Comments by "Dennis" (@Dennis-nc3vw) on "The Myth of the 1950s" video.

  1. Life expectancy is highly influenced by infant and child mortality. If one person lives until 80 and his brother dies as a baby, they are have a life expectancy of 40 between them.
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  2. I'm a Psychology Major. One thing we learned is that people tend to get happier as they get older, BUT also rate their past as being better than their present.
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  3.  @dewlittle1211  Maybe OP could try watching the video? For one, the poverty rate in 1950s US was at 22% in 1959. And I'm supposed to believe it was a working man's paradise?
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  4. But people drop the ball on what the good points were. The 1950s may have had better morals, but the economy wasn't some working class utopia.
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  5.  thesnownigro7932  In 1950 the life expectancy was 65, the median house size was 1000 square feet, and the average family spent 30% of their income on food. If you want to live like that today, you can easily do so on one income.
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  6.  @squeaky206  No one is really forced to choose between rent and food in America. A loaf of bread is $2 last time I went to the store, and that's after some wicked inflation (it was $1.25 a couple of years ago). That's what the poorest paid laborer makes in under 20 minutes in America. There was a time when people thought giving someone a loaf of bread a day would turn them lazy and idle. Poverty can really suck, but nobody is starving in America. FFS, 700 million people survive on less than $2 a day, and that's measured in Purchasing Power Parity so don't you dare give me that "cost of living" crap.
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  7.  @karenryder6317  Even that's not really true. People are more moral as they get older. Children bully each other, acting with pointless cruelty that would be unthinkable to 99% of adults. Studies even showing that a man 17 - 20 is twice as likely to hit his girlfriend as one 25 - 28.
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  8.  thesnownigro7932  "Except for technological advances and subsequent higher living standards, the past century has been a disaster for humanity." That's like saying "Except for the fact I was utterly miserable, I had a good time" except the other way around.
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  9. Argument from authority bullshit. One person's experience are not worth as much as statistics compiled from millions of people's experiences. Besides, I doubt your grandpa told you the intimate details of his financial life.
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  10.  @squeaky206  The average family under their poverty line spends 12% of their income on food today.
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  11. The median house size in 1950 was 1000 square feet, now its 2400 square feet.
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  12. "The Wild West just got a whole lot wilder!" 😆
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  13. It's not just conservatives who are referring to the 1950s as "The Good Old Days" now. The Gravel Institute, for instance, has a video with Mariam Williamson glorifying the 1950s. Taxes on the rich were very high and leftists are arguing that after FDR America had a worker's utopia that was destroyed by Reaganomics.
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  14. If those times were so ideal why is that when Occupy Wall Street came onto the scene?
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  15. While I generally like the video, Alfred Kinsey was a seriously dodgy person whose data shouldn't be taken serious. He over sampled and prisoners, prostitutes, etc. and had a very clear and disturbing agenda. Read up on the children of table 34.
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  16. Teen pregnancies and high crime rates FTW!
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  17. But we should ask ourselves why they were happier if we want to replicate that happiness, and realize it wasn't because of economics.
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  18. Did you even watch the video? Do you believe that simply because you watched Leave it to Beaver, which I will remind you was about a dad who worked a white collar job for a big company in New York? Yet even despite that his kids still needed bunk beds. And "sustain a family" is meaningless term because we change our definition of "sustain a family" based on the economic expectations of the time. In the 1950s the average family spent 30% of their income on food, the life expectancy was 65, and the median house size was 1000 square feet. Bunk beds were a cultural icon of the 1950s because kids rarely had their own individual rooms.
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  19.  @a.b3203  Some of the poorest countries have the highest birth rates, does that mean they are financially better off?
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  20. People get all their information about the 1950s from watching Leave it to Beaver. They forget that show was about a white collar dad who worked for a big company in New York. And yet his kids still needed bunk beds.
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  21. Farmed chickens had better lives before the rise of factory farming.
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  22. The average family spent 30% of their income on food in the 1950s, and the median house size was 1000 square feet (now its 2400).
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  23. Research actually shows people get happier as they get older, but mistakenly believe they were happier in the past.
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  24.  @steve5123456789  The poverty rate was twice what it is today. What is a "working class utopia" if not a low poverty rate?
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  25. I think the 90s are slowly becoming the new 1950s. People are nostalgic about them. But they forget about the rampant crime and teenage pregnancy.
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  26. "Struggling to raise a child" is meaningless gobbledygook, because if you wanted to raise a child the way we did for 99% of human history, which was in a one room cottage with a life expectancy of 25 (due mostly to high infant mortality), with no electricity, no air conditioning, etc. you could do so today on one income very very easily. So what does "struggling to raise a child" even mean? It means struggling to raise a child within what's considered an acceptable standard of living for the time, and that will ALWAYS be a struggle because that will always be relative.
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  27. 22% poverty rate and everyone was more equal?
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  28. Yes, and I'm sure you had a magical device to measure everyone's happiness. 🙄
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  29.  @a.b3203  "Afford to raise 2 kids" is meaningless gobbledygook, because if you wanted to raise a child the way we did for 99% of human history, which was in a one room cottage with a life expectancy of 25 (due mostly to high infant mortality), with no electricity, no air conditioning, etc. you could do so today on one income very very easily. So what does "struggling to raise a child" even mean? It means struggling to raise a child within what's considered an acceptable standard of living for the time, and that will ALWAYS be a struggle because that will always be relative.
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  30.  @a.b3203  "Young people aren't being encouraged to have kids any more, it's all about hedonism and the now." There you go! It wasn't the economy that made birth rates higher in the 1950s.
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  31. Maybe, but the idea the 1950s was a middle class/working class utopia is a myth.
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  32. How about you watch the effing video before commenting? It debunks the myths like that people worked fewer hours. In 1950s the life expectancy was 65, the median house size 1000 square feet, and the average family spent 30% of their income on food. Oh and no one had air conditioning and most people lacked TV and air conditioning. So you could easily afford the middle class life style of the 1950s twice over on today's Middle Class salaries. So what does "worse real wages" mean? Absolutely nothing.
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  33. The idea it was a working class utopia, though, is unequivocally shot down by truth with that 22% poverty rate.
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  34. Culture and economy is basically all there is. And as the video demonstrate, the economy was NOT better. There was a 22% poverty rate in 1959 FFS. The culture I agree with. But I think is important to note that, if people were happier back then, its because culture matters more than anything.
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  35. 🤮 If you make over $45,000 a year, you are in the one percent of the world economy. You've never been within a hundred miles of true poverty in your life. Yet here you are pretending to be a starving proletariat, rallying the masses. And you want to label someone else an "insufferable, whiggish little prick". Back when "there used to be important common resources which communities could use to satisfy their needs in a sustainable manner", the life expectancy was about 25 years old. People like you have the nerve to cry that healthcare is a human rights yet then paint idyllic pictures of stone age societies that didn't even have penicillin. You call housing a human right but then want to take us back to the days everyone lived in tents. You say "overall health is decreasing even as medicine improves" but YOU don't even know what you mean by that. People are longer lived than ever before in history, and are several inches taller than their ancestors centuries back due to better nutrition. If a 40 hour work week was the norm, explain the Sabbath. The Jews took one day off a week, not two, and this was considered controversial. For example, the Romans thought this was debauchery and encouraged idleness.
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  36. This may be true, or it may not. I think a common theme in literature back then was that the world was that humanity was a dangerous species that was going to wipe itself out with war very soon.
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  37. You don't think people constantly crying about "cost of living" and "being paid peanuts" is contributing the underpopulation problem? They're scaring people away from having kids. Leave it to Beaver was about a family whose father worked as a white collar job for a big company in New York and yet his kids still didn't have their own rooms. If people were willing to put up with a little more deprivation instead of crying about how hard life is, don't you think we'd make more babies.
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  38. Yes, a 22% poverty rate, 1000 square feet of housing, and a 13 year shorter life expectancy are such trivial facts.
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  39. Look at the comments below you and you can see Marxists coming after this video. The left is onboard the "1950s were great" bandwagon too because they want us to think America had a worker's paradise with high taxes on the rich until Reaganomics destroyed the country.
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  40. I can buy just that at McDonalds for under 10 dollars, which is basically exactly what the minimum wage was in the 1950s adjusted for inflation.
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  41. You were there as a kid most likely, what did you really know about the world? Just because you were there doesn't mean you were immune to the biases of nostalgia. Studies show people tend to rate their happiness higher as they get older but mistakenly believe they were happier in the past. PS for someone so old you sure come off as belligerent and immature.
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  42.  @teukel1157  Again, what does a child know about the world around him?
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  43. I've explained this so many f***ing times youtube is erasing my comments. The left is all onboard the "1950s were great" bandwagon too, just completely opposite reason. They want you to believe the FDR created a workers utopia which Reaganomics ruined.
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  44. "Stupidity is a luxury. At a time of unprecedented luxury we are living with unprecedented stupidity." - Evan Sayet
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  45.  @travishylton6976  Crime rates actually were very low from 1940 - 1960. The mafia's golden age was the previous two decades.
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  46.  @darkworlddenizen  Both
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  47. That's actually true. Homicide rates dipped in the 1950s then shot up in the mid-60s.
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  48. But the vid poster mentions that.
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  49. "Liberalists" are jumping on the "1950s were great" bandwagon to justify high taxes on the rich.
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  50. But then why single out the 1950s, if we're talking about problems specific to the modern world?
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  51. The poverty rate in 1959 was 20%.
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  52. That's meaningless statement. For most of human history, people lived in one room huts with a life expectancy of about 25 years old (mostly due to high toddler mortality). If you want to "survive" like that as a family of four, you can do it today too, very easily on one income. In fact, you can do it on one work day a week.
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  53.  @sulmona55  Well it's true a family probably couldn't live on that in the sense such a home wouldn't be available on the market. They've have to "settle" for a higher quality home, but... A tiny house goes about $250 a month. A loaf of bread is about $2. So if you ate half a loaf of bread a day, and rented a tiny house, you would only have to make $310 a month. That would be miserable living but you could easily do it working one day a week. And the Romans worried giving people a loaf of bread a day would turn them idle.
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  54.  @sulmona55  Well my friend leased them for $200 a month about five years ago. I don't know if he still sells them but I adjusted for inflation. I don't think you could fit a family in there, though. They're really for single occupancy.
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  55.  @sulmona55  No, you wouldn't need to figure out where to put it. He rented them like apartments. For $200 a month.
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  56.  @MEE-t2k  As the video said, the median house size today is more than double what it was back then.
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  57.  @MEE-t2k  But if housing was cheaper, why would the median house size be smaller. People get all their information about the 1950s from watching Leave it to Beaver, which was about an upper middle class family. Watch A Raisin in the Sun or Flowers for Algernon to see how the working class used to live.
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  58.  @MEE-t2k  Again, watch A Raisin in the Sun or Flowers for Algernon if you want to see what apartment life was like back in the "good old days." Heck when my mom first moved out she had three roommates and a mushroom growing in the bathroom.
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  59. Thanks!
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  60. "Stupidity is a luxury, at times of unprecedented luxury, we are living with unprecedented stupidity." - Evan Sayet Things were spiritually better but materially worse. I don't think that's a coincidence.
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  61. Why the hell would people being buying smaller houses if they were 10 times cheaper? That makes no sense and you know it. Also, the life expectancy was 65 in 1950, and the poverty rate in 1959 (as the video mentions) was 22%. So what do you mean by "healthcare" and "workers rights" were far better? Do you even know?
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  62.  @nebojsag.5871  Again, the poverty rate was 22%. What kind of economic equality is that? That's more than 1/5th of the country making less than half the median income. That's a huge ass under class. Maybe there were not as many uber-rich, bu there were a lot more uber-poor. Healthcare is more expensive because many of its forms simply didn't exist in the 1950s, hence why the life expectancy was shorter.
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  63. You know what they say about hard times and the men they make...
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  64. The left is onboard with the "1950s were glorious" myth. Read the comments. They want us to believe America had a working class utopia with high taxes on the rich and Reaganomics destroyed it. The Gravel Institute has a video with Mariam Wilson repeating the working hours myth.
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  65. Houses were smaller, the average family spent 30% of their income on food, and the chance of basically anything you can think of (whether a TV, or refrigerator) was lower then. How could that be if people had greater buying power.
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  66. ​ @CP-pg5mg  First off, as the video said, the number of working wives was still substantial in the 1950s, more than half of what it was today. You watch Leave it to Beaver and assume that's how everyone lived. But guess what? The dad in that show had a white collar job for a big company in New York. These days if you have one of those you can support a family on one income too. Also people worked 10 more hours a week on average. But even saying people "could support a family one income" is meaningless, because what constitutes "supporting a family" keeps changing. People "supported families on one income" a thousand years ago. And guess what? Half their kids died before age 4. The reason its hard to "support a family" now is because of healthcare, and the reason healthcare is so expensive is because decades ago, instead of the hospital saving your baby and then sticking you with a huge medical bill, your baby would simply die. Infant mortality it was much higher in the 1950s. You're delusional if you don't think the average American worker today has more Purchasing Power today than he did in the 1950s.
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  67. The people who killed hope are the same ones screaming about how much better the past in, convincing us of lies like "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer."
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  68.  @OTG1776  The dollar is at its lowest value its every been? You believe that? Even though the median house size today is more than double what it was in the 1950s, and the average family spent 30% of their income on food back then, while the average POOR family spends only 12% of their income on food today. Even though the life expectancy was 65 years old? And almost no one had home air conditioning? Do you really believe the average worker today couldn't afford the life style of the average person in the 1950s three times over?
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  69. If housing costs were better back then, why was the median house size so much smaller?
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