There are enormous amounts of study on the concept that the above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific point in history by white men was built on the exploitation of other groups. Frequently, people who name that specific point in time as the model for how they would like the world to be are simply unaware of this tradeoff and have no idea that simply reverting society to that point would make it worse for some groups - this is why it gets mentioned when someone says "let's go back to those good times", to educate these people. Less frequently, they already know this and simply don't care, and it's always useful to give this group an opportunity to be explicit about their priorities.

The "above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific point in history" came in the US because Europe was destroyed in WWII, and they got to easily be the world's producer and exporter and dictator of terms for decades. That plus strong unions and growing economy. And the tide also lifted black people with it, that's the era when the civil rights progress was made, for example.

Oh, and Europe also ended up enjoying a similar stability and uplifting economy a few decades later, as the economy recovered there too, without having those other groups to exploit, and even for countries which lost their colonies the decades prior.

>Less frequently, they already know this and simply don't care, and it's always useful to give this group an opportunity to be explicit about their priorities.

I think it's more that people making your argument are with the side of capitalists, and you want to make a bogus argument as if livable wages and job prospects are racist and only feasible when combined with exploitation, to absolve the current neoliberal order as "the best possible world". So they weaselly mark anybody pointing to those things as pinning for the rasist aspects of 1950s/60s too.

Hear, hear!

People that pine for the 50s are def suspicious.

Yes, and anybody who disagrees is literally Hitler. Only the present is glorious in all aspects.

In the United States, if you’re not a white male it probably is. It was also probably pretty good for white women that didn’t want a job and wanted to be a homemaker.

There are changes (systemic and "organic") in the United States that made it worse for everybody, including people that are not white males, while at the same time issues like systemic racial injustices got better.

A vibrant economy and an on the rise domestic production, for example, meant many more working class jobs for everybody, for example, including blacks. Housing and healthcare was more affordable, including for blacks. That's how millions of blacks post-war could enter into middle class, a class that is now squeezed for both blacks and whites.

Amazing, how orthogonal changes can happen in both directions? And that eras are not just defined from a single aspect, and are not just like their mass media caricatures?

That's why facebook allows teenage girls to bully each other into suicide.

Show me the facts and we won't have to agree on sophistry. We used to share the same facts as a society, in the 1950s. Society can't agree on the shape of the earth anymore as a basic fact, and you want to tell me everything is better in all aspects.

> Society can't agree on the shape of the earth anymore as a basic fact

This has always been the case, but it's just more evident now that the Internet makes it easy for you to read the viewpoints of others.

True we don't agree, but that was not required to unify society on authorized facts.

It is very clear what the facts are socially when the State media declares them via TV, newspaper and authority figures. The internet gave endless niches, virality and influence to disagreement.

Right now you can ignore any facts I bring up and continue to spread flat earth as a fact (not saying that's your view), when before that behaviour would have been ostracized socially.

Now I have to adhere to literal meanings or conquer with sophistry to find agreement on factual grounding.

For culture wars, I don't care, do whatever you want. Say the earth is flat.

But for collboration, understanding and finding boundaries, it makes things very difficult and worse than the past.

> It is very clear what the facts are socially when the State media declares them via TV, newspaper and authority figures.

And that left little room for dissenting opinions. Dissenting voices could be silenced easily, without fanfare and awareness by society at large. Now, it's not so easy.

> Right now you can ignore any facts I bring up

Indeed.

> before that behaviour would have been ostracized socially

It's still ostracized, even online. Remember "cancel culture"? That's a characteristic of the digital age. Before the Internet, people were finding their niches regardless. They would do it in secret - in barns, basements, or whatever.

> it makes things very difficult and worse than the past

It also makes collaboration very easy. Never before have we been able to connect our ideas to millions of people around the world.

>And that left little room for dissenting opinions. Dissenting voices could be silenced easily, without fanfare and awareness by society at large. Now, it's not so easy.

I think it's the opposite. Dissenting opinions were more powerful and more coherent, when there was a coherent "establishment" baseline to go against. Now they're lost in the noise.

The 50s and even more so the 60s where much more potent when it come to rebellion and dissent. Between the civil rights movements, black activism like the Black Panthers, the student and youth movement, the feminists, the anti-Vietnam movement and so on, the US was really boiling with dissent.

In 2023 rebellion and dissent is either fringe or is partisan with corporate sponsorship. In either case, it's voice is drown.

Same for the press. In the 50s and 60s and 70s journalists would talk back to power much more poignantly, and publish incredible exposes. Now they're mostly shills who repeat establishment and party talk points, and the independent voices are let go.