I agree with you on a lot of this, but I suspect that people have been bitching about storage space since about five seconds after they harvested the first corn crop.
Definitely. I especially wish top hats and monocles were back in fashion. 
I agree. The fact that consumer goods were more expensive doesn’t detract from the fact that people lived more simply and still managed to be happy. I think simple living has numerous benefits.
Right. I like the fact that people don’t dress up all the time like they used to, but I also appreciate that more limited choices in clothing means people put more thought into what they look like.
I just wanted to post something my grandmother told me, forty years ago when I was still a teenager.
She said she didn’t believe in the concept of “The good old days” and that friends and relatives were the main thing she missed from when she was growing up.
Grandma was born December 17th, 1904, one year to the day after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. She told me she likes air conditioning, indoor bathrooms, modern medicine, indoor bathrooms, refrigerators and freezers, indoor bathrooms, and washing machines. And did we mention indoor bathrooms?
About modern medicine, that’s why we still have my grandmother, at 107 years and 7 months of age.
The Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory predated the internet, didn’t it? no, never mind, I’m not going to argue there were just as many Conspiracy Theorists in the Good Old Days. I won’t even argue that the relative ratio of Useful Information to Idiocy is the same. But I WILL argue that accessing the information you need is much easier now.
Or going further back Charles Chiniquy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Chiniquy
Uhhh, did I say it wasn’t?
Okay, you’ve lost me. I thought you were disagreeing with me about something.
I thought of another one - pumpernickel bread. The stuff in grocery stores these days is too soft.
Candy and soft drinks used to have just sugar without high fructose corn syrup.
Just hats would be nice. Also suits you could actually move around in. For the past 30+ years they’ve been cut strictly for standing up and sitting down - it saves tailoring and reflects the modern suit’s function as a costume with limited uses.
In the 1930s, when labor was cheaper than materials, there were even sport back suits, with pleats down the shoulders and back and snug underarms to keep the jacket from flying up. They’re actually quite comfortable.
Good point-when soft drinks were sweetened with sucrose (cane sugar) people were slimmer. Is there something about fructose that leads the body to convert it to fat immediately?
Morbid obesity was almost unknown in the 1950’s.
Well, it doesnt seem so. One study did show that HFCS had a super-low satiety rating, in other words you can drink a lot before feeling “full”. But I remember Mom telling me “Dont drink too much soda, youll spoil your dinner.” …and her being right. After a mere 16oz.
But I see my friends today quaff multiple super-big-gulps without hesitation then eat a double bacon-cheeseburger with extra large fries. So, clearly their appetites werent spoiled.
I am not sure what you mean when you write “opinion” after several of the ways in which BobLibDem suggested that things were better in the past. This is the “In My Humble Opinion” board isn’t it?
And the fact that some things from the past are still possible does not make things better today if the cost of maintaining the original method is being unnecessarily passed on to those who do not want to change because the entity that controls the changes prefers to make more money rather than maintain personal contact with customers et al.
Also I am still waiting for a response to why you chose my suggestion that music concerts were cheaper to address your completely off topic response on page two.
Pollution in Pittsburgh in the 1860s or Beijing now can’t be dismissed as a local thing, though. Pollution has this nasty habit of not staying where it is created. The ozone hole in the Antarctic was not created by CFC use in Antarctica, it was contributed to by CFC use all over the world.
Pollution can keep causing environmental consequences years after the cause of the pollution is gone, too. If we’re still experiencing the consequences of past environmental damage, does it really make sense to say the past was better in terms of the environment? They just hadn’t experienced all the consequences of what they were doing yet.
I disagree with some of this. I remember the 70’s as being far…dirtier…than today. I could be wrong.
A revealing story is from my mother, who moved into my father’s boyhood home in 1947, the same year the farmhouse got both indoor plumbing and electricity. Prior to that they used kerosene for lighting (and used a coal-fired furnace).
They were all so excited on the day the electricity was connected and could hardly wait for evening so they could finally turn on the lights. When they did so, their first impression was “It’s so bright! And look at how dirty the walls are!”
Some of the things I remember from the 1960s and 1970s were noxious gas and diesel fumes from vehicles, finicky starting cars, and tires that were so unpredictable that you HAD to know how to change a tire by yourself.
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Agreed. As long as you agree that the GLOBAL environment was cleaner in 1860 than today. By that, I mean some sort of average for particulate matter per litre of ambient air or whatever. Same thing with water pollution, toxic chemicals, etc. Per acre/per litre of water/per whatever, the WORLD was a cleaner place ON AVERAGE. Again, I am willing to concede that some local areas in some pollutants may have been dirtier in 1860, but not the global average.
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That’s a fuzzy concept. How do you seperate the past from the present in regard to what gets credited to last month’s pollution, last year’s pollution, last decade’s pollution?
I remember the gas fumes in the early 80’s. I remember that our garage, and other people’s garages, always smelled very strongly of gas fumes. I couldn’t stand to be in there for very long, because the smell bothered me. My garage now does not smell like that. I haven’t smelled that noxious odor in a long time. My parents didn’t run their cars in a closed garage, or anything like that, at least not that I can remember. I suspect the main difference is that their cars then put out more odorous and probably more polluting fumes than mine does now. My car is more fuel-efficient than theirs generally were, but it’s not a hybrid or anything like that.
I have heard that the generic store-brand extra virgin olive oil you get at the supermarket or at Costco now is better than any olive oil you could have bought in the US in the late 1980s (unless you were a chef at a very famous and well-connected restaurant, or something like that).
In my college dorm in the early and mid 1990s, long distance calls were expensive. ISTR it costing around 25 cents a minute. Now I get lots of free minutes on my cell phone that I can use for long distance calls at no extra charge.
Food costs are at historic lows as a percentage of disposable income for Americans. This fact alone probably has something to do with the rise in rates of overweight and obesity. When things cost less, people buy and consume more of them. If you eat more food, all else being equal, you’re going to gain weight. This one isn’t an unmixed blessing, not like garages not stinking so bad any more.
Regarding air pollution: most are right-the air is MUCH cleaner today.
In the 1960’s, my Dad worked in Boston-his office was near a big coal fired electric plant. Th inside of his car was covered in “fly ash”-God knows how much of that stuff he inhaled.
The shift to nuclear and natural gas-fired plants has been a big improvement.
Getting the options you wanted on a car used to be simple- go to the dealer, check off the options, wait a few weeks, pick up your car. And there were options galore! You could choose from six different engines in a '68 Camaro. Today there’s one engine per model for most lower to mid-line cars.
I’d like to order an American-made car optioned to my specs: manual transmission, air conditioning, and cruise control. I don’t want or need any GPS, super sound system, electric windows or mirrors, or other junk stuck in the car to dazzle the technophiles.
Can’t do it any more because options are only sold in stupid packages.