How did this happen?
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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“… by billionaires, not immigrants.”
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Yup. Neighborhood I grew up in was poor but there were people PAYING A MORTGAGE on the salary they got from working at a gas station pumping gas and changing oil, while their wife maybe worked part-time.
Trickle-down economics happened.
The idea that if you give tax breaks and grants to the rich then the money will flow down to the poorest.
It’s based on the Carnegie-style idea that the rich will be public spirited and employ more people, donate, found scholarships etc and not just blow it on a larger dick-measuring yacht or add an extra supercar to the fleet.
That and the increase in tax-avoiding schemes and laws to allow the wealthy to pay less tax and hide their wealth put a much greater tax burden on those people not rich enough to afford tax lawyers and accountants to hide the money.
Billionaires took more and more until it was no longer possible
The US profited immensily from the aftermath of WW2. Europe was in ruins and China hadn’t became a world power yet. The American industry was faced with an seemingly unlimited demand for all kinds of western goods and since production of *anything* used to be very labor intensive, there was a huge hunger for workforce. That gave the US industry a huge boost that carried the economy for decades – so much longer than it actually took to rebuild Europe.
I’m not saying the US isn’t suffering from end stage capitalism, though. But you can’t expect to ride the post war economy forever.
Reagan. Everything goes back to Reagan.
*unless you were black, Irish, Italian….
Over 25% of Americans lived in poverty in 1950
I was born 1961 in Florida. Two kids, family of four. Basic 3-bedroom home and one car. Both parents were hs grads (father learned electrician trade in military) and both worked (mother did a secretarial course) to support a middle class life: public schooling, a summer trip, music lessons, community sports. We had only one car. It’s probably possible we could have survived on father’s salary only, but it would have been tight.
It was also done in an era of a 91% top marginal tax rate.
His name is Ronald Reagan.
Minimum wage was a living wage.
My Dad supported three other people on non union construction worker’s wages. We lived in a nice middle class neighborhood, too.
Heck, when my Mom divorced him we lived in a decent sized two bedroom apartment. My mom was a book keeper at an IGA. this was in the late 60s. No welfare for working mothers back in those days. She got 50 bucks a month in child support payments.
Not defending the current status quo (especially considered the god-awful amount of money I spend for a health insurance plan that will pretty much just get me a diagnosis and nothing more), but it seems the post should be slightly edited to:
“A world where a *straight white man* with a high school education could support a family of five comfortably”
In the US, women couldn’t even open their own bank account until 1974.. And of course, we all know that much much much worse things would happen to anyone who wasn’t straight, white, and male.
Then, of course, there was the draft.
From a straight white man.
People kept voting for the parties that supported the rich, so much so that the all the other parties just started doing the same thing.
Yeah but half of america blames liberals and welfare queens for hiking taxes whilr thinking elon musk is going to take us to mars for free because “he doesnt need the moeny”
The people that need to hear this have a million excuses why its not capitalism.
Don’t worry Trump said he loves the uneducated. He’ll fix ya right up.
Rampant capitalism and over population?
And this reality was also true in Europe
Not anymore…..
It was real for me..my dad made $1000. a month..supported a family of 4 and owned 3 homes before he died.
Reagan
I feel I need to say this. This was normal for one generation. One.
Between the 1940s and 1970s, this was “achievable”. Before that wife would work part time or produce something from the home. Beer, weaving, cheese, are examples of home industries that were active in homes before the Industrial Revolution. It is and was not normal for a single income household.
Career politicians?
My stepfather was a high school grad making $100k/yr as a district manager for a retail chain in the 1990s. We were a family of six living in a 4 bedroom home on an acre on Long Island that was largely paid for with my parent’s inheritance (couple hundred thousand down on a $350k home in their mid 20s).
I bet person doing his job today is making $75k/yr and is renting a two bedroom apartment for 2-3x the mortgage payment my parents had, and their parents are living until 85 while healthcare bleeds them dry, so no inheritance for him.
I agree. I was born in 1964. Dad worked for the power company, and Mom stayed at home. Family of 4, with a 3br 1.5 bath house and one car (we got a second car later).
I can see, in hindsight, that it wasn’t easy. We kept the car for 13 years (Dad maintained it himself) in a time when cars weren’t designed to last 10 years. We almost always ate at home, and our meals (I realize now) made the most from the least expensive ingredients. But my sibling and I NEVER realized how hard my parents worked to make it happen. It helped that they were both great cooks.
Today, that’s simply not possible.
Citizens United and trickle down are the two main culprits for killing that way of life.
Corporate greed. Simple as that. Capitalism did what it was supposed to do: work against our interest and prioritize profit over human beings.
Nothing can grow exponentially every single year without cutting corners and people.
i hate how Americans blame immigrants for their shit. The only reason they don’t like them is race.
Their country (USA) has enough money and resources to support them as well as more than enough land. Every time these racists talk about immigration it makes it harder for other countries to have actual discussion about whether their country is still able to support/ benefiting from immigration without fear of being labeled as racist.
A little bit of hate makes the world a worse place.
This society has embarked on a grand social experiment where parents no longer raise their kids.
Instead, the mother spends maybe six weeks with her infant and then we farm them off to day care or relatives or older siblings or a public school or a cell phone or a gaming system and then the child turns 18 and we expect them to magically become productive members of society.
In reality they are less equipped to work, interact with neighbors, solve problems, find a mate, ……… and parent. We end up with this feedback loop of social ills that gets worse every generation because the quality of parenting is getting worse and worse because parents don’t have time to parent and no longer know how to parent.
I’m scared to see where this takes us.
Just watch The Simpson’s for a reminder.
When I married and had my first child at 22 back in 1990 I was a carpenter with basic wages and she was working part time as a CNA. We had 2 cars, had a nice apartment and took time off. Always had food and clothes. This wasn’t that long ago.
It was never going to last.