It depends on what is being compared. It is a situational thing.
I wouldn’t want to go back. It was not that ‘great’ of a time due to ongoing family issues, etc.
About 10 years ago, I noticed that the local grocery stores stocked watermellons and cantelopes — in December!
When I want to check something out or do a price compare, I search the Internet via browser and get instant results. I live a comfortable life — could want for more, as most people could.
It would have been nice in the late 1960s to have some of the advantages young people had today. My folks didn’t help much went I went to college. There wasn’t much financial aid. I was the first in the family to go and it was difficult because I had to work part time and attend college full time, some years, and the reverse — attend part time and work full time. I still managed to graduate in 3 years and 3 months.
No, I wouldn’t want to go back. I like Netflix and Amazon Prime too much.
Shortly before he died, the great Joseph Sobran suggested the only thing that got much better is the car stereo.
50 years ago our country had not yet legalized the savage murder of millions and millions of pre-born human beings. We also did not have a legal way for perverted men to "marry" other perverted men, or for perverted women to "marry" other perverted women.
You also did not have to worry about censoring every single word that came out of your mouth, lest you get in big trouble with the dictatorial speech and thought police.
I could go on, and on, and on, endlessly, but life was definitely much better 50 years ago, in so many ways.
50 years ago?
Anyone at 18 yrs old, and able to hear thunder and see lightning, could get a good paying job that would support a family.
You could buy full sized Ford 150 4x4 for less than $3K.
Queers hadn’t invented AIDS yet, and were kept in the closet by normal people that beat the piss out of them if they ever got out.
The summer of love was still a couple years away, but I’m here to tell you the girls were Auditioning for the part!
Yeah, life was good!
I wonder how this dork knows all this? Did some college degree know it all tell him? Well then, it must be so then right?
Here is a fact for that dork. Take a look at it for yourselves.
Even in the late 60s, the family structure was still in place-hell, even up to the mid 70s. Take a look at how many children are growing up in single parent homes now. One of the parents worked and provided income for the family while the other stayed mainly at home taking care of the children..and if they got out of line, they got a swat cross the head to correct them.
Then came the mid 70s-around 1975 I saw the change. No respect, the GIMME GIMME GIMME atitude began and parents struggled to adress the loss of respect from all corners of the society. Now, guess who began to get into the education system around that time? It was the stinky filthy lying socialists who had run wild during the late 60s while they were in college, smoking their wacky weed and shooting their drugs, screwing everything that moved, and doing nothing and expecting everything. Those are the ones who infiltrated the schools and began the long slide towards an ignorant soiciety.
“I’m not sure if Mr Gillespie is on the same planet as the rest of us. “
He lives on planet libertarian, where only economic and material issues matter.
In that fashion it’s remarkably similar to its mortal enemy, planet Marx.
They had drive-in movies everywhere in those days. Whenever we see one of the few remaining ones on our trips, my wife bugs me to go to one as they didn't have them where she grew up (England.)
Tv, movies, music were all better in those days.
You would be correct.
It's all perspective and depends upon what aspect of life you're talking about and what you're using to measure it by.
Family was better 50 years ago. The family breakup and breakdown had already begun, but Govco hadn't fully replaced the father then as it has now 50 years later. The crucial process of progressively removing "the Father" in all forms had only just begun.
This unbalanced, brave, new, feminized world, ruled by emotion and the doctrines of Political Correctness, is only made possible in the absence of the Father's stabilizing male energy, which was still with US in abundance 50 years ago.
Americans had a better and longer childhood then than now. Kids were far more sheltered and naive and much less sophisticated until a much older age than today.
Childhood was more outside doing and less inside in a chair in front of a screen then than now.
VCRs, DVDs, cell phones and video games hadn't been invented yet. While they might have been nice to have, high tech baby sitters weren't required in those times as they are now in these.
Basic education was better across the board, though by the early 60s, from what I remember my WWI veteran grandpa saying and complaining about, it was in the beginning of the now steady decline.
On the bad, white America still hadn't fully adjusted to black America 50 years ago.
After a strong kick in the pants, given by necessity in our society's effort to survive WWII, our progress toward the mutual acceptance and affection between the white and the black, as Christians are to profess for one another, returned to being halting and painfully slow.
For US, living our ideals day to day, being and living as though all truly have been created equal, even those who aren't "_____" like me, has been a slow, generation by generation evolution of consciousness.
We're better now than we used to be, but we are still sick with division.
The sense is that we are being kept this way, in division and grievances, as though we are in a higher level or form of psychological slavery, and that our division and grievances benefit the keepers.
Our GovCo mandated educational system has an indoctrinational-feel to it these days and it seems to be designed to service and perpetuate this psychological slavery.
Richer? Our affluence, such as it is, doesn't have the look or feel of say... a healthy, prosperous, working family farm.
Instead, it looks and feels more like the kids partying hearty through, and being cheated out of, their inheritance after the parents died.
Our affluence is eating the seed corn while slowly selling off the family farm, acre by acre and whatever's in the barn.
Speaking of working, 50 years ago there were jobs for kids to do after school to go along with sports and playing games. Anything from a paper-route to working in a store, restaurant or gas station to whatever.
Today, just put a lemonade stand by the side walk in front of your house and the city will warn you, fine you and shut you down.
I've got to stop thinking about this. It's depressing.
Unless Jesus comes back and rattles some hearts, I can't think of a way back to the good aspects of then. And, on too many days these days, I doubt our being able to maintain the good of now.
Oh well...hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
God gave US a beautiful day today and I'm going to enjoy it!
50 years ago today? Probably only had the start of baseball season in my mind.
Smart phones don’t make for smart people.
Today half the country and 99% of FedGov embraces it.
Fifty years ago MLB was mostly played in the daytime. There were no Sales Taxes. Candy bars were 5 cents, and with a Dollar a child could buy a pack of cigarettes, a quart of milk, a newspaper, a candy bar, a comic book, and still have change.My mom used to send me to the store often enough.
Little League had real cotton (burlap like) uniforms just like the Majors. The letters DH meant doubleheader, and they had a few every season. I saw my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park and the ticket cost me $.0.75, for 2 games with open seating. A Buck at McDonald's could feed 3 or 4 kids.
Cartoons were Saturday morning and Church was on Sunday, and almost everybody went.
You could travel from any place in the city (metro area) for a Dime.
Everything went bad when the price of a candy bar went to 10 cents.
You also didn't hear of any cases of "thumbitis" back then, caused by people's obsessive addiction to non-stop texting.
Before the commi-hippie-feminazi-faggot-NEA-Wlater Cronkite-warped 1960’s, and the corn syrup-laced American diet, it was definitely much better.
Kids played safely on their own, and were disciplined by a public with a common morality. One wasn’t assaulted for speaking their mind honestly. Women and girls weren’t cursing, tattooed sluts. Men and boys knew they had to work to get, and that queer was queer.
Boys played outside using their leg and arm muscles, not in a basement using just their thumbs. Families included fathers. On Sundays stores were closed and you did home and family activities. TV went off at midnight, and you went to bed by then; and broadcasters were held to moral standards.
Yeah, there was discrimination then — that’s how life’s decisions are made, all day every day. ‘Discriminating taste’ used to be held in esteem. And self-esteem was earned, not handed out for free.
America has not progressed socially. Technically, yes. Socially, no. We’ve regressed.
Fifty years ago I was in my teens. With the exception of the communist country’s the world was much better off. While not as advanced materially, we were more moral and just. And individuals, in the vast majority, took responsibility for their actions. Manners were better and people were much more decent towards each other. Regardless of race or faith. Yes there was segregation, but it was on its way out. Not because of fear or coercion but but because people knew it was wrong.
Take some of the medical advances since then that benefited the vast majority of the American public - the polio vaccine for instance - and around half of the Internet-related stuff (IE; tech that isn’t just used to make adult toys like Ipads or Xboxes) and you’d pretty much have all that we’ve really done to make progress.
An 8th grade education beats a good many highschool ‘graduates’ now, jobs are far rarer and pay poorer when you account for inflation, our native birthrate has been in a flaming nosedive for decades and our moral base is falling apart at the seams.
Our lives are easier in a few material aspects and those have come at a serious cost. Personally, I’m a massive techie and have been since I was a kid...but I’ve watched nearly everything I knew and loved and grew up with in the 90’s be thrown by the wayside or deliberately destroyed. What’s replaced it has been in no way better and rarely even equal.