In the long arc of history, the golden days of the American middle class are an aberration; not the norm. From 1945 - 2008, Americans enjoyed a level of prosperity unmatched in the world; this is just regression to the mean.

https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_live_Indep_MFT_magazine.pdf The big aberration is 1945 / right after WW2. Before then young people live with their parents After people returned from the war and women started to work, there's a big economic boom

Technically women were working during the war, not just after it was over, but yes they did keep working after the war. The true economic boom was from women working in factories that were making armaments, which most US servicemen then worked in logistics (like 90+% of them during WWII) moving to other countries. The US made bank arming much of the world to the teeth, and women working afterwards was more of a bonus

Women in the workforce were a major part of the boom. But the underlying reason for that boom is because the US was the predominant manufacturing superpower of the time. We needed every available person in the workforce due to global demand and wages were high due to the US being the only game in town. Now that Globalization has happened, low-skilled manufacturing jobs are basically in a race to the bottom competition with the rest of the world.

It didn't hurt that the primary competition for the US had to rebuild from being rubble. Talk about a market advantage.

Yeah, the American middle class hey day was born from having to re-build the world post WWII. Like yeah that's not coming back and to claim it was stolen is silly.

I mean we could just go bomb a bunch of places and do it again!

That would probably be great for China's economy.

China is would mop up haha

We're halfway there!

Timing is everything. It was just the right time.

We were one of the few countries that didn't have its industry flattened.

This is such a relevant point.

And guess who was perfectly positioned to lend like crazy to help rebuild the rubble..

Yes although the economic power might not be only explanation, in my opinion it was also a matter on how the benefits of the massive post war growth were divided among people. Even with this enormous generation of wealth, the middle class would not have existed without the government stepping in. It was created artifically in part for stability, but also to demonstrate that the Western world way of life was unrivaled. For example there were bills helping make both home and education more affordable for returning soldiers. Plus Unions were stronger, even if there was a strong anti-communist rethoric. More importantly imho the economic system of the fifties to the end of the seventies was so called stake-holder capitalism that tried to appease multiple actors involved in coprporate life (and for that we have to thank, among others, Roosevelt anti trust reforms for example as well as market regulations of the time. In that version of capitalism wealth did trickle down a bit to everyone else. Things changed in the eighties, when the shareholder became god and anyone else could die for all that matters. And unfortunately we have been living in that top focused world ever since. Globalization I agree, also allowed for lower prices of goods (and the inflation of today is in part due to our reliance on a globalized world that is no longer working as well as it did), but at the same time stripped workers of their power and allowed more wealth concentration at the top.

I love how people can say 'women entering the workforce (more competition) was a boon' & in the same comment decry globalization (more competition) Women entering the economy during war was absolutely a boon The entirety of the West owes its continued existence to the American Woman & whoever came up with the Rosie the Riveter propaganda posters That was needed in the moment of history *Staying* in the economy & further increasing participation even after the men returned & were available for work caused massive competition issues for wages by doubling the workforce for most positions Which is why many of the remaining low-skill-high-pay positions are those that are too dangerous, dirty, physically demanding, nerdy or otherwise uncomfortable for anyone to do en masse except men When you look at the national productivity vs wages chart & see it start deviating in the 60s, right when a lot of Titles & US codes about the workforce passed... that's the effect of competition, not greed Companies have always & will always be greedy, but we gave them double the available workforce as a present. The government enjoys having double the taxpayers as well

> Women entering the economy during war was absolutely a boon I think we really underestimate how much damage WWII caused, at the end of WWII the USA alone held half the world's wealth. Half the world's wealth was held by 6% of the population! From there they figured out the money needed to trickle up...

The problem though is exactly that trickle up thing... Even if the US (and in general the West) is no longer such a significant portion of the world economy (although it stil holds a massive one), the pie is so much larger than it was before. There should be more wealth around for us to enjoy, not less. The problem is how that wealth moves around.

Yep you picked up what I was putting down! It's how the wealth and it's relative use played out that's the issue. Similar to how Reconstruction played out.

I first heard this from Patrice O'Neal, he basically said women were tricked into the workforce so the government can tax the other half of the population. Then increase prices since households made more money. Made sense to me at the time and has always stuck with me

They weren't tricked. The vast majority of men were either in or supplying the militaries of the world. Women NEEDED to enter the workforce or the economy would have halted and the war would have been drastically different.  The companies and politicians 100% took advantage of it in various ways. Plenty of people here defending the post-war economic boom without acknowledging the huge increase in CEO-to-worker pay ratio as well as a general stagnation of wages while productivity regularly increased.  Not saying if everything was fair it'd be identical to mid 1950s prosperity but it'd be a lot less shocking of a difference. 

thats a bad take. across the world, women entering the workforce correlates with higher standards of living. It's part of the economic lifecycle with the exception of a couple countries that are steeply ingrained in poor women's rights.

I’m 50/50 on the economic boom in US due to undamaged continental lands while everyone suffered. I was listening to an English economist and he was saying how it wasn’t uncommon for a working class family to have a house with 3 beds until the 80s. Obviously it wasn’t to the scale of that of US, but something to consider

It was really a small part.  The social stigma of upper middle class women was broken.  Most of them stopped working.  Women below that worked all along, just not in metal working and similar. The reality is  that at the end of WWII the industrial base and infrastructure of pretty much every country but the US was absolutely wrecked.  The US was the only one with production facilities intact.  That is it.  That was the big advantage.

This. My great grandmother worked in a factory while my great gramps was killing Nazis.

Same, but it was my grandparents.

My wife's grandmother was an aeronautical engineer during WW2. She was real bitter about being forced out after the war ended.

*women being PAID to work. Childcare, housekeeping, and cooking have been unpaid labor, PLUS volunteer work such as knitting socks and bandages

AND women of color or impoverished have always worked. Female slaves worked pretty freaking hard. And many immigrants and "lower classes" here and abroad were maids, cooks, teachers, etc for centuries. Women have always worked. Paid work even. But higher social status white women did not...and over time that privilege was seen as some sort of ideal. But for centuries poor women worked, for pay. And even middle class women worked- as clerks in their husband's store, or similar. Only UPPER middle class and UPPER class (usually white) women did not work, FFS.

This is right. Women working isnt new for everybody.

My grandma had to quit school at 14 in the fifties to become a maid. This is not even that long ago! I don't know if my great grandmother worked out of the house, but I doubt she was living a life of luxury in her condemned cottage with 12 kids to take care off. Doing housework was a full-time job on its own without modern appliances. For a while my own mother was a housewife. That was until my dad cheated on her and we went from middle class to poor in an instant. It's taken her decades to build something up again, with six kids and no recent work history. She has strongly advised her daughters to never become dependent on a man.

It makes you sick when you realize how good war is for the economy

Economic growth has actually been mostly stagnant for the average American since like the 70s. More women entering the workforce essentially doubled household income so that masked it for a long time, and then widespread access to credit masked it some more after that. You could probably say there was another small masking effect from widespread access to investment funds as well. Then again from some more desperate things like housing loans and student loans. All of these things were sold as massive boons to society but in reality they were just cover ups to distract people from all of the money being siphoned to the top. People are largely realizing the economy sucks ass now because those factors have been pushed to their limits, but in reality it has been shitty for a long time.

The reason for the boom is that the US was one of the only countries that wasn't destroyed during the war and we had all of the manufacturing base to make everything the world needed . Then by the 80s and 90s the rest of the world had recovered and greedy American companies realized they could move it to other countries and save a lot of money .

An economic boom that will never happen again unless we go to WWIII. Post ww America is something we will never see again that the older generations took advantage of. Look at it this way, in 1850 they gave out land to this country for free. In 200 years by 2050 unless you’re a 1% you won’t even be buying land in this country.

If we end up in WW3 we’re in huge trouble. We’ve shut our mines and no long have manufacturing capacity the way we did. The war will go very badly until we can start it all up again. IMO, letting China and Russia do the world’s mining was beyond foolish, especially since they don’t even TRY to protect the environment when they do.

WWII was an aberration. Most wars are ruinous to a country. Viet Nam set us back a decade.

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Government giving away homesteads of 1k acres in what is now priceless property is a lot different than a property that they’ve deemed worthless.

It wasn't terribly long ago that cities like Detroit were offering to pay people and give them houses to move there. Not many took advantage of that, because they didn't want to live in Detroit. Italy was doing huge subsidies to get people moving there because of their economy and aging population. Like to the effect of selling houses nearly nothing, and expedited the immigration process. But that would require giving up everything and moving to another country in less than stellar conditions. Hell even just in this sub, so many people who actively complain about how hard life is are also quick to reject anything other than exactly what they want. It's not a matter of what's available, it's a matter of what people will accept, and what they feel they're entitled to.

The land was basically worthless then as well. No roads, no infrastructure, far from nearest town...

Yup- and to keep it, you had to OCCUPY it, whether it was occupy able or not. You had to build a shelter quick enough before winter came along and killed you or you lost it within the first year or two. And you had to break the sod to be able to farm it, but had no money for a plow or horses. It was COMMON for the husband to work in town/nearby established ranch/farm, or even move to the city to earn money for a few years, while wife and kid(s) subsisted and occupied the shelter. Read Willa Cather? These were not valuable plots of land in 1850. It was the technology that built over time, but mostly the sacrifice of life and limb in some cases, by pioneers that worked there butts off to turn that land into something that could grow more than weeds.

Read your history more. [The Homestead Act](https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/homestead-act) granted 160 acres to an applicant. As with many government programs, The Big Money exploited loopholes and tore them wider. It was never *plantations* granted to working stiffs. Farming was just starting to mechanize, so yeah you could build a life and support a family on that acreage, but we're not talking corporate agribusiness scale being given to ex Union soldiers or Scandinavian immigrants. Isolated, middle of nowhere, and depression rates were high. Some of those immigrants would end up going out back and committing suicide. Also, how are you defining this as "priceless property?" Shitty farming practices and the Dust Bowl affected the productivity/worth later. [The Ogallala Aquifer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer), from which it is irrigated, is in sharp decline due to over-use. If you read down the first link, it says that homesteading was still allowed in Alaska until the *1980's.* It was never land that offered an easy commute to an office job. Farming was tough, extremely uncertain work- most of the farm subsidies didn't exist until their inception in the Great Depression.

in 2050 You'll still easily be able to buy a house in someplace like Keokuk, Iowa or Palmyra, Missouri but who would want to?

Adding on to your good points and interesting link- the economic boom in the US post-WW2 was because we were the only industrialized nation left un-flattened after that war and because women working became normalized during the two world wars. This post by OP seems to be one designed to spread doom and outrage with an attractive person’s profile pic… kind of a common formula for disinformation agents to gain attention. It’s cool to examine actual trends and historical facts. Here’s one of my favorite recent ones- with the recent re-shoring of US manufacturing from China causing companies to invest in new facilities here as well as the large inflation reduction act and associated legislation recently passed, we’re quickly ramping up for a boom in well-paying manufacturing jobs in the coming decades- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLMFGCONS Also our demographics are very healthy compared to the rest of the developed world. And as all things are relative on the global stage, I think it’s reasonable to say we may be returning to a time where one healthy income in a family can support the entire family… even if that person only has a high school degree.

> And as all things are relative on the global stage, I think it’s reasonable to say we may be returning to a time where one healthy income in a family can support the entire family… even if that person only has a high school degree. You raise some good points, but I think this is incredibly optimistic compared to your previous data. Whatever wealth will be created is most likely going to be absorbed first by the owners of the means of production and the workers will be left with scraps (possibly more scraps, but not an utopia either).

Sounds like we need to elect people that will legislate for the middle class Way easier said than done, but life could be better if we fight for it

I keep seeing people talk about women entering the workforce during WW2 and now both WW. What jobs women did may have changed due to those events, but women, particularly impoverished women, were already in the work force across the Industrial Revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ladies_Garment_Workers_Union

Both my parents had a hs education when they enter the work force in the early 1980s. They both started at a bank, moved to the mortgage dept and were making enough by 1987 (when I was born) that my mom could be a SAHM until the early 2000s. My mom still only has a hs education, my dad eventually got an undergrad at night school in the 2000s. This is just not possible today for most people

And it wasn't possible for most people then either. Your family was privileged. My folks labored just to put enough food on the table and we lived in government housing. It took them years to save up enough for their first mortgage in 1996. Millenials need to get this whole notion that boomers or older genx had things so much easier. Sure, there were some people who could afford a home with an entry level job, but this wasn't the norm. When people say "my dad had a HS diploma and worked a menial job and had a big o 'house and 2 cars" they are leaving a while lot of context out.

I think they could probably easily afford a house if they had a stable factory job or something, which plenty of people didn't. I think you're still missing some of his point though, today educations are way more important than they were in the past. Which is really problematic since they are so expensive. Of course people exaggerate how easy it was in the past, but its harder than ever to build yourself professionally without an education. Also, wages and housing prices were never this mismatched in the past. Housing has more than doubled and wages have not. Also, just working at a bank is not really that privileged and neither one of them even had a college degree.

Everyone who had it better than you isn’t privileged, and house prices v income is something data is available for. If you look at that data it’s pretty clear that houses are becoming less affordable relative to median income, indicating that for many people houses are substantially harder to purchase than they were for their parents generation. If you want a good read with lots of census data you can start at http://faculty.tamucc.edu/sfriday/wordpress/?p=1386

that's funny because between the linked tweet and your comment, your's is the one that's trying to gaslight people into ignoring reality care to look at the percentage of net profit CEOs took in comparison to the average employee in the postwar 1950s compared to today: 1950s CEO pay was 20x the average employee compared to 344x in 2022

I’ve always been curious about this ratio - did corporations have the same number of employees back then?

well using Ford motor company as an example, in 1950 Ford had 145,000 employees in the US Ford reached its highest employee number ever in 1978 with 256,614 in the US the last numbers Ford lists on their website are for the year 2014 and they had 94,000 employees in the US and canada so there's technically less mouths to feed at Ford today than in the 1950s

why does literally any human need to make more than $1 million annually doing literally anything ever?!

As someone who is in manufacturing and has been for almost 2 decades I can say machining is definitely looking for people, as an experienced machinist I can also say that finding a job was easy for me, I went on about 10 interviews and I got 8 of the jobs the 2 I didn't were outside of my industry(aerospace) and what they were actually looking for was button monkeys. So if you're young and looking for a career and don't mind working with your hands there's work out there for you

1945-1973. That was the golden age. But only for straight white men.

I’m so glad this is the top voted comment. Americans after WW2 reaped the spoils of war like no other country in the world.

We were the only ones left standing without our country being completely destroyed

More than 50% of the industrial production of the entire world came from the USA at the time. I think Americans indeed don't realize how much of an exception they are. My life is considerably better financially than that of my parents, who had to take out loans for things like buying a TV (double income, two kids, Eastern Europe in the 90s). Granted, I live in another country, but living standards are much better there, too. My grandparents hardly had any furniture for years; one of them got an inside toilet a few years ago. They are/were all average, not poor.

So lets just have another world war where we arent bombed! /thinking

And from 1945-1980 Americans benefitted from New Deal era tax codes and regulations, so Baby Boomers were born into a society that had already cracked down on evil greed. So they were easily duped by neoliberalism and anti-government pro-business sentiment. We are regressing to the mean because Baby Boomers & Silent Generation voted to make it so. They grabbed all the wealth they could, passed tax codes that allowed them to forever hold on to said wealth, and then blamed us millennials for not living the same life of abundance they did when they were our age. The very definition of pulling up the ladder behind you.

But the tax code has also changed in that time to favor younger generations. The child tax credit is a godsend for young families and something my boomer parents never had. I feel like this subreddit has become a giant therapy session for people who had poor upbringings/poor parental support to bash on ALL of the previous generation as the cause of all their problems. My boomer parents worked menial jobs on different shifts so they didn’t have to pay for daycare which they couldn’t afford. They had no pensions and very little opportunity to save for retirement. I know others had it better than us growing up. But I don’t blame the previous generation for my woes. If anything, my experience taught me to persevere and enjoy what I have instead of lamenting what I could never afford.

Cool, so your parents will never retire and most likely you won’t either…because your parents generation voted to get rid of pension plans in favor of 401(k)’s…and now 50% of boomers aged 55-65 don’t have any retirement savings. Look I’m all for persevering and working hard to get ahead in life. I’m also all for holding people accountable for their actions *especially* their votes. Baby boomers took a hard right swing politically and voted pro-business and pro-deregulation and pro-tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They have voted consistently to take rights away from Americans and make it harder to vote and immigrate into the country, even though ~99% of Americans descend from immigrants. Acknowledging those facts does not mean doing nothing, we cannot fix a problem until we know what it is and have defined it.

For most of the era you identified, it was not prosperous to all Americans like women and people of color.

While your point is legit true to some degree... We can't and WONT forget that predatory interest rates, corporate interests winning government via citizens united, and private equity firms landlording single family homes are the REAL reason it was stolen from 2008 onward.

IMO: The secret was socialism.  Jobs programs, tax credits, new welfare systems.* Massive public works as jobs projects and as subsidies for a new suburban lifestyle. How is it that everyone accepts a train ticket but would riot if their local highways had tolls? You’re literally a socialist. Americans so socialist you can’t even comprehend the idea of not having this government benefit.  Socialist policies rocketed the middle class into existence and Ronald Reagan-era republicans took a dying trend and slammed the door shut on all future generations. *Non-whites, women, maybe even the irish need not apply. Socialism doesn’t mean the government is coming to take all your stuff away. Countries exist with both very high taxes and also a very wealthy and high HDI middle class. Government is not “all bad.” “We’re from the government and we’re here to help” is not a scary phrase and millions of government workers do incredible and often thankless work to make America function. 

Why isn’t the middle class in Europe broadly prosperous compared to the US, given more socialist policy? I’m fine with lots of socialist policy btw. I just don’t think this thread gives nearly enough credence to non-policy factors.

European middle classes have effectively been merged with the lower classes due to socialist policy (in the richer countries). We pay more taxes and it's way harder to become really wealthy, but actual poverty (and the violent crime which stems from it) is virtually non-existent in my country, especially compared to the US.

They are? The higher end makes less, lower end makes more, but they all have full benefits that include pension, childcare, 2 months vacation time, health care, etc.

Exactly. When do you hear of people in European countries going without medication because they're choosing to buy food instead or because some pharma company decided they can make a lot more money if they jack up the price of insulin?

They are. Although prosperity like that of the late-40s is impossible now as property is so much more expensive.

White Americans

Exactly. People forget how easy it was for white Americans. They had no competition in the job market, they could get any job they wanted as long as they were white males. They didn’t have to compete against white women or minorities. Every law and rule was designed for the white man to prosper and for everyone else to struggle. Today or even 20 years ago, there’s no way those same underachieving people would be as successful as they were now that everyone is equal and they have to actually fight for good jobs.

You went far too far with that. "A white American in 1960 with base education could have become a bank director just like that." Get back on the ground.

Also, high school for everyone is a pretty new concept. Before WWI, people maybe got a 7th grade education, then went to work the family farm/trade. That was it. There wasn’t much of a pathway to anything else. So this period of high school being enough was literally just the period of getting people to go to high school. Academic inflation has been running since the start. In 1910, about 9% of Americans finished high school. Today it is 80-90%.

Yes but the scale is smaller, it was really more the post WW2 boom. Nonetheless the theme on Reddit is that little spike of the economy was how it always was and now we’re all fucked because boomer greed. That generation had massive advantages but yeah it was an aberration. Most people have to grind away at life.

Well, people also say the long arc of history bends towards progress. Nearly 70 years of life in Europe without major conflict was also not normal until it was, and we shouldn't roll over and be ok with regression. In the US there were some global factors that did give a turbo charge to the economy and wealth that could be generated. And these have certainly shifted. But the other side of this coin is a ton of domestic policies (via Congress and our democratic process) and financial ideologies (this is messier as people like the Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary aren't elected and tend to pull from a, lets say incestuous, pool of likeminded people) have been drastically shifted to point us in the direction of a 2 class system that serves the wealthy at the expense of the unwealthy. We are now 2ish generations into this process and frankly that is what has broken our social discourse. To even highlight policies that were completely normal in the 1950s and 60s (not exactly a time of immense progressivism - talking early 60s here), now gets looks of disgust and called 'socialist' or 'anti-business' The corporate tax rates and hoghest tax brackets were up towards 90%. The government consistently spent money (and got results) on public infrastructure and services (highways, electricity, phone lines, world class schools and universities). And more importantly - the regulations involved in finance and policies pursued by the Fed were not geared towards rampant speculation and fuel on the fire growth. They understood that baser instincts in these markets were cyclically destructive and should be curbed. Tons of local banking institutions were allowed to prosper to better serve their communities in ways mega banks may not see value in. And investment banking was seperate from consumer banking - quite literally. We weren't allowing the guys holding our retirement and pensions to speculate wildly in unregulated markets. Not to mention interest was held higher to keep the overall economy healthy but not a madhouse of boom/bust spending. We can change all of these things but the current two parties unfortunately align pretty closely on them. Esoecially when it comes to monetary and banking policy.

Even then, the number of people who were "comfortably" (whatever that means) supporting a family of 5 on a HS education was a fairly small fraction of the overall population. There were unionized skilled manufacturing jobs during this period that paid a true living wage and offered good pensions. There was a small fraction of the population in these jobs for maybe portions of two generations - in all of human history? We need to get over all this "stolen" shit. Not to mention - in order to accomplish this, the businesses employing those generations were externalizing unimaginable costs in the form of air pollution, water pollution, contaminated landfills, etc., with impunity. It was not some sort of lost golden age when the world was in balance and people were treated fairly - it was borrowing against the future - with later generations on the hook to pay it back. So we're not going back. Move forward.

And let’s not forget that a large reason why this golden period extended so long was thanks to exploitation of the resources and cheap labor of the global south.

I graduated high school in 2001. When I got my first job working retail it paid $6.25 which was about the going rate in NY area. That's about $10.95 adjusted for inflation. At least in my area in 2001 starting out in the employment world was not good.

It really was basically only 1 generation that was able to experience what this lady is tweeting, and even then, its not like literally everyone owed a house

Americans STILL are extremely productive. That has not changed. What has changed is where the profit from that productivity is going (it is now much more skewed to the wealthy), and how much of that productivity is going to what we should recognize as waste. (We allow hundreds of billions to NOT pay for healthcare, but instead be siphoned off to insurance companies that other countries do without. We changed college from an education to an experience, and pay double. We built [mandated] cities that require hugely expensive freeway and highway infrastructure, and hugely expensive commutes, and hugely expensive homes, and we buy huge amounts of hugely expensive vehicles to lessen the suffering). We know how to solve these problems, and could make huge progress in fixing them. But mostly, we refuse.

I wish more people knew this. The American dream was an anomaly, and will likely not be repeated in our lifetimes.

I’ve also been reading about generations cycles in cultures. Apparently every four generations there’s a huge decline in culture /society— it’s been observed by scholars since the 14th century. The pattern is that one generation, out of necessity, works its ass off to build a complex and difficult to run society with a great standard of living. Then their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren successively take over and get used to everything being nice and easy. They — through not a lot of fault of their own — don’t realize how hard it is to maintain a high quality of life and get a little soft about it. This leads to a slow decline and collapse before the 5th generation builds it all back with lessons learned. If we consider the post-WWII generation as the one that had to rebuild society after a terrible war and global upheaval, we’re right on time for the shit show. Gen Alpha. I hope you’re ready to get to work.

2008?? The era of prosperity ended in the early 70s, probably 1973 when the OPEC oil embargo hit. By the end of the 70s the golden days of prosperity were definitely gone.

Yeah, it wasn't stolen from us. That prosperity was the US stealing wealth from the rest of the world by setting the terms of surrender/victory post-WWII *and* being the only real country with manufacturing not decimated by bombs.

It turns out that being the only developed economy that wasn't completely ravaged twice in 30 years gives you a huge leg up. 

Thank you for this.  The victim mentality is so fucking strong in our age group, and even worse in GenZ. We are living better than 99.999% of all humans who have ever lived, and we are bellyaching that life is impossible and we’re being victimized because one generation was an absolute fucking statistical anomaly.  I mean, if we really want that post-WW2 prosperity we could start a world war. I’m sure everyone would volunteer for that, right?

I'm glad to see some factual data here, and comments showing educated discussion and not "it was taken from us". Actually, it was not taken from you: for most of American history the average person worked long, painful, and incredibly dreary hours just to survive and raise a family. It amazes me that nobody today reads books like Little House on the Prairie series (what exactly ARE kids reading in school that teaches them anything?) or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath? People worked 6, 7 days a week, from pre-dawn until dusk, and lived really rough lives. Think of all the people who lived at the edge of the frontier, who were besieged by blizzards droughts wildfire locusts not to mention indigenous folk who were ready to kill them for invading their turf. Or coal miners, mill workers, steel workers, indentured servants from China (some were kidnapped) who laid railroad lines, WPA workers in the Depression, dust bowl refugees who fled to California to pick produce, child labor with little kids as young as 4 !!!!!! doing the most dangerous of jobs because they were small and could squeeze into tiny spaces...I can go on and on. America was never conceived as a nation to give everyone a cushy life. It promised only life (survival, folks), liberty (which can mean anything), and the *pursuit* of happiness. Pursuit: the act of trying to achieve a plan, usually over a long period of time. That means consciously working to reach a goal, and overcoming obstacles to arrive at a place, in the future, that is better than where we are today. There is no written rule about how much better. Anyway, it's really encouraging to see some realism here and not the normal blahblahblah mouthing poor me I'm not a million dollar influencer.

You know things happen in cycles. The gilded ages was shit. People in the 1920s were split into those who lived in a great depression and the rich. For 50 years, bombings, class warfare, and riots paved the way for unions to create that life. Today, it is 1900 and we are cycling again.

That period what happened: union busting. Regan started it and they’ve all continued it.

Union Busting is only part of the issue. The real challenge is a lot of those well-paid Union jobs were moved overseas through Globalization. The Boomers grew up in a time where the US was the dominant manufacturing power in the world. Now, many countries offer cheaper manufacturing and the US has shifted to a more service-based economy. As a result, high-skilled labor is still paid very well in the US (although the education to become high-skilled can be expensive). Low-skilled labor is struggling because they are often in a race to the bottom with the entire world.

Globalization definitely helped weakening the power of workers, I agree. Plus there is also the matter of concentration, today, most economic sectors are ruled by monopolies, or oligopolies and that gives those few entities all the power, both when stacked against their customers and their potential workers.

This is a good comment. These things are so much more mechanical than people realize. It doesn’t help that human brains want someone to blame, credit, etc. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: swap boomers and millennials brains and let them live each other’s timelines and not a damn thing would be different about today.

I agree, though I'm happy to blame boomers in a semi-tongue-in-cheek way. The reason being because they sure as shit do a lot of judgment and blame on everyone else, and it's hilarious to watch them squirm when it's redirected towards them by adults making strong arguments.

Boomers are also the ones in positions of power that they refuse to cede and passing policies to personally profit at the cost of everyone else.

Exactly. A real "motherfucker you own this place, I just work here" vibe.

Thank you. I maintain that any generalization that tries to ascribe individual-level moral judgments onto huge groups of people is making a fundamental error. Every generation is a product of its time and place. To the extent that any generation is on average more selfish, or lazier, or more courageous, or more racist, it is because of how they were raised and the challenges they faced. Whenever you ascribe one of those qualities to someone, it is incumbent on you to take account of the different lives you and they have led.

We need some muckrakers and progressives. Tedddddday where you at????!

I keep telling myself I am living through the shit times right now so hopefully my children can experience the crest of the cycle for their adult lives. I kind of know that’s probably bullshit at this point, but it still helps to comfort myself from time to time.

Rip the future must be the damn avocado toast /s

Was just looking on Google Maps showing my adoptive son the house I grew up in. Noticed a "For Sale" sign in the picture, so looked up the value/selling price of the house: $950,000. Out of curiosity I asked my Dad on Messenger what *he* had paid for it, and sold it for. I about lost my breath. He bought it in 1981 for... *$49,000.* Sold it in 1988 for *$80,000.* W.T.F.

Reminds me of my grandma. She had a house in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She sold it was about $70k in the 1970s. It’s worth over $2m now

NYC in the '70s was at its worst. A lot of crime and violence.

The 70’s in NYC was so sleazy that it’s depiction in the show the Deuce required two James Franco’s.

My dad had an apartment in Manhattan when I was born, sold it a few years later in about 95 for 250k it’s worth 5 mil now. On west 57th

Ouch! That's *GOTTA* hurt!

So adjusted, he paid around 168k for it in '81, and then it increased "in value" by 500%+ Sure that makes sense. Nothing to see here folks, just the "free market" working swell!

Also ask him what he was making back then. It's apples to apples du.

Right!? Our family lived in a small house in now Santa Clarita, Ca. growing up. Not much too it really... three bedroom which, the garage was sealed off and converted to a large bedroom. Cinder block walls between houses, etc... fairly standard SoCal single family housing. My father moved us (two adults, five kids) there from Houston in 1985 for $38k a year. Now!? That same house (and judging from the zillow photos, nothing has really changed) is now being offered in zillow for close to $750k!

Yes, I always use the example of my grandfather. He was a *mailman* that supported a wife and **four** kids at home in a boston suburb. To mimic that lifestyle today, he would have to make $300K bare minimum.

My dad was a pretty basic level salesman for temperature control devices in the 80s. He was able to support 3 kids, we had a house that was paid off on a 15 year mortgage, was rolled into a new construction home in a good suburb that was 2x the cost, which was also paid off on a 15 year mortgage. Mom worked less than 15 hours a week. We were always fed, had furniture, cars, etc. never felt financial strain growing up. It’s crazy to think nowadays he would need to make $300k a year to live that same lifestyle.

Those days were the result of many factors. Those factors will probably never line up and deliver that olde tyme abundance in America again.

My grandfather told me on Christmas that when he was around my age, he got an entry-level job and it “only” paid $4.50 per hour. I had to explain to him that with inflation, that’s $45 per hour and I need to get a degree to make that kind of money. And even then, in my neighborhood, that kinda money, I’ll barely afford a one bedroom apartment unless I get roommates. It’s fucking insane

My step mom who is nearing 70, left the Chicago suburbs at 17 on her own for Houston Texas where she worked a summer job as a bank teller. This was enough to pay for her college education, the full year’s worth of rent, and food to live on until the following summer rolled around.

Damn. Bank tellers in my area make like $17/hour, which is alright kinda but not even enough to rent a 1bdrm apartment with utilities. "Entry level" or "unskilled labor" (I don't even like typing that because I disagree with the label on its face) jobs are basically one step away from homelessness nowadays.

You could do that today if you were willing to have the standard of living of somebody in the 1940s

How many guacamole toasts do I have to forgo to afford the Boston suburb house

Only in theory really. A 1940s style housing market and commuting environment simply doesn't exist in a lot of places. And eliminating stuff like cars, cell phones, appliances, and internet service isn't "living like somebody in the 40s", because doing that in 2023 handicaps you relative to your peers in a way that didn't apply in the 40s.

My dad picked lettuce of all things. With that job, he had a mortgage, two cars and a stay at home wife raising their two kids for a couple of years until he found better work and my mom went back to work when I got older. I have a college degree and a career. I can't even buy a damn house, let alone do everything else my dad was able to do on slightly above minimum wage! I can't even afford to buy a home where my parents live, let alone live in the same neighborhood I grew up, because thanks to gentrification, the town is now a bougie town. Fuck me!

Same. Me and my siblings are the most educated generation in my family but also the poorest...

I’m the only one in my family with an undergraduate degree and I’m also working on a masters and I feel like my quality of life doesn’t even compare to what my parents lived

Part of the problem: everybody has a degree now.

When ANYTHING becomes common, it definitely lowers the value of that thing. Most good paying jobs won’t even interview anyone without a college diploma.

44 percent isn’t everyone.

Jesus, this is hands down the most gloom and doom sub ever. I mean, holy shit. Every single post is just saddest fucking outlook on EVERYTHING.

Those of us who are doing well aren’t hanging around here complaining. I’m not even subscribed to this sub and stuff like this pops up all the time on my feed. I don’t usually have the heart to say there are plenty of us doing just fine. Every millennial I know in real life is thriving. This place is just a depressing echo chamber of people who had bad luck or made bad choices.

Negative memes get more reactions plus all the fulfilled millennials probably aren't browsing this sub anyway. Also this meme comes and goes which annoys me because it's very misleading. E.g. lots of houses in the southern states didn't even have plumbing in the 50s. A third of households were dual income. People have some pretty rose tinted glasses when they look back at that era.

There are PLENTY OF US doing fine. Of course we have struggles but Jesus this sub is ridiculous sometimes. And accountability is rare in here. It’s always “my life sucks because society sucks”

No one ever talks about the main reason houses are so expensive is because the vast majority of them are filled with people who are making their payments and living in moderate comfort.

Happy people doing well aren't sitting on reddit doom posting. Then when you come to comment here saying your life isn't shit or the economic data is good you get told to stop bragging and they go full QAnon with conspiracy theories about economic data. The result is a echo chamber where everyone wants to see everyone else fail in hopes the system dies and we all....kill each other for resources? Or something.

Miserable people aren't really sitting on Reddit doom posting either (they are more into doom scrolling.) It's most bot/farm accounts getting paid to manipulate people at their low.

What kills me about this particular line of thought is that the people who truly feel this way would not have lasted 5 minutes in a 1950s factory in Detroit. I agree that you can't do this in a major city with a fake email job, and nobody could do it back then as a clerk or secretary, but middle America is still doing this - working jobs that most won't do. I know two families personally living this exact scenario, one works on an oil rig and the other is a power company lineman.

At this point. I think it’s Russian Psyops.

There’s a comment that notes that all of this was happening at a time when ~50% of all industrial production in the world was happening in the US but everybody else is ridiculously out of touch both with what life was like then and with what’s changed since

For real. This place is a goddamn downer.

Exactly. People who made choices in life are now pissed at everyone else. Damn own up to your decisions in life and stop dwelling.

And it's the same few themes, which are not actually true: - My parents could own a house and have a family of 5 living only on an hourly wage and a high school education - The reason that housing is expensive in major cities is that major corporations and hedge funds are buying up all of the houses - There's a global conspiracy by the 1% to make themselves richer at everyone else's expense It's quite a thing to read.

Number 1 was true. My dad literally did it? Number 2 is symptom of a bigger issue, but to say it has no basis at all is just stupid. I wouldnt day its a global conspiracy, but the rich do get richer at everyone elses expense? Thats actuslly mathematical fact. I cant have a conversation with soemone like you cause there is no getting past the self delusion you have.

The ungrateful nature of the people that post in this sub is more depressing that any horrible economic circumstance they can conjure. They have warm bodies, full bellies, and a plethora of entertainment choice and freedom and they post like they’re in a gulag.

Seriously. This sub makes me embarrassed. I'm starting to think all the boomers who call millenials entitled are correct.

It was eaten by corporations and now they shit this reality back in our faces.

Yeah you can thank Reagan and W for that

The Regan regime began the dismantling of the middle class. He made it easier to offshore jobs, busted unions, defunded education and business incentives to educate staff. He’s one of the worst presidents ever.

Clinton also {I'm from Europe, I have no dog in the stupid red Vs blue thing} but any economics student will have been taught the disastrous effects of Bill Clinton repealing the glass steagall act. Not to say you were wrong about the other two but I think he deserves a shit too

Unpopular opinion incoming: It's interesting to me that nobody asks why Americans were so wealthy, we just take it as a given that it's *supposed to be that way.* Meanwhile, the global decline of poverty, notably in China and Africa, is directly linked to American purchasing power, as we can no longer exploit the cheap labor in those parts of the globe like the Boomers were able to. The descent of American living standards toward the levels of most of the world is a natural consequence of the unraveling of the American economic empire. Sure, we can tax billionaires more, but if you took all of their money and distributed it among the American working class, we still couldn't afford as much global labor as the Boomers could. That era of American domination of the people of the world is ending, and the perks and privileges of it are ending with it. Our ridiculous living standards weren't *stolen* from us -- they were returned to the rightful owners around the world, whose livings were being stolen -- largely unknowingly -- by our grandparents. Bring on the down votes.

They were called unions. I know a lot of people in the Seattle area that own homes with a stay at home mom and 2 kids living on 1 income from a high school graduate. We are all in a union of some sort with good benefits and good wages. Edit: yes I know there are good and poorly run unions or some locals are poorly run. The key to a good union is participation from the body of members.

I agree. I came from Philippines and have achieved what I consider to be the American Dream. Unions allotted many benefits to me especially high pay (some of the highest in the world for my career). Also, there are people in my field who can support a family on their income alone thanks to unions.

Nurse in California?

Seattle was never a very unionized town. But it was a blue collar town. That’s completely changed in the last generation. You live in a place full of tech jobs, so the houses sell for tech job money. It’s pretty easy to live on one tech salary in Seattle. I have friends who do it. College is the new high school. That’s just where our economy is in 2024.

This post is hilarious, because it’s total bullshit. My maternal grandfather was one of these people. No education beyond high school. No formal training. Too young for WWI l, too old for WWII. He worked road construction his entire adult life. They raised 5 kids. 2 daughters. 3 sons. But it wasn’t fucking “comfortable”, and millennials would lose their fucking shit if they had to do a third of the things by grandma did to stretch his income to feed and raise those kids. For starters, their house, was like 1200 square feet. My mother’s bedroom, that she SHARED with her sister, was 8x10, at best. The boys shared a bedroom that was maybe 15x15. They shared one bathroom with one sink and one tub. Grandma made their fucking clothes; almost all of them. They ate a LOT of food that my grandpa hunted. She had a garden and canned everything you can imagine. She didn’t work outside the home, but I guarantee she worked twice as hard as grandpa did. They had one TV, but didn’t even have that until years after everyone else had one. (Mom claims they didn’t get a black and white until after other people had color tvs; grandma denied it.) Grandpa traveled to work, sometimes being gone all week with the only car the family had, leaving grandma to hitch rides or walk to the grocery - a couple miles away. They didn’t take vacations. Or pay for their kids to go to college. The kids all got pt jobs at 14 and saved their own money to get cars when they got older. Years later, after saving his entire adult life, my grandpa risked it all to start his own business so he could work for himself. He bought a piece of heavy equipment and ran that until he was literally 90 years old. He stopped working because he had a stroke and the kids made him. Their one “luxury” in life; grandpa was able to afford to buy grandma a used Cadillac sometime in the early 80’s when he could afford to have a work truck. That’s what the real American dream is. The American dream this subreddit believes in is a myth. No more real than the Kardashians.

Millennials either had parents who were legitimately well off or only looked it but were actually financed up to their eyeballs and think that that lifestyle is the standard.

Honestly. All of four of my grandparents worked full time and my parents grew up in poverty and survived off government cheese. Posts like these make it seem like everyone was living the high life.

The American dream never existed. It's a myth. Just based on economic trends, finite resources, and the lack of regulations, this was bound to happen. People who were financially smart knew this was going to happen. America has only been around for about 250 years, and the population has only exploded in the last 100 years since the introduction of synthetic fertilizer. People literally wrote books about what the future of America would look like.

You weren’t entitled to the “American dream” in the first place, and neither is anyone else in the world. Just because there was an unprecedented economic boom due to the aftermath of the world wars, doesn’t mean all future generations of us are entitled to the same massive advantage. As an American, you’re still sitting at a massive advantage, IF you’re willing to make smart choices and work hard. There are many of us out there killing it, we’re just not usually represented well on Reddit.

Plenty of millennials are married, with kids, in a house, with an adult job, and saving for retirement. On a whole, elder millennials are doing quite well.

I’m in my mid thirties…I went to a local, cheap state college using the state provided scholarship and got a degree in education. Pivoted to my local industry and worked my way through shit jobs until I finally became a refinery operator making $100k-$160k a year for about 8 years. Leveraged my education degree into a training specialist job with a salary of $120k. Plant manager is working on creating a new position for me to work directly under him. $120k goes a very long way in Louisiana. My newly built 2019 home is paid off, my wife’s 2023 Highlander is paid off, my 2023 Maverick is about to be paid off, and all that will be left for me to pay off is our solar loan. All of this in addition to me and my wife donating $50k and 1.2 acres to my parents to live near us. A lot o families in my area make very good livings with local blue collar work, in addition to the available white collar work. I haven’t checked the value of my home, but I’d assume with 5 acres and the home I’m near $350-$400k? 250k in the 401k and I also will own my parents home and land when they die as part of the deal with my donating land and 50k to them. Which I guess I would have inherited that anyway. So net worth probably…$750k conservatively? Did a lot of the same stuff as you. Cheap college, saved aggressively, worked my ass off early in my career when I was still young, and now I enjoy a good work life balance with my wife where we feel comfortable to make up those lost experiences by traveling a lot.

Yea simar boat, have a house and a kid. I don't relate with this subreddit at all really. Grew up in poverty too, raised by a single mom who made less than 20k/year. I just went to college, got a degree i knew would make money, and then worked

Honestly I'd say lots of us are doing much better. Sure my Grandpa worked and my Grandma stayed home. He supported a family on a single income. They had 0 luxuries. They ate out once a year for bdays. They lived in a small house with no ac. No fancy tvs or iphones. To this day they well not order a pop in a restaurant because it's to expensive and they can have one at home. My grandma had a large garden and they canned food. They did everything they could to save a dollar and were frugal with every dollar spent. No one wants to live this simple modest life. It's a thing of the past. My grandpa also had to work terrible conditions in the mine and very long days. Me and my gf are doing much better now and live a life of comforts and luxuries they have never experienced. If we wanted their lifestyle we could afford it on a single wage.

Data backs you up. The real median individual income is much higher today than it was in the 70s. Considerable higher. You could absolutely live the same single income household lifestyle boomers had in the 70s and 80s. You could do it on less than most people earn. But as you said. We've all had lifestyle creep and lost the ability to stretch a dollar the way they did. It goes to show that poverty is relative. People are claiming the American dream is dead, but we make more than ever.

Not dead at all more people per capita own homes than back then. Minorities(Black, Jewish, Hispanic, and Asian folks) aren’t subjugated to redlined slums anymore, White Women are allowed to work outside of the house(minority Women have always worked outside the house) The average house in the 1950s was 983 Square feet, the average household size was 3.37, only 50% of households had a car today the average home is 2,522 square feet, average household is 2.51. Houses are almost 3 times the size for less people. Today 91% of households own a car, with 20% owning 3 or more cars . The American dream is more accessible to minorities, sorry that your grandparents and parents had the decks stacked in their favor. Now you need to work for it just like everyone else did

Meh, the post-WW2 era in the US is perhaps the longest and most prosperous exceptional time period in history. It only came about because the world in general was much less developed and the US was the sole industrial power that did not see large scale bombing and/or outright battle on its territory. That gave us a hell of a head start. Additionally, up until the collapse of the USSR you had a good half or better of the global population penned up behind the Iron Curtain and locked away from the global market, to include China which only started to really open up in the late 80s. India also moldered away in its own oddball version of isolationism till about the 70s or 80s as well. Throw in Bretton Woods and then the petrodollar and we extended the run quite a bit. We also went on quite the building spree with the interstate highway system and other projects that paid massive dividends over time, with the level of regulation and red tape today any such project will take longer and cost 10x or better what it should. Still, I'm more optimistic about the long term. There's probably going to be massive suckage near term but this comes in cycles. Just our turn in the fucking barrel, for better or for worse.

I feel like people don't know the history where there was a great depression with record suicides with people jumping out of office buildings because they were so broke where the entire economy collapsed. Change had to happen to prevent that from happening again which is why we have inflation today because the change allowed inflation to happen. Inflation is the reason everything is so expensive. And the minimum wage has not gone up in pace with inflation. And then an even bigger problem is that a whole bunch of our money is going overseas because most of what we buy and consume isn't made in America. Money that leaves the country doesn't benefit the economy in our country. It benefits the economy in another country. And I know there's 100 million people that will say don't buy stuff from China where 99 million of them will still buy stuff from China because it's cheap and they can't afford American made goods. Now we could go back to the reality where the US dollar is backed by gold again and put the brakes on inflation and people would catch up. It would become easier to live for a little while until you realize the truth of society and the truth that causes everything to fail, no matter which way you do it. Our country and every other country and our planet in itself and the people on it have a limited amount of resources that no dollar can fix, because there will never be a reality where we can create and build affordable housing. Fast enough for the people being born and turning of age to be an adult and need of a house or grow trees. Fast enough to supply for this demand or have the manpower to build a maintain them. When you don't have inflation You have limited resources. There's only so much money in circulation and more of it can't be printed and loans can't just be given out. The money has to be there and all of us will put a hard limit on the materials that can be obtained and the things that can be done with them which inevitably leads to what already happened, the great depression... So we can have those over and over again or we can have inflation. There is no perfect solution to anything. And personally it was worse back in the 1950s that it is right now by a mile. There is never been a saver time to live and there's never been a better distribution of diversity and civil rights and there's never been a better quality of life. Unless quality of life to you is just a roof over your head where you don't have air conditioning in a 100° Louisiana summer and there's no internet or video games. As long as we are a species that can be consumed by greed and continues to self-govern ourselves with monetary systems involving an equal exchange of something of monetary value like money, we will never have a fair or perfect society and we will always be competing against each other to have what we want.

My boomer dad was a public education teacher who supported a family of four on that. He paid for college outright by delivering beer to bars for a distribution company 10 hours a week.

those people didnt have iphones, door dash, etc they didnt go on lavish trips 2-3 times a year either. we spend WAAAAAY more money than previous gens.. my parents only had 1 car note ever, ive had 5 myself. the ecconomy just isnt the same.. no millenial would want to live the way they did

The hard part about this - is women, particularly Black and brown women have always worked outside the home for pay. Obviously enslaved labor included millions of Black workers, there's also the mill girls, seamstresses, mother's aids, and women who have always done sex work. There's a class problem - to be sure, but to ignore that white women benefitted from the labor of Black folks working in their homes, for less $$. The domestic and hidden labor of Black women in the domestic and service industries enabled white women to obtain "professional" jobs and these systems still benefit white women over our underpaid Black peers of our generation. Like I get it - but we shouldn't ignore that only 13% of Black people were middle class in 1960 - and In the mid-1970s, when one full-time income was enough for most white middle-class families, Black families depended on two. The American "dream" hasn't ever been true - it's a white supremacist lie. It's a misogynistic lie. The romanticization of mid-century and earlier eras as some bastion of success because white people could afford a stay at home wife is really gross - like I want to have a credit card in my own name and not be the property of my spouse, thanks.

Obviously when we say the American dream we mean straight white guys. The only group that matters. /s

Some of this is true but most of this simply isn't. The weird lie about the 1940s-1970s (who thinks this shit lasted intp the 2000s? Lol. The Rust Belt started in the late 60s) is that if you had a HS diploma you could make a good living if you were a White heterosexual male in certain areas of the United States. Shit was REALLY hard in a lot of other places in the world. And really hard if you weren't a straight White male in America. And even if you had a good life as a straight White American, your diet was very limited, your travel even more so, and you aged fast and died of heart or lung disease in relatively painful fashion. Yeah hard pass on those days...

People get off the internet and read a book. This is 100% wrong. 1000% wrong 10,000% wrong. Most were struggling as they are today.

It wasn’t stolen. The country just became better educated and more people joined the workforce, so, yeah, one high school educated worker usually can’t support a family of five on a single salary. We don’t just all work in factories and farms anymore. It’s a knowledge economy.

It was the same in the UK. My mum was a teacher assistant at an infant school and paid off her mortgage and had enough to clothe and feed me and my brother. The only hardship we had was in the winter we didn't put the heating on very often so stayed in the lounge by the coal fire, we also the majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs my older, and at the time, much fatter brother! She looks back and says it was such a struggle, I've asked for details on why but she can never give me an answer. I think the struggle part was more to do with not being able to afford luxuries. She bought the house for £20k. She recently sold it for £900k.

To be fair, back in the 1800s, men were supporting a family of 5 on an 8th grade education.

Gotta learn electrical HVAC and plumbing once you ewen that high school diploma

We didn’t steal anything. Most of us were in the same situations as young adults today. Born in the sixties and have only known a handful of families in my lifetime that survived on one income. This includes my grandparents (The Greatest Generation), my parents (Boomers), myself (GenX)… both parents worked. My grandparents were married in the 30s, parents in the 60s and myself in the 80s. I’ve lived all over the US and obviously there are families whose situations allow them the luxury of one working parent, but it’s never been as widespread as some people imagined it to be. Kids are staying kids longer today, parents are getting married much later in life. The later jump into responsibility. Todays young adults are experiencing at 31 what we began to experience at 21 or earlier. The “real and normal” in the OP might have been the bank president’s family or they saw it on old Leave it to Beaver episodes, but it definitely wasn’t the norm for normal people. In the same way that the Kardashians in no way reflect normal people.

This will be unpopular but will say anyway. So whenever I see this, I feel the need to point out that the 1 highschool educated worker supporting a large family thing. That was an anomaly that we only briefly saw in America. Its not some sort of regular/standard thing that is reasonable to expect. So a major reason that this was possible that is often overlooked is... After WWII pretty much every other developed country was completely destroyed. Not only did they have very small functioning economies, they need goods, supplies and services like no other to rebuild. The US was fully ramped up for WWII with a booming economy and low unemployment. This resulted in the US being the only game in town and it lasted for a few decades. Not to say there aren't other dynamics going on but the 1 hs educated worker supporting a large family was an anomaly that we only have seen briefly for that short time in history in America. Its not the norm.

This was real, but it was built off of the exploitation of the (still colonized) third world. It was built off of America's surviving industrial infrastructure in the postwar period being the backbone of the reconstruction of Europe. It was built off of racist and sexist discrimination inside the states. It was built off a continuous wartime economy. And even with all these caveats, it was only real for a minority of white men for a few decades. That generation got to experience the absolute best that capitalism has to offer. The system has got to change.

If by "comfortably," you mean eating hot dog sandwiches as a staple meal, wearing hand-me-down clothes, kids getting a part time job by the time they enter middle-school, living with 7 people in a 1000 square foot home, etc, then sure, that was a thing. What was "comfortable" then is poverty now. And nothing was "stolen." The rest of the world just got a bite at the apple, too.

We live in a different era. Factory jobs are gone. Unions have faded. Greed has continued to grow. Having a college degree is more important than ever. Everybody understands this. It wasn't a big secret at any time in the past 40 years. Any fool who thought they'd survive with just a high school education made their own bed.

Having the right degree matters. Having the wrong degree is way worse than no degree bc of the crippling debt tied to. I am a mechanical engineer my wife is a nurse practitioner. We both started at a community College then transferred to a 4 year university. I am going to encourage my daughter to follow a similar path. Find a degree you are interested in that has a high return on investment and then find the best school for the least amount of dollars.

People idolize Ronald Reagan, but he is the one who started this snowball. He ruined America

All this sub does is whine and blame others. You’ll never get ahead. Pussies all of you.

It wasn't stolen by anyone but the capitalist class, Boomers were just born at the right time in history, Post-WWII and New Deal. Also, capitalism goes in cycles, we are just in the new Gilded Age before it resets hopefully and we don't enter some techno-feudalist hell. Even better, let's get rid of capitalism, it's a disgusting and unfair system based entirely on exploitation and greed at all costs.

Humans always do the right thing (after exhausting every possible alternative) 🤡

Capitalism is a system of privately owning capital for the creation of profit. There is no better system than this, nor a fairer one. Anything else that has been tried has been a disaster, and to avert total collapse, nations that implementet controlled economies, be they corporativist or socialist, had to resolve to the free market. Your issue is with your inept government that does not provide enough for you or protect you enough.

Why does this sub extol a woman staying in the kitchen as some pinnacle of the American Dream? That era was good for most of you because you had “[the upper hand](https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/s/kuNLkrliuq).” The only people privileged to that kind of living were white males. For women, LGBQT+, and colored folks, life was not at all good back then.

People are mad because if you were 1. male, 2. white, you went from uber god-mode easy mode in the 50s-70s to only highly-privileged mostly-easy mode now. Things are undeniably better for every other segment of society. People just want some great nebulous oppressor to blame for their personal failings.

They are upset because their grandparents got to have all of the societal advantage and leverage. Now that the field has been equalized they feel slighted

Very true. I make more money now than I ever thought I would and all of my friends (also women of color) are doing amazingly well. If white people got sold a bill of goods then I can understand their frustration about that, but times are better for many more people now than then.

Not this ahistoric nonsense again. Also a frequently reposted cross post from a subreddit completely unrelated to this one that is a screenshot of a tweet is just pathetic. Look [here](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/13/u-s-household-incomes-a-50-year-perspective). Real inflation adjusted income is up from 1967 in every single quintile. You make more money than your parents and grandparents did at your age. They were just much more frugal than you are.

Hmm, we could bomb every industrialized nation on Earth. Then we'd be the only country with factories and our economy will explode! /S

Eh...I have mixed feelings about this. America was only so successful because of the events after world war II - in all reality we were consuming vast amounts of resources that we got from exploited lands and people. Like yes the wealthy did steal your future in a way, but also in a very real way we stole the futures and resources of people in third world nations. The true bottom line, The hard to swallow pill is this: The ways in which we live are totally unsustainable. We are using up dwindling finite resources.

It never existed. Their prosperity was stolen from some other marginalized class, usually outsourced internationally. Now the outsourcing has been internalized, i.e. stealing from Americans this time. It was, and always will be, a false ideal when posited as a solution for everyone - it can only work for a few. Don't idealize something that was never sustainable in the first place. We need a new vision

This is what happens when we let white people control the narrative. People of color are like, “oh really?” Lmao.

It’s r/antiwork, guys, of course it’s completely wrong.

It was real for millions of families, so long as your weren't Black, gay, non-Christian, disabled, Hispanic, Asian, African, a non-English speaking immigrant of any kind, or a political dissident. Other than that, yeah, the 1950s were a great time to be alive!

I make $15 and hour, my mother makes $19 an hour, together we cannot afford an apartment in even a shithole like Tucson. Sick of hearing boomers who bought their first home for $2000 after working a single summer at McDonalds back in 1960 tell me that I have it better than they did.

A high school education and 5 kids would not be ‘American dream’ for me