What changed?
I guess I have to apologise for the lack of effort posting lately:) The reason for this is we were busy celebrating my husband's birthday and St Nicholas Day with the relatives. We did it two times already and next weekend we are planning to celebrate it with our own small family by going to the Midwinter Fair.
Anyway. We had an enlightening conversation with an elderly aunt about "good old days" when women didn't work outside home. We all know it's because everybody was awfully wealthy in the 1940s and 1950s, like in these Hollywood movies, right? Unlike now when everyone is dirt poor due to the Boomers stealing all the wealth for themselves, so they really need these 2 incomes to survive.
She was talking about some cousin who used to live in our neighbourhood. She and her husband had 4 children together and would probably have more but he died early leaving her a widow. This family of 6 used to live in a house of about 50smth m2 (square meters) which are now sold as the houses for 1 or 2.
So here's your answer. That's how they managed to survive on 1 income in those days. This and men having 50+ hours working week as opposed to modern sensitive males with back pain who only can manage to work 36 hours max. This and the wives cooking everything from scratch, hardly ever going to eat out and not demanding luxury vacations 3 times a year. Simple really.
By the way about Boomers. Folks online, especially those from the USA love to accuse them of all sorts of stuff. Now I get it, Boomers are weird in some ways and slightly irritating at times. However, IF they are guilty of something, it's really of buying into this idea that every generation is going to be wealthier than the previous one and teaching this entitlement to their children.
The truth is that post WWII era of everyone getting richer every decade was a historical aberration and it's not coming back.
People lived more frugally back then.
ReplyDeleteMy late mother born in 1940 grew up in a one-bedroom house with her parents and younger sister. She and her sister slept in an unheated, uninsulated attic, just the plain boards that was the house as the walls. This was in northern Massachusetts so freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer in that attic.
My mother, sister, and I lived in that same house until I married at age 20 in 1980. For a few years we also had a female lodger live with us when I was 4-6 years old. All four of us slept in one bedroom. My mother, sister, and I in a double bed and the lodger in a twin bed. My mother was a young divorcee who worked in a factory.
My husband's family (consisting of his parents, grandfather, 2 older brothers, one older sister, and himself) lived in a 3-bedroom, one-bathroom house. They finally moved to a larger home when his baby sister was born.
No vacations. One car per family, one black-and-white tv per family, no air conditioning in the home or car, one telephone.
My aunt had a childhood friend whose family was so poor that they lived in a Quonset that had holes in the floor and you could see the ground underneath. I would hope they kept rugs over the holes and the friend removed them to show my aunt the holes. LOL
My mother's family had a party line in the 40s and 50s. For those who are younger than I, a party line was one telephone line for several families. Each family's phone had a different ring pattern so you could tell if the incoming call was for your household or not. If another family was using the phone, the other families on the party line had to wait for the line to become free to make a call. Nosy people could pick up their phone and listen in on the conversations of neighbors. It was more expensive to have a private telephone line.
When I was a child, living in the same one-bedroom house my mother grew up in, we had no phone for about 5 years. It was an exciting day when we got a phone put in, let me tell you.
My childhood home was probably about 600 square feet or 55.75 square meters.
My husband's childhood home where 7 people lived was probably 1100 square fee or 102 square meters.
My husband's family of 7 never ate at a restaurant, not even McDonalds.
My family of 3 would eat at a diner or fast food place on Thursday nights when we did the grocery shopping after my mother got home from work.
I also remember getting government cheese and other foods because we were poor. Back then the government gave out actual food instead of food stamps and now today's EBT card.
We didn't always get that so I'm assuming we went on some degree of assistance whenever my mother got laid off her job or was between jobs.
I absolutely love your comment, read through it twice. ❤️💚⛄
DeleteAnon, thank you for your story!
ReplyDeleteHere people were literally starving during the war (a funny thing is that in the year of the worst hunger there were practically no new cancer cases. Makes one think, doesn't it?) and after the war everything lay in shambles. I have my late mother-in-law's 1950s cooking book which teaches how to substitute meat with brown beans. Only wealthy families had cars up until 1960s, and there was no central heating, either. You had gas or coal stoves in the living room and bedrooms which were often upstairs were freezing cold during winter.
People rented washing machines to do their laundry and had to take the bath in the kitchen or go to public baths. When my husband bought out house in the 1990s it still only had a toilet, but no shower/bath facilities, and he had to install it himself.
Working week was 6 days, and up until 1960s it was about 1-2 week paid vacation and no health insurance. And yet these families thrived, had lots of kids and mothers didn't work. Modern people are horribly entitled. Oh and btw. They didn't own their homes, these were all rentals.
Wow...this post is right up my practical-tired of the sickening entitlement attitudes-always living opposite the masses- alley!❤️
ReplyDeleteWhen you say they would rent a washing machine, do you mean a Laundromat type facility?
Interesting about cancer rates....so fasting related or the foods were bad,?
My mother-in-law told me it was a normal washing machine which was brought home for several hours. Theirs was delivered early Monday morning and she and her eldest brother had to wake up at 5 a.m to do the family laundry before they went to school, since the age of about 10. we are talking early 1950s here.
ReplyDeleteAs for cancer, your guess is as good as mine:) Probably the lack of (animal) fat and caloric restriction? People basically lived on what they could get from a farmer close by, mostly veg and beans.
The biggest issue is the funny money system followed by the tax burden here in America. My dad made $13.5k in 1969 at warehouse job as a civilian at a military base. He retired from that job. Plug $13.5k into the lying BLS calculator. We do seem to suffer from some 'afluenza' since thanks to capitalism, stuff like airline flights and cruises are available to almost any schmuck who earns enough to do those things. The choices of food at the grocery store or eating out is beyond anything in 1969. Thai food even a rural town of a few thousand is common place or sandwiches with vegetable year around.
ReplyDeleteI see your point. My mom stayed at home to take care of us. Most meals were home cooked (70s and 80s). My grandmother would take us on to see family out of state sometimes via airplane. My mom sewed some clothes through the 1970s.
The frustrating thing is that stuff like food, shelter, medical keep getting more expensive while wages have failed to keep up. How low are you supposed to go?
USA has always been wealthier. Europe was pretty much ruined during WWII, and it took a long time to rebuild. I watched some old Mr Bean shows and in some episodes he basically rents a room in a big house with a sink and a kitchenette but no shower or toilet so he presumably had to share those facilities. All the while wearing a suit which means he had some white collar job. These must have been late 1980s btw. I also read a British discussion board once where people recalled how they only could get (skim) milk from a gov-t program at school, how they divided half kg meat with a family of 5 for a week, and how the father and any son who worked would get the biggest portion, then the other kids and the mom ate what was left. Defence expenses were huge and people only really got affluence after the end of Cold War. I think in the USA it started earlier and lasted longer.
ReplyDeleteI do agree housing market is insane at the moment (mostly by design, imo) but people do want bigger houses and it was also true 6 years ago when the prices started to rise.
At least we don't have to worry about medical costs so much, though basic health insurance became more expensive yet again this year. We do get some compensation from the tax office from it, income dependent.
ReplyDeleteAmericans pay an obscene TOTAL tax rate if you include city, county, state, and federal. I lived in a mid-West state in early '00s. I made $42k and after paying for some health insurance and 401k (retirement), I was taxed on maybe $37k or so. Before and after my check, it came to around $12k which was more than my $600 per month 1 bed apt and some groceries. Gas was $1/ gal and a Subway #1 combo $4. I'm sure rents are worse now, but taxes at least as much. Anyway, I was pretty much a slave for 5 to 6 months of out of the year.
ReplyDeleteI have always thought taxes in America are lower than over here;) We pay like 50% of our salaries. If you are lower than a certain income you'll get some gibs back for that, and then, of course there are tax refunds for mortgages, minor children etc. However till the beginning of the 2000s men who were breadwinners could claim a dependent wife, and if they had children they got back even more. Thanks to feminism that system was totally abolished and substituted with the new one, "to encourage people to work".
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you are in a lower income bracket you also pay less tax, but the 2 income families get child care subsidies which is a lot and then have the cheek to complain, too.
The saving grace of living in America up until recently was that we do have a more dynamic economic system, so despite the tax burden, many things could be bought for fairly reasonable prices.
DeleteWe have an English Common Law system where property tax is the basis for funding local city and county government (police, fire) and public schools K-12. Local and state sales taxes on things, so in Texas, we have around an 8% or so sales tax, but the percent may vary because the city, county, and state get a bit of it.
Texas does not tax most unprepared food at the grocery store. Medical devices and medicines are not taxed. There is a sales tax on clothes even if bought at a thrift store. Some states vary. Minnesota had no sales tax on clothes. I lived in Missouri which had a partial sales tax on regular grocery items like meat and vegetables. Lots of variations across states and localities.
You are lucky! We have sales tax on everything, divided into low tariff (about 9%, I think, used to be much lower) and high tariff, I forget how much it is but about 20%, plus some things like energy or benzine are taxed twice. And then, of course, property tax and city taxes for communal services.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. Yet some Europeans look down on us here in the US. Here is an interesting column on what things used to cost in the 'good ole days' of some 40 years ago.
Deletehttps://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec24/big-lie-prosperity12-24.html
We still have more social stuff, more workers' rights and less crony capitalism. In fact, things started changing for the worse after EU was created and we underwent US style "privatisation" which privatised profits and socialised the costs. We certainly had less immigration and less women working before. I sometimes think our current system tries to copy the worst of American stuff without any positives, like the freedom of speech, the right to bear weapons etc.
ReplyDelete