America was much better before the rampant acceptance of obscenities in day to day life. Now we have presidential candidates using terms like Harris “effn”, Trump “p**y” Walz “ “g-d damn it”.

Not to mention rampant sexploitation in the entertainment industry.

I don’t think Vance at least has publicly cursed, but I could be wrong.

Of course there are outliers but statistics show kid’s fare much better in 2 parent households.

Hey everyone, in 1950, the average new home was 983 square feet. Most Americans lived in a one bathroom house. About 1/3 of homes still did not have indoor plumbing in 1950.

Just so you know!

Instead of thinking of countries in terms "time", maybe we should think of them in terms of "space". There are many countries in the world and we could argue that some are "greater" than others in various ways (and where they are located and their resources and how they use them have much to do with this). So given that time cannot be turned back (all of the technology is only going to progress and the competition in this area cannot be denied), it is unrealistic to think that things will be the same going forward. But how can we use our space/resources and the knowledge we have to create better living conditions? How can we help the world to live better (which is the moral high ground)? Only thinking about this from a transactional viewpoint may not be the best paradigm. This is what we need to discuss. We were fortunate to have many advantages stemming from our victory in WW2 in the past. It kept us prosperous (which doesn't mean that certain groups within the country were, but as a whole we had good roads, schools, healthcare, etc.). We did not have starvation or civil war, etc. In a competitive world we need to find ways to keep our relative prosperity and stability.

Anonymous wrote:America was much better when most children were raised in functional nuclear families.

White children you mean.

And you assume that all nuclear families are functional. Making it legally and practically impossible for women to leave bad marriages doesn’t mean the kids who grew up in those families and the women who were trapped in bad situations had it great. Ask Gen X.

Anonymous wrote:1959-1998. All nations enter decline. The US has been there for quite some time now.

Yeah. Let’s look at 1959 to 1998. We had Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We also had the first Gulf War. Nixon was freezing wages and prices and 15%+ mortgage rates. The highest marginal tax rate was 90%. There were long lines for has, and in some places you could only get gas every other day.

In many cases, women could not: get abortions (hospitals had septic wards), get birth control unless married, get credit cards or bank accounts without a spouse’s okay, buy a house in their name, perform many jobs or attend many colleges. They could legally be fired for being pregnant. They could legally be paid less for doing the same job as a man, because it was assumed they were married to a man able to provide. They couldn’t leave abusive marriage because they could support themselves and their kids and we had no fault divorce.

LGBTQ people were expected to stay in the closet and stay quiet. AIDS was spreading like wildfire and Reagan was fine with that.

The south was fighting desegregation with everything they could and we had poll taxes. They could buy homes in certain neighborhoods Many Black citizens couldn’t vote and discrimination based on race, religion, sex, ethnicity was legal in hiring.

I’m later Gen X. I’m sure it was a great time to be a straight white male with bone spurs or educational deferrals from Vietnam. Not so much for everyone else. Straight white men could be Masters of the Universe, treat everyone else poorly and legally discriminate. They were handed the best jobs and educational opportunities without having to compete. They could drop the N would and call openly call women b**ches and it was fine.

We were not at Peace. The economy was not amazing, the government taxed the wealthy at insanely high rates to do things like support state colleges and build infrastructure (which the opposite of MAGA) and everyone who wasn’t a straight white male and the ability to avoid the draft got shafted/ was legally a second class citizen. MAGA!

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Anonymous wrote:I'm always suprized some liberals think insulting another person's rose-colored dream is a winning tact. effectively you are pointing out that life is horrible now and always was horrible. why do you think this vision will move anybody in a useful direction? why not acknowledge that there were some good things for some people in the past? wouldn't that be more balanced, more honest,
m

The good things were mostly for white males. The goal is to try to make it for all people. And that is where the GOP white male grievance comes in. They cannot fathom sharing the pie.

Especially when they didn’t deserve the pie to begin with. If you genuinely believed in the best person for the job or the smartest getting into the Ivies, Dubya and Trump and countless other white males, would be the ones working in slaughterhouses and landscaping

What about Bill Clinton? What about Harry Truman? What about Barrack Obama? What about Jimmy Carter? Your post is ignorant.

Which one of those presidents came from a wealthy, privileged, connected family? Thanks for answering.

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Anonymous wrote:1950s through the 1980s.

DP, i'd extend it to late 90s with the expansion of IT until the end of the dotcom era. When you're the country with a manufacturing base that wasn't destroyed by war you have a huge advantage.

So you think the 1950's were good for non whites in the US then?

Yep, things got better, you had the great migration, brown vs board of ed, and lots of manufacturing jobs were provided! US dominance post war of manufacturing plus a strong military meant lots of job job jobs! Strong unions too.

Do you think women were equal then?

Women and men will never be equal. Viva la difference! They have complementary traits. Plus not having to slave away to some boss in an office has benefits.

Do you know what the tax rates were in the 1950's-1980?

Almost no one paid those taxes on a personal level. On the other hand corporate tax policy did mean that companies gave more benefits to employees and there was more investment in technology. Look at Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, or IBM Research Labs which were in part a result of tax policy.

Do you know how much the Dow grew in the late 1950's to early 1970's?

PE ratio expansion isn't exactly a great thing. On the otherhand if you were a dividend investor, you were fine.

If you think that post war era was so great, you are looking at it through a very narrow lens.

Not at all!

Today we have lousy work life ballance, an economy based off intangibles that can easily be disrupted, a (legally) drugged up population, tons of neighbors who are isolated from one another with no sense of community, and if you are a service worker, lousy job prospects with poor benefits.

but we have iphones and LGBT acceptance so i guess its a fair tradeoff.

LOL at your flippant answer that the 1950s were so great because "things got better" for black Americans. Was just reading a review about a new book about Emmitt Till's murder. Ask your black friends and family members if they remember the 1950s fondly, when they had to act subservient, couldn't move into certain areas, couldn't get certain jobs or get into certain schools, and where representations of black Americans in movies were all painful stereotypes.

And would you really, as a woman, go back to a time where casual sexism was rampant, where you'd have been asked to leave jobs if you got married or had children, where it wasn't illegal to pay you way less than your male colleagues for the same job, where you couldn't take out a mortgage or get a credit card without having a male co-sign? I hear you that you want to be a SAHM who is expected to wait hand and foot on your husband and children - fine. No one is stopping you from doing that now.

Also, regarding your last sentence, why would you want to live in an era where your gay friends and family had to suppress themselves or risk being jailed for loving someone??? Yikes.

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Anonymous wrote:Asking MAGAs honestly - please describe when America was “great” and what you want “again”. Thank you.

1980’s. Silicon Valley was crating innovation without own children

Business would hire US citizens and train them

College grads could find entry leve jobs and afford a house in 5 years of saving

It was immoral to fire someone and replace them with cheap temporary foreign worker

So what policies are Trump proposing to get us there? Because tariffs and deporting migrant workers won't.

Clearly all Trump supporters and other republicans are avoiding this thread, so they aren't here to answer your question.

My take is those two are exactly what maga want. IME, aside from the nazis, the other maga are people who feel they and their kids can't compete today. The Democrats should take heed and try to take some of the edge off what we used to call 'globalism' in the 80s.

The Democrats passed the CHIPs Act, which is materially bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. This is already in process.

Except the government got involved, overspent billions per usual and Intel flopped. The chips act is already an object failure.

the word you are looking for is abject and no, it isn't. It will take a decade to see the full results.

Google Intel and go to the news section. Just yesterday this headline came from WSJ: “How Intel Fell From Global Chip Champion to Takeover Target.”

Last week Qualcomm approached it about a takeover. Intel won’t be around in 10 years.

And Qualcomm is and will be in a much better position to take advantage of the CHIPs program. Ask me how I know.

+1

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Anonymous wrote:America was much better when most children were raised in functional nuclear families.

Please define “functional “.

Defining “better” would be great, too, but let’s start with “functional”.
Quite a lot of what used to look functional on the surface involved alcohol, cigarettes, what now would be viewed as abusive behavior, and laws and social conventions that made it extremely difficult for women to leave highly problematic marriages.
So many biographies from children who survived supposedly “functional nuclear families” — and those are just the stories that got published.

You’ve made important points. Those families weren’t perfect, yet their children became adults who could read and write.

Anonymous wrote:MAGAs will never accept that their antiquated worldview is what will kill America. A bunch of myopic goons listening to Trump tell them how wonderful America will be under him. Telling coal miners coal will come back. Meanwhile, he didn't do sh*t about infrastructure as other countries (full of non-whites) appear to be investing in their futures while this one is full of psychos making 10yo leave their state to get an abortion and thinking some trans athlete is their biggest problem. I'm absolutely against trans competing in sports that give them a biological advantage, but that sure as hell no where near the top of my list of priorities.

Trump's policies are poor, but he is pointing out a number of flaws. If you invest strongly in America, you have a strong manufacturing base, you have domestic energy production, then you won't suffer as badly against global competitors

It's a pretty easy message that other less damaged politicians could run on and implement. Both parties should focus on that stuff first, and foreign adventures and social issues can be worried about later.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm always suprized some liberals think insulting another person's rose-colored dream is a winning tact. effectively you are pointing out that life is horrible now and always was horrible. why do you think this vision will move anybody in a useful direction? why not acknowledge that there were some good things for some people in the past? wouldn't that be more balanced, more honest,
m

"Liberals" insult other people's rose-colored dream? The MAGA creed that they want to go back to the past is pooping all over many "liberals" rose-colored dream of equal treatment and respect for all people. How about that shite?

This whole post goes to show that there is good and bad in every time. For every thing you find from the past that was positive, we can find a dark underbelly or point out a group for which that time was horrible. That is NOT saying everything is horrible all the time. It is pointing out an unfortunate fact of human existence, that there is always a mix of good and bad. That there are always upsides and downsides to every thing. And whenever humans try to make things better, there are always some bad actors who try to take advantage and ruin it for everyone else for their own benefit.

The MAGA dream of "make America great again" is truly just an imaginary cherry-picking of things to benefit mainly white Americans or address white male grievances that they cannot say and do whatever they want without consequence. It's not really about making America ideal. So stop trying to pretend it's anything else.

Or it's a time when the middle class was strong.

You all are so obsessed about social equality that you ignore the real economic problems that are the result of giving away our economy and self sufficiency.

Hunger Trump's social issues.

the middle class was strong in the 1950's and 60's when unions were strong and the marginal tax rates for the top 20% was over 50%.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm always suprized some liberals think insulting another person's rose-colored dream is a winning tact. effectively you are pointing out that life is horrible now and always was horrible. why do you think this vision will move anybody in a useful direction? why not acknowledge that there were some good things for some people in the past? wouldn't that be more balanced, more honest,
m

The good things were mostly for white males. The goal is to try to make it for all people. And that is where the GOP white male grievance comes in. They cannot fathom sharing the pie.

Especially when they didn’t deserve the pie to begin with. If you genuinely believed in the best person for the job or the smartest getting into the Ivies, Dubya and Trump and countless other white males, would be the ones working in slaughterhouses and landscaping

What about Bill Clinton? What about Harry Truman? What about Barrack Obama? What about Jimmy Carter? Your post is ignorant.

Jesus, you guys really are embarrassingly dumb. No wonder Trump appeals to you.

Explain please - what's so dumb about citing 4 presidents (against your two) that had nothing handed to them?

Seriously? I have to further explain the point? The whole point of being a MAGA/right-winger is telling yourself "Affirmative Action" and "DEI" (and all of the other racist buzzwords used to diminish the accomplishments of predominantly non-whites), is how anyone non-white gets ahead. Meanwhile, you have complete idiots handed everything to them or you simply ignore how dumb they are (like Palin and her 6 years/5 mediocre colleges to get a BA in communications) and pretend they deserve to be president or VP or heading up Fortune 500 companies.

The four presidents mentioned all earned what they have. This isn't about saying NO white males/females deserve to be in positions in power, it's the audacity on the right to shriek "DEI" when you vote for clowns handed everything and who had no business being accepted to the schools they got into. I don't understand how you people can't see your glaring hypocrisy when it comes to meritocracy.

ok, we agree. But you only mentioned the two didn't to make your earlier point, which was why I asked.

My apologies. I should've been clearer. It's just galling to me listening to right-wing hypocrites pretend they care about "the best (wo)man for the job" and then try to tell me people who never had to earn what they have (all of whom are white), deserve what they have. No, Bush never deserved to be at Yale or HBS, so why are they so obsessed with some black kid with a 3.8 getting in, but ignoring the white legacy with the 2.0 (if that)? The instinct of the right-wing to believe anyone non-white got handed their place at a university or on the SC, is why I'm disgusted by them.

MAGAs will never accept that their antiquated worldview is what will kill America. A bunch of myopic goons listening to Trump tell them how wonderful America will be under him. Telling coal miners coal will come back. Meanwhile, he didn't do sh*t about infrastructure as other countries (full of non-whites) appear to be investing in their futures while this one is full of psychos making 10yo leave their state to get an abortion and thinking some trans athlete is their biggest problem. I'm absolutely against trans competing in sports that give them a biological advantage, but that sure as hell no where near the top of my list of priorities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asking MAGAs honestly - please describe when America was “great” and what you want “again”. Thank you.

1980’s. Silicon Valley was crating innovation without own children

Business would hire US citizens and train them

College grads could find entry leve jobs and afford a house in 5 years of saving

It was immoral to fire someone and replace them with cheap temporary foreign worker

So what policies are Trump proposing to get us there? Because tariffs and deporting migrant workers won't.

Clearly all Trump supporters and other republicans are avoiding this thread, so they aren't here to answer your question.

My take is those two are exactly what maga want. IME, aside from the nazis, the other maga are people who feel they and their kids can't compete today. The Democrats should take heed and try to take some of the edge off what we used to call 'globalism' in the 80s.

The Democrats passed the CHIPs Act, which is materially bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. This is already in process.

Except the government got involved, overspent billions per usual and Intel flopped. The chips act is already an object failure.

the word you are looking for is abject and no, it isn't. It will take a decade to see the full results.

Google Intel and go to the news section. Just yesterday this headline came from WSJ: “How Intel Fell From Global Chip Champion to Takeover Target.”

Last week Qualcomm approached it about a takeover. Intel won’t be around in 10 years.

And Qualcomm is and will be in a much better position to take advantage of the CHIPs program. Ask me how I know.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm always suprized some liberals think insulting another person's rose-colored dream is a winning tact. effectively you are pointing out that life is horrible now and always was horrible. why do you think this vision will move anybody in a useful direction? why not acknowledge that there were some good things for some people in the past? wouldn't that be more balanced, more honest,
m

The good things were mostly for white males. The goal is to try to make it for all people. And that is where the GOP white male grievance comes in. They cannot fathom sharing the pie.

Especially when they didn’t deserve the pie to begin with. If you genuinely believed in the best person for the job or the smartest getting into the Ivies, Dubya and Trump and countless other white males, would be the ones working in slaughterhouses and landscaping

What about Bill Clinton? What about Harry Truman? What about Barrack Obama? What about Jimmy Carter? Your post is ignorant.

Jesus, you guys really are embarrassingly dumb. No wonder Trump appeals to you.

Explain please - what's so dumb about citing 4 presidents (against your two) that had nothing handed to them?

Seriously? I have to further explain the point? The whole point of being a MAGA/right-winger is telling yourself "Affirmative Action" and "DEI" (and all of the other racist buzzwords used to diminish the accomplishments of predominantly non-whites), is how anyone non-white gets ahead. Meanwhile, you have complete idiots handed everything to them or you simply ignore how dumb they are (like Palin and her 6 years/5 mediocre colleges to get a BA in communications) and pretend they deserve to be president or VP or heading up Fortune 500 companies.

The four presidents mentioned all earned what they have. This isn't about saying NO white males/females deserve to be in positions in power, it's the audacity on the right to shriek "DEI" when you vote for clowns handed everything and who had no business being accepted to the schools they got into. I don't understand how you people can't see your glaring hypocrisy when it comes to meritocracy.

ok, we agree. But you only mentioned the two didn't to make your earlier point, which was why I asked.