Replies

Somehow it seems that one of you started by posting something about the 1950s and 1960s and then the other started talking about 1943. I was born in 1944 so I have only very limited memories of the very late 1940s but I have no doubt things were very tough then, especially during the war years, but things were much better in this area by the mid 1950s. There are many aspects of life in the mid 1950s that I think were better than today but I certainly would not want to go back to the 1940s.

Somehow it seems that one of you started by posting something about the 1950s and 1960s and then the other started talking about 1943. I was born in 1944 so I have only very limited memories of the very late 1940s but I have no doubt things were very tough then, especially during the war years, but things were much better in this area by the mid 1950s. There are many aspects of life in the mid 1950s that I think were better than today but I certainly would not want to go back to the 1940s.

I was born in 1966 but being the armchair historian that I am, the problems in the late 1940's was a transition from a wartime 24/7 economy back to a standard peacetime economy and it was painful with all the GI's being mustered out to where they had to go back to their old jobs, housing was at a premium leading to suburbia and so on. It is like taking a car and throwing it from reverse to drive without stopping. I have an old 1944 magazine where even at that time, there was talk about making a few civilian products, although they had to be approved by the government for what and how much, because even in 1944 there was a light atthe end of the tunnel for World War II, at least for Europe as D-Day progressed.

I was answering questions in my post. I am older than you but we did well in the 40's. If a TV doesn't exist you don't miss it. If they aren't making any cars you can't buy one. If you or some of he family owned a farm you did not go hungry and you did what was known at the time. I knew many people that were very poor but did not suffer to the extreme. it seems to me things have gotten progressively better as we go along but people are trained to be more dissatisfied. The poor today would have seem rich to most in the 40,s. We had less than 139 million population then and today we have more than double. Than in itself is a big change. I saw marked change starting at about 1948 and it has only gotten better in material goods. I have never been unhappy in any era nor have I ever considered the economy to be anyones fault. Its a joint effort. I am just happy to be here.