a poodle skirt and pony tail... |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2016-04-07 15:55 |
| #9 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2016-04-07 15:15 |
| #8 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2016-04-07 15:15 |
| #7 In 1956, you retired at 60, but you probably died five years earlier. You lived in a shoebox, and thought a Levittown Cape Cod of less than 900 square feet was a palace. You drove a rolling stamped-steel piece of shit that drank oil by the gallon. Your relatives drank and drove and died like flies on underbuilt highways. Your children were eating lead paint chips. Europe was surging economically because they were starting to get a handle on "rebuilding from rubble and starvation". The US was fat and stupid from ten years of being the only major undestroyed industrial economy left in the world. Taxes were through the ceiling, and everybody who couldn't figure out how to legally shelter their income cheated like bandits. A sickeningly high percentage of the economy was run by gangsters, and big corporations ran much of the rest. Everybody chain-smoked. Everything stank of tobacco. Pollution was terrible - Pittsburgh was practically mainland-China-level lethal. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2016-04-07 15:06 |
| #6 1968 |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-04-07 14:17 |
| #5 America as conceived by the founders was wrecked long before the 50's. Wilson's progressive amendments and FDR had pretty much obliterated our Constitutional form of government. Everything since then has just been us getting used to the new regime. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2016-04-07 13:12 |
| #4 By disco era, the damage was already done. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-04-07 12:37 |
| #3 I dunno - I think the decline started during the disco era. |
| Posted by: Raj 2016-04-07 12:14 |
| #2 Rent-seeking. It kills every empire, unless vigorously fought. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2016-04-07 11:32 |
| #1 So how did it all go so wrong? Something, something, about urban growth. How many cities ranked at one million, how many at ten million. The urban bubble grew and forgot what kept it sustained. What sustained it became magic. Flip a switch and you got light. Go to a store and see it loaded with food. Nothing is understood how it all got there. It's magic. Let's not forget it's also about the decline in education to grasp all that. So let's close down the icky stuff that makes it all happen. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-04-07 10:47 |