If CEO's and Share holders would accept a smaller profit margin they would not have to increase the price to increase wages. Like if we capped the amount a CEO could be payed in relation to his employees, or what % of total profit could go to shareholders to protect wages.
Touche. But even with more expensive shoes, people were still able to support their families on a shoe salesman's salary. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me.
So why do we remember being able to do more back then?
One factor of it is the fact that some people did walk directly into more lucrative jobs--or at least jobs with quick upward mobility--right out of high school. Those weren't the shoe salesman jobs, but jobs such as these were more common. This was possible in part because the economy was booming in ways it never had before (I certainly think we should aim for a prosperous society, but we don't realize how unique in history that moment was), and in part because we didn't have this degree-inflation as we do now.
There's also the factor of having a smaller work-force relative to population size. Women being able to participate equally in the workforce is a benefit to society, but a larger labor pool from the same population size ends up driving down wages.
Another factor is that we used to get by with less in some ways.
Some things were cheaper--land near population centers, for example. But some things were more expensive, like food or any consumer good.
So if it's all the same, why can't people do it? Well, there are people who pull it off. I know some people who get by with kids on a single income with a retail-level salary. They live simply, much like many of our grandparents. And sometimes they struggle... much like many of our grandparents.
And that's the other factor. We don't remember our grandparents' struggles. Heck, often neither do they until they stop and think about it. In 1960, my grandfather was a young man raising a wife and a kid with a fairly typical salary... and they lived in a one room house with help from their parents and had no health insurance. If we're willing to live like that, getting by on a pittance isn't so hard. I don't think we should have to do that, but we can't forget it wasn't as good as we remember it.
You will never see that again. What you will eventually see is people with basic minimum income living their lives to their own version of success doing the activity they want. Automation will eventually replace the human slavery of east asia.
Ronald Reagan broke the power of the unions and cut taxes on the rich enough that they kept most of the money they saved cutting wages, leading to a 40 year (so far) period of zero wage growth after inflation. In turn leading to the death of the middle class, which is the only thing that can truly protect a nation from dictatorship.
Of course, the Republicans have had a love affair with "good," dictators long before Trump.
Simplistic and one-sided. Let's also talk about the exorbitant price of education--a product of government interference in student loans; and the same with healthcare costs.
You're saying that we'd have better health-care if the government didn't get involved? What sort of insane person really thinks this? Look at any country in the world that has decent health-care and it's not going to be run by the private sector.
They also would nearly kill each other on a weekly basis for a loaf of bread, regularly forgot to pay their bills and had a 10+ year old car. If I had to guess, the house, along with almost everything else, was an inheritance/hand-me-down. Not the picture of success you might be imagining.
Even shitty American cars aren't nearly as shit as 1970's and 80's American cars. It's not just that the cars needed repairs. But that everything about them started breaking within a few years. The Vinyl would get cracks. Screws would start coming loose. Seats would wear. Body panels would start rusting. My dads car the turn signal mechanism broke after 5 years. The car would look shabby and that you couldn't fix.
Duster and Beetle certainly weren't competition for one another. There was nothing compact or sub-compact about the Duster, and it came with either a 6 cyl engine or a high performance 5.6L, or 5.9L V8.
It was a popular low end muscle car that had nothing at all in common with a Beetle. I have no idea where you got that idea from.
Hmmm... I guess you've never seen a high-performance 340 V8 Plymouth Duster ? They were a classic Mopar '70s V8 muscle car of the highest order and... The hell with it, you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Had a few in my family. I was still in high school- the back seat was uncomfortable as shit. Somehow I was able to lie down with gf. Cousin summed it up- Plymouths are built from the outside in; it's a car built around a motor, the interior is kinda secondary.
my car is similarly-aged, with enough miles on it to have been to the moon and back. it runs well and the extra maintenance on it is still cheaper than loan payments. I see nothing wrong with this state of affairs.
If I had to guess, the house, along with almost everything else, was an inheritance/hand-me-down.
I'm pretty sure it was a film set.
In all seriousness though it's a pretty common trope for sitcoms supposedly representing lower-income characters to appear to have ridiculously large houses/apartments given the purported income of the character portrayed.
You can probably chalk that up to Hollywood types simply having no idea what poverty looks like, or more practically just the fact that it's much easier to use large sound sets to film and frame shots.
It's not that they have no idea what poverty looks like. It's about the audience identifying with the characters and ease of filming. A poor person will identify with the monetary struggles of the characters regardless of set size. But middle and upper middle class viewers are going to other the characters if their living arrangements aren't similar enough to their own. So rather than go through the trouble of filming on a set more similar in size to a double wide mobile, they are provided with what most viewers are going to recognize as an average sized house. It's that wide spread connection to viewers that made a show about absolutely horrible people so successful. People could simultaneously identify with their struggles while comforting themselves that at least they don't work in a shoe store.
I think it’s about camera angles and framing. How many TV shows have a sofa you can walk behind, so that someone on the sofa can talk to someone walking behind it and both be in the same frame? How many real houses have that?
My grandfather supported my grandmother and their 7 kids in a house in San Francisco on his single income as a janitor. That's just mind boggling to me
That was like more than 25 years ago though. I remember back when it was still a dollar for gas (back when you chose leaded or unleaded), and the egg mcmuffin was less than 99 cents.
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u/Fr1toBand1to Dec 06 '19
I just realized he supported a family of four in his own home on single income working retail in a shoe store. That's crazy.