Because back then people earned their standard of living. Now the gummint gives it to half of them every month. A family on perpetual welfare today has a higher standard of living than our family did in 1962. We had BW TV, one radio, one phone, a record player, no AC. We just got our first car in 1960.
And now people demand it and we hand it to them out of our own pockets.
It's an attitude decline, not a material decline.
“It’s an attitude decline, not a material decline.”
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I basically agree and yet on the material side I have to consider the following things. My father was a poor carpenter yet we had forty acres of our own land, we ate mostly farm fresh food, believe me the fried chicken we had was vastly better than what is available now, so was the home killed and butchered pork. We did without a lot of things simply because my parents would not borrow money. If you had two thousand dollars in the bank then you had the price of a low end new car. How much is that today? People who said they had no money often had the price of several new cars in the bank and owned a house and a hundred acres or more without debt. Most of those I know who seem to be better off today have very little or even a negative net worth. A lot of what we have today simply did not exist back then but even if people tried to live with only what was available then how many carpenters with a stay at home wife can raise four sons on forty acres in the country now?
It really isn’t a simple comparison is it?