Unemployment ranged from 5.40% to 10.4% in the 80s and is 4.2% now. Only the last few yeas of the 60s had lower unemployment than 2021. In 1960 people spend 24% of their income on food, vs 8.6% today. And for most Americans the food was FAR worse in 1960s, cold chain and logistics improvements mean that average Americans have access regularly to foods that were luxuries in 1980.
> nicer looking cars
Those cars were death traps. There were twice as many fatalities per 100k Americans in 1960 vs today with fewer people driving fewer miles per capita.
> more sustainable lifestyle
The US of the 60s and 70s was so choked by smog and industrial pollution that Nixon created the EPA. Cars now get 2x the mpg vs 1960. Forrest coverage was lower, and numerous species that have now recovered were going extinct, like the bald eagle.
> better off middle class
The middle class wasn't better off, it was larger. The poverty rate in 2017 was half of what it was in 1960. And since 1960 many families have moved from the middle income quintile to one of the top quintiles. The middle class in the US didn't disappear into poverty, most of it just became more wealthy.
The 1960s sucked, there was political upheaval, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile crisis, global spanning totalitarianism, frequent political assassinations, Jim Crow, and on and on.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Its-Better-Than-Looks-Optimism/dp/161...
That's because of an increasing number of magic tricks the neoliberal governments (which includes both Rep and Dem, and any major party in Europe on the last 30+ years) have agreed on to make it appear so. Makes them appear as having done their job (no pun intended).
Things like not counting people giving up on job hunting, and especially avoiding any qualitative comparison, and counting any kind of shitty precarious non-job as a job. Hell, if it isn't the case already, I'm pretty sure "Uber Driver" and "Amazon Mechanical Turk signee" will also sure count towards reduced unemployment.
>The US of the 60s and 70s was so choked by smog and industrial pollution
Yes. And still the US had less CO2 production, less plastic waste, and more sustainable lifestyle.
You're taking a by-product of 1970s car exhausts as if it's a permanent given.
We could go back to 1960 levels CO2 production, less consumption (e.g. no fast fashion, less fast food) and so on. And we could do it without giving up modern exhausts, hybrids, and electric cars.
>Forrest coverage was lower, and numerous species that have now recovered were going extinct, like the bald eagle.
2022 really doesn't want to start an argument about extinguished species with the 1960s.
>The 1960s sucked
Not the experience of most who lived through them and herald them as a great age, or even many who didn't live them, and still consider them so.
>there was political upheaval
Far better, more progressive, and forward looking political upheaval than in the last 10 years...
>the Cold War, the Cuban Missile crisis, global spanning totalitarianism, frequent political assassinations
So, business as usual. Though I'm not sure what bearing exactly the have in this conversation. We can have the positive things I've mentioned about the 60s (which were about levels of employment, consumption, sustainability, etc.) without the "cuban missile crisis" and "frequent political assassination" and so on. Those are historical incidents. The things I pointed at are things we can adopt or not.
>Jim Crow, and on and on.
The 60s was the era that got rid of the last of Jim Crow laws.
This is frankly, an absurdly ridiculous comparison. Pittsburgh and Lorain, Ohio, where I had relatives working in the steel mills were completely choked out by smog/industrial pollution. The sky routinely glowed orange as in a volcanic eruption or the Great Day of Orange during the wild fires in the Bay Area! Everything and everyone was covered in soot. Buildings turned black. My old landlord's personal entertainment as a kid was watching dump trucks pour slag onto heaps - watching the molten embers cascade. People heated their houses with coal, which was dumped directly into their basements. Houses in Pittsburgh from that era have a lone, unenclosed toilet and often shower in their unfinished basements (Pittsburgh potty), so the workers could hose down without ruining their house. Rivers were treated as interstate highways at best - the Cuyahoga caught on fire for the Nth time in Cleveland (the EPA is created in the 1970s). Loads of kids routinely died from now treatable diseases! It was just a routine part of life. Cities were violent. Police just shot fleeing suspects in the back! 1973 saw multiple bombings daily. Police stations being bombed was so quotidian, it didn't even make the front page!
[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/pr/2010_fdr_preli...
Not really relevant to the claim, is it? 1880 England cities were also filled with coal smoke, but still had less CO2 production...
Locally? Probably not. As a nation, sure. More importantly though, their quality of life was terrible.
The BLS has been measuring the unemployment rate the same way since 1940.
> Yes. And still the US had less CO2 production, less plastic waste, and more sustainable lifestyle.
You're taking a by-product of 1970s car exhausts as if it's a permanent given.
The was more of almost every type of type of non C02 industrial pollutant. There was acid rain, and we were punching a hole in the ozone with refrigerants. Pesticides in use then were far more toxic to people and wildlife. Asbestos was everywhere, and lead was in everything.
We could certainly consume fewer disposable things, but the tradeoff is that being poor today affords people a far higher material standard of living than in 1960 by literally any metric.
> Yes. And still the US had less CO2 production
This is almost entirely solvable over the next few decades.
> 2022 really doesn't want to start an argument about extinguished species with the 1960s.
You could and you'd find that numerous large charismatic species on the verge of extinction by the mid 70s have recovered in much of the world. The US has become so rich that we're re-wilding and re-introducing displaced species. The rest of the world could follow.
> Far better, more progressive, and forward looking political upheaval than in the last 10 years...
We started a drug war and the expansion of the carceral state in the late 60s[1]. MLK, JFK, RFK, and Malcom X were all assassinated so I wouldn't call that progressive upheaval. And the progressive upheaval caused by the likes of The Weather Underground or the SLA is hardly impressive.
> Those are historical incidents
Everyone living under the constant threat of nuclear holocaust was kind of a wer blanket.
> The 60s was the era that got rid of the last of Jim Crow laws.
By the end, and replaced it with a drug war.
In the 60s crime was higher, material wealth was less plentiful, more people lived in poverty, life expectancy was shorter, and most people in society had few options. Localized environmental pollution was worse. Cars were far less safe, and mortality by all causes was higher.
> Not the experience of most who lived through them and herald them as a great age
Nostalgia does that to people, but basically all objective measures of life quality were worse.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
Men in their 30s and 40s commonly having debilitating heart attacks with few options? No thanks.
Also the 1960s was full of smoky offices and literal poison leaded gas fumes in everyone's blood stream. Gross
It is, if we measure it against the average (or even worst) of the past (and go quite far back), and also include things like slavery, etc. as if they are non-separable parts of the past, and not something we could have skipped even in the past (and many places did).
>My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better.
Is it? I'd take the 60's or 80's any day - less rat racy, easier employment, more value for your money, more optimism, less wage inequality, better off middle class, less surveillance, less bureucracy, more relaxed life, and so on. Also a better top-10 and nicer looking cars. And I (and perhaps others) would also gladly take fewer modern technology items over a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle.
I don't consider things like some improved smart fridge, or smart bulbs, or a car GPS and mobile phone much of a quality of life improvement. If anything, some of those are net negatives.
And things that have been worse, e.g. seggregation, they were not "1960s didn't have advance technology to avoid that", they're just cultural choices. We often mix these two ups, like we couldn't have, say, 1980 living, technology, etc. AND gay rights.