Posted on 07/28/2012 3:55:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent with the average family income at $6,000 a year.
Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley's record "Return to Sender" and went to see "Lawrence of Arabia" in movie theaters. At home, "Wagon Train" was the top TV show.
Years later, the film "American Graffiti" featured the ad campaign "Where were you in '62?" Well, I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.
My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.
In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.
Also, we now have close to nine million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about five million. Here's my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?
The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the Nanny State.
Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is now eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of "where's mine" has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edward Winter Group once sang: "Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich "pay their fair share." And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.
Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.
And the second corner is the growth industry.
Contrary to your claim, the length of life has nothing to do with the quality of life.
Our standard of living is much higher now than it was in 1962.
How exactly has the country been in decline?
When did your spaceship arrive from Mars?
Years later, the film “American Graffiti” featured the ad campaign “Where were you in ‘62?”
And not a lot of years either; about 13. Tells you a lot.
Not where I lived. I was married in 1965 and we got a color TV (RCA $500 17") and there were all sorts of color shows on, all of them prefced with the announcement "The following show is brought to you in living color"
In fact color TV was available in 1959 and the brother of a friend of mine bought one for $1000 (inflation adjusted that would be $7885 today)and the color sucked.
No, it isn't.
I was 15, we had moved to the Ozarks from the Intermountain region of the west. We were not from here and the hillbillies hated us as outsiders.
Two weeks later we were handpicking beans in the hottest weather I ever lived in. The standard of living here was low and the CHICKEN MAN had an economic stranglehold on this area. You worked for agricultural poverty wages or you did not work.
There was no air conditioning and I remember hot, hot nights when I would wake up and the sweat would be rolling off me. Days were worse.
Movies were good but we were not allowed to see them, I slipped away and saw KINGS OF THE SUN that year, then EL CID and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.
1956-1966 was not a good time for us.
More freedom?
In 1962 the lowest income tax rate was 20% and the highest was 91%.
The corporate income tax rate was 52%.
Sure there were loopholes and deductions, but the effective tax rate was still much higher than today.
If only...now.
***That’s just as well. TV shows weren’t broadcast in color until 1967,***
Some shows were broadcast in color on NBC before that time. We used to see the NBC peacock come on with the announcer said...”The following program is brought to you in LIVING COLOR!”
I remember one show, ‘THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS”, a spoof on the weekly news in color.
We saw it on our black and white TV.
That’s, “EDGAR Winter Group”.....
Are you sure? LOL!!!
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6BA0BEB38B1FE6A6
Me too. Wombs were safe back then.
Yes, dumba**, more freedom, lots more freedom. You seem to think the only criteria for freedom is more money and more gadgets. As it was, the tax rate went down a few years later. We had freedoms that people who didn’t live back then have never experienced. As I said, you either didn’t live back then or you are a left wingnut troll.
I was also in my mother’s belly. (She preferred the term “mother”, not “momma”).
First, let’s translate that into English:Journalism “was more balanced then."
In reality, journalism was slobbering all over John and Jackie Kennedy in 1962. You couldn’t pass a counter anywhere without being “treated” to a picture of one or the other of them. It was sickening.Bias in journalism didn’t start later, it was in full bloom when we were told that Joe McCarthy was a right wing radical for saying what we now know was an understatement of the communist subversion of the government.
I wasn’t a thought yet - my parents were dating.
Average income in 1962 was 6,000. A family of four deducting average expenses totaling 1200 would pay a tax of about 480 or 8% of gross.
Average income now is about 52k and the same family of four would probably pay 2% of gross. A 6% saving. The 62 rates were followed by decreases in 1964.
However, there are other differences.
Social security tax on the same amount would be 2.5% and today 7.65%. A 5.15% increase.
Sales tax rates are generally higher. In CT the rate increased from 3.5% to 6.3%.
Also, state income tax rates are higher. CT went from 0% to 4-5%.
I did not find info on property tax but my guess is that those are significantly higher.
It is undeniable that the family of four is paying more tax when all things are considered. Another thing to consider is the average family income was met by one person working. Today that same average requires 2 working. It could be argued that the total tax burden needs to be met by two workers per family rather than one.
I was 13 the summer of 1962. We spent our time at the neighbor’s pool, or at the beach slathering on Sea and Ski,one of the only two suntan lotions. Coppertone being the other.
Once a week somebody’s Mom dropped us at the library and we checked out a bunch of books to read.
We also used to get on the city bus and go downtown to shop at the dept store or go to the movie and eat lunch at the counter at Walgreens Drugstore. We always wore dresses and white gloves. The South was still very formal then.
There was almost no AC except in commercial buildings so after dark my dad would turn on the attic fan and by midnight you could stand it enough to drift off to sleep.
There was a drive in movie theatre right next to our neighborhood and one of our neighbors was given a free speaker mounted on a tree in their yard so they wouldn’t go to court about the noise. We used to all gather over there on Sat night and sit on the side lawn and watch the movies for free. I remember seeing all the Troy Donahue movies.
We lived in a very nice neighborhood and had 2 cars. A beater for my Mom to drive to the grocery store and a company car for my Dad. I believe he made about $6,000 per year and we lived frugally but well. It was a good time to be growing up.
In the summer of 1962 I was 17 and working in the alfalfa fields hauling hay. Had just recieved my Soc Sec Number. Fantasized buying myself a new 409 Chevy or 421 Pontiac Ventura hardtop w/4-speed trans. (On $1/hr — right.)
After work would shower and drive my mom’s ‘52 Chevy about 15 miles to visit my girlfriend and listen to her Kingston Trio album collection.
Later, in the middle of the October Missle crisis, met my high school sweetheart. Wondered if we would survive to have a second date.
The problem is the same as that in the arab areas surrounding Israel. The education of several generations of children has been devoted to death hatred for the Jews and CANNOT BE UNDONE short of a hundred years of 19th century colonization on the India pattern.
moonshot925 from post #14: "How exactly has the country been in decline?"
Nice post Mach9, along with several others who expressed similar sentiments.
moonshot925 is correct in the sense that our nation is far wealthier and more powerful today than it was 50 years ago.
If you just consider the IRS's five quintile income categories, every category from lowest to highest is better off today than it was in 1962.
Yes the so-called 1% are much better off, but so are all the other income groups.
Indeed, a clever economist could probably figure out that the lowest quintile in 1962 has virtually disappeared (except for illegal aliens?) and nearly all of us live in what were then the higher income groups.
In the past 50 years far fewer farmers now produce far more food.
Fewer manufacturing workers produce more manufactured products -- yes, much has been off-shored, but we still make ourselves far more today than in 1962.
At the same time, Mach9 and several others have identified what we took for granted back then -- strong work ethics, families, communities, religious affiliations -- which are weaker to nonexistant today.
But there is a much more fundamental difference between then and now, a "forest" sometimes hard to see for all those "trees".
In 1962 each of us had almost no past and nearly infinite futures -- we were then nothing, but could become almost anything according to our abilities and the luck of life's draws.
Today all of us have established pasts, and far less future.
Our lifes' stories are not yet fully written, but we are into the final chapters, and many of us have already done the most important things we will ever do.
We are into the dénouement of retirement.
And so the real question is: if we could rewrite our stories, if we could go back in time, to a time when all the world was young and new, and our futures were infinite in front of us, would we?
Well, of course, but on the other hand, would we really want to relive some of those darker moments of the last 50 years?
As a generation we were educated for the world as understood then.
Today our children & grandchildren are being educated for a different world -- more "multi-cultural" less of "American exceptionalism," more "international government" fewer & fewer constitutional limits on government powers.
Will they be as well prepared (or unprepared?) for their challenges as we were for ours?
Hard to say. In terms of conservative Free Republic values, I don't see how we did a good job of it -- one genuinely conservative President (Ronald Reagan) in 50 years is not so much to brag about.
In 1962 non-defense Federal spending amounted to about 5% of GDP, today it's around 20% -- so what example did we set for our offspring?
Do you remember 1962 as the beginning year of John F Kennedy's 50 mile walk program -- to prove that Young America was still as physically fit as ever?
What are the chances we'd ever see such a thing again today?
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