You can absolutely live like it’s the 50s right now.
No, you can’t . You can’t send your kids to a state college or university today and expect them to work their way through on part-time minimum wage and graduate without debt. Pensions are a thing of the past. Unions have been decimated and their protections have been unavailable to most workers for decades now. Today, banks are regulated by private trade associations made up of- you guessed it- banks. Today, employers buy back their own shares (which was made illegal in the 1930s and brought back in 1982) at labor’s expense. Today’s median wage buys you less than minimum wage did then.
My post above was not a call to go back to the 50s, (fuuuuuck that) it was a call to recognize that the buying power available to labor has been squeezed so hard that the middle class as a demographic is shrinking and that in turn probably causes people to lose faith in democracy. When both major parties have worked together to dismantle labor protections and to deregulate finance, is your democracy really working for you, or for corporate power?
Yes, today it’s normal to buy things that didn’t exist then, and most fatal childhood diseases have been all but wiped out, and bigger houses and a housing inventory shortage is a thing, but that’s not the whole picture by a long shot. Raw material inputs (like lumber, and basic foodstuffs) cost more in normalized labor purchasing power terms and that’s probably largely because of corporate mergers in the supply chain and wage standards have not kept up with basic costs.
I think it’s remarkably silly that so many Americans that long for the 50s to come back think they’re gone because the Democrats embraced civil rights or because of feminism and not because they joined the GOP in dismantling the New Deal.
That’s why college is more expensive now. It used to be something you paid for to go, and now there are loans. This drove up demand and changed the financial incentive structure. It’s the #1 reason why I believe college should be free for the lower three quintiles.
Pensions are a crap idea and always were. Today my wife and I are straight up cashing in her pension because it’s worth more in an IRA.
Share buybacks are good for companies, workers, and the market in general - which protects 401(k)s as well. Not sure why that’s an issue for you?
Unions are expanding again and I hope that really takes off.
I definitely do not see how the New Deal was “dismantled” or that the Democrat party of today had anything to do with it. The New Deals/Great Society were a defining time for conservatives and many conservative Democrats left the party over it.
Back then, states funded their colleges- tuition wasn’t the primary funding mechanism. But, shortly after desegregation, that funding started to dry up now that brown people could benefit and the politics of keeping college cheap became fraught (and educating a multiracial egalitarian society became ‘communism’, which nicely dovetailed with the red scares of the time).
Then, as prices went up, loans became a thing- but loans were routinely discriminatory on things like race, gender, etc. So, when they made loans less discriminatory and easier to get, that’s when your answer became accurate: we all watched an army of MBAs swoop in and become middle-management of universities that transformed themselves to capture a share of all that available money.
Yeah, college got expensive because loans got easy to get- but the reason for loans in the first place was in large part that the right wanted to gatekeep education because they saw an educated public as a threat.
I definitely do not see how the New Deal was “dismantled”
Then you’re not looking. Glass-Steagall? Repealed under Clinton. Enforceable financial regulations? Deregulated quietly on a bipartisan basis since the 90s. Labor relations? Unions have been gutted and wage protections neglected, so much so that it became difficult to form unions. Antitrust? When the Democrats swept congress after Nixon, they retired the Democrats’ expertise on antitrust enforcement. The then-new dem leadership became fascinated with pivoting towards the center, such that the Democrats stopped representing labor and became the party of professionals. With 0 parties representing the working class and both parties engaged in the project of deregulation and privatizing public goods and services, several major parts of the New Deal were quietly neglected or just not enforced.
Today, banking is to a much greater extent regulated by private consortiums composed of… yes, bankers than it was then. The same fox that guarded the henhouse prior to the Great Depression was put in charge, and it wasn’t long before we had another depression-scale collapse.
As of the early 1970s, the robust trust-busting of the 1930s onward was quietly discontinued; the ‘watergate-baby dems’ (who were elected in the wake of Watergate) weren’t excited about monopoly enforcement. On their watch, enforcement was largely defunded. Non-enforcement of The Packers and Stockyards act eventually led to today’s state of affairs, in which there are just 4 conglomerates in the market between farm and grocer. This pattern isn’t limited to the meat industry, it is happening everywhere- middlemen control supply chains, ‘vertical integration’ and mergers and acquisitions mean producers are squeezed. That’s just plain down on the neoliberals getting hold of the Democratic party and letting corporations reassert dominance.
The New Deals/Great Society were a defining time for conservatives
If by that you mean conservatives hated everything about it and called it communism and conducted non-stop red-scares and moral panics to fight it, I suppose you’re right. That bit where conservative dems left the party- yeah, that coincided with the democrats’ embrace of the civil rights movement too, and that party realignment broadly energized the American right under the GOP banner (where before that, both parties had conservative and progressive wings)
Jesus you people are fucking exhausting the way you write like you’re trying out for Last Week Tonight.
Just speak like a person. I would’ve been interested in this discussion. We’d have politely disagreed on a couple things, I’d have fixed some of your bad history, and it would’ve been fun
If you’re gonna keep writing all jackassy at least try to be funnier.
No, you can’t . You can’t send your kids to a state college or university today and expect them to work their way through on part-time minimum wage and graduate without debt. Pensions are a thing of the past. Unions have been decimated and their protections have been unavailable to most workers for decades now. Today, banks are regulated by private trade associations made up of- you guessed it- banks. Today, employers buy back their own shares (which was made illegal in the 1930s and brought back in 1982) at labor’s expense. Today’s median wage buys you less than minimum wage did then.
My post above was not a call to go back to the 50s, (fuuuuuck that) it was a call to recognize that the buying power available to labor has been squeezed so hard that the middle class as a demographic is shrinking and that in turn probably causes people to lose faith in democracy. When both major parties have worked together to dismantle labor protections and to deregulate finance, is your democracy really working for you, or for corporate power?
Yes, today it’s normal to buy things that didn’t exist then, and most fatal childhood diseases have been all but wiped out, and bigger houses and a housing inventory shortage is a thing, but that’s not the whole picture by a long shot. Raw material inputs (like lumber, and basic foodstuffs) cost more in normalized labor purchasing power terms and that’s probably largely because of corporate mergers in the supply chain and wage standards have not kept up with basic costs.
I think it’s remarkably silly that so many Americans that long for the 50s to come back think they’re gone because the Democrats embraced civil rights or because of feminism and not because they joined the GOP in dismantling the New Deal.
Roughly 50% more people go to college now than in the 50s and 60s: https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics#college-enrollment-statistics
That’s why college is more expensive now. It used to be something you paid for to go, and now there are loans. This drove up demand and changed the financial incentive structure. It’s the #1 reason why I believe college should be free for the lower three quintiles.
Pensions are a crap idea and always were. Today my wife and I are straight up cashing in her pension because it’s worth more in an IRA.
Share buybacks are good for companies, workers, and the market in general - which protects 401(k)s as well. Not sure why that’s an issue for you?
Unions are expanding again and I hope that really takes off.
I definitely do not see how the New Deal was “dismantled” or that the Democrat party of today had anything to do with it. The New Deals/Great Society were a defining time for conservatives and many conservative Democrats left the party over it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#:~:text=The Second New Deal in,tenant farmers and migrant workers.
Back then, states funded their colleges- tuition wasn’t the primary funding mechanism. But, shortly after desegregation, that funding started to dry up now that brown people could benefit and the politics of keeping college cheap became fraught (and educating a multiracial egalitarian society became ‘communism’, which nicely dovetailed with the red scares of the time).
Then, as prices went up, loans became a thing- but loans were routinely discriminatory on things like race, gender, etc. So, when they made loans less discriminatory and easier to get, that’s when your answer became accurate: we all watched an army of MBAs swoop in and become middle-management of universities that transformed themselves to capture a share of all that available money.
Yeah, college got expensive because loans got easy to get- but the reason for loans in the first place was in large part that the right wanted to gatekeep education because they saw an educated public as a threat.
Then you’re not looking. Glass-Steagall? Repealed under Clinton. Enforceable financial regulations? Deregulated quietly on a bipartisan basis since the 90s. Labor relations? Unions have been gutted and wage protections neglected, so much so that it became difficult to form unions. Antitrust? When the Democrats swept congress after Nixon, they retired the Democrats’ expertise on antitrust enforcement. The then-new dem leadership became fascinated with pivoting towards the center, such that the Democrats stopped representing labor and became the party of professionals. With 0 parties representing the working class and both parties engaged in the project of deregulation and privatizing public goods and services, several major parts of the New Deal were quietly neglected or just not enforced.
Today, banking is to a much greater extent regulated by private consortiums composed of… yes, bankers than it was then. The same fox that guarded the henhouse prior to the Great Depression was put in charge, and it wasn’t long before we had another depression-scale collapse.
As of the early 1970s, the robust trust-busting of the 1930s onward was quietly discontinued; the ‘watergate-baby dems’ (who were elected in the wake of Watergate) weren’t excited about monopoly enforcement. On their watch, enforcement was largely defunded. Non-enforcement of The Packers and Stockyards act eventually led to today’s state of affairs, in which there are just 4 conglomerates in the market between farm and grocer. This pattern isn’t limited to the meat industry, it is happening everywhere- middlemen control supply chains, ‘vertical integration’ and mergers and acquisitions mean producers are squeezed. That’s just plain down on the neoliberals getting hold of the Democratic party and letting corporations reassert dominance.
If by that you mean conservatives hated everything about it and called it communism and conducted non-stop red-scares and moral panics to fight it, I suppose you’re right. That bit where conservative dems left the party- yeah, that coincided with the democrats’ embrace of the civil rights movement too, and that party realignment broadly energized the American right under the GOP banner (where before that, both parties had conservative and progressive wings)
Jesus you people are fucking exhausting the way you write like you’re trying out for Last Week Tonight.
Just speak like a person. I would’ve been interested in this discussion. We’d have politely disagreed on a couple things, I’d have fixed some of your bad history, and it would’ve been fun
If you’re gonna keep writing all jackassy at least try to be funnier.