# Did we peak in the 1960s? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 6, 2005, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786 "2005-11-06T13:33:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/41 "2005-11-08T11:28:03Z")
I have no reason to doubt your post, Sam. But those cars just don’t have the image and style of the 442. Sorry, but when you got in one of those, it just said “muscle”. > [@msmith537](#): > > Yeah, I miss the days before I had to share a water fountain with a Negro. What this decade needs is a good old-fashioned draft. Send all those Gen X slackers and Gen Y rave kids off to Iraq. That will thin out THEIR ranks! Well my goodness we certainly didn’t have the separate water fountains growing up in Michigan in the 1960s. And I’m against the war as much as anyone. kunilou, I’ll accept that prescription medication is better now. But the JFK assassination was only one crime by one person. Richard Nixon was a thousand times a better president and better person than Bush. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/42 "2005-11-08T14:22:16Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > My point is that in the '60s, it wasn’t generally accepted or expected that fundies would exert such an overbearing influence on public policy as they do today. Is this post whooshing me? Do you seriously think that America today is more morally uptight than in the 1960’s? Do you think that South Park or Family Guy would have gotten aired in the 1960’s? Do you think that Marilyn Manson would have video’s on TV and concerts around the country? How about violent video games like Grand Theft Auto or Doom III? You can maybe make a case that America is more morally uptight now than 10 years ago. Republican president, superbowl wardrobe malfunction, etc. Maybe. But, more uptight now than in the 1960’s? That’s just way off base. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/43 "2005-11-08T15:22:06Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Rose colored glasses. During the 60’s guys like me could NEVER have owned their own companies, married a blonde from the East Coast, lived in the neighborhood I live in or moved as easily through society as I do. Guys with darker skin than me had an even worse time of it.-XT Wasn’t there a very successful TV show back in the 50s about a guy like you who married a redhead from the East Coast? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/44 "2005-11-08T16:04:56Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > We’re living in the golden age of the automobile right now, after a long decline during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The decade of the 1990’s was the automobile renaissance. Your list is sort of what I was getting at when I asked what he meant by ‘faster’. But is it the ‘Golden Age of Automobiles’ today? I don’t think so. The cars of the '60s, as **BobLibDem** pointed out, had _style_. For example, my B had a nice crinkle-finish dashboard with toggle switches. In 1968 the Bs got padded dashboards and flush switches in the U.S. (and lost the cubby, which was replaced with the ‘Abingdon Pillow’). The chrome was replaced, due to U.S. regulations, by ‘rubber baby-buggy bumbers’ in 1975. But the sheet metal was almost identical to that that rolled out of Abingdon in 1962. Today cars are safer and slipperier. Their computer-controlled systems help to make them more efficient. As I said, my 1.8 litre engine put out 95 hp. What’s a 1.8 litre engine put out today? But most modern cars’ styling seem a little uninspired. Some of them I like, most just look utilitarian to me. So what _was_ The Golden Age of Automobiles? I couldn’t tell you. As you point out, the efficiency of today’s cars point to now. But I like the styling of 1960s European sportscars. Other people will say the '57 Chevy is the _ne plus ultra_ of automotive design. Someone else may say it’s the Tucker. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/45 "2005-11-08T17:16:59Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Wasn’t there a very successful TV show back in the 50s about a guy like you who married a redhead from the East Coast? Sure…but Ricky Richardo wasn’t exactly one of the 'manos from the barrio right? In addition that was TV…not reality. At least such attitudes hadn’t exactly filtered down to South Tuscon when I was growing up. 😛 And with folks of darker skin it was even longer before such things became acceptable. It certainly wasn’t acceptable in the '60…least not in the parts where I lived. -XT ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/46 "2005-11-08T17:28:46Z")
I and most of my friends still believe anything is possible. I think the 60s was born of an incredibly narcissistic generation that tried to beat into their children how much greater the glory days of the 60s were compared to anything their kids could come up with. Erek ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/47 "2005-11-09T01:48:40Z")
I think the OP caught the essential point right away, about the 1960s “joie de vivre.” There was sickening conflict all around, but for a few years people really believed they had the chance to make the world a better place. I’m afraid that’s been lost. People still sing John Lennon’s “Imagine” though, if they want to relive a little of that spirit. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/48 "2005-11-09T03:59:15Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > Your list is sort of what I was getting at when I asked what he meant by ‘faster’. But is it the ‘Golden Age of Automobiles’ today? > > I don’t think so. The cars of the '60s, as **BobLibDem** pointed out, had _style_. For example, my B had a nice crinkle-finish dashboard with toggle switches. In 1968 the Bs got padded dashboards and flush switches in the U.S. (and lost the cubby, which was replaced with the ‘Abingdon Pillow’). The chrome was replaced, due to U.S. regulations, by ‘rubber baby-buggy bumbers’ in 1975. But the sheet metal was almost identical to that that rolled out of Abingdon in 1962. Today’s cars don’t have style? [Rebuttal #1](http://www.fast-autos.net/pontiac/solstice2.jpg) [Rebuttal #2](http://www.allsportauto.com/photoautre/chrysler/300c_srt8/2005_chrysler_300c_srt8_02_m.jpg) [Rebuttal #3](http://www.saac-mcr.com/menu/gt500/30.jpg) [Rebuttal #4](http://www.rsportscars.com/foto/07/saturnsky06.jpg) [Rebuttal #5](http://www.carpage.hu/szeleczky/galeria/lr_fusion1.jpg) [Rebuttal #6](http://www.autoextremist.com/cars/january2004/vette2.jpg) [Rebuttal #7](http://www.usauto.pl/_starewww/tapety/chrysler_crossfire_06_800x600.jpg) [Rebuttal #8](http://news.auto.cz/img/art/22_41da5fb6bc953.jpg) [Rebuttal #9](http://motor.tuportada.com/img/wp/mazda-rx8-12.jpg) [Rebuttal #10](http://motor.tuportada.com/img/wp/nissan-350z-roadster-12.jpg) [Rebuttal #11](http://us.autos1.yimg.com/img.autos.yahoo.com/i/nctd/q/06s-civic-1.jpg) [Rebuttal #12](http://motor.tuportada.com/img/wp/lotus-elise-13.jpg) I could go on. All of the above cars are mid-priced or cheap, some are practical family vehicles, and all of them have style like crazy. I used to think the same way you do, and I’ll bet we’re close to the same age. I had a '67 Camaro when I was younger, and lusted over 60’s era Corvettes and other muscle cars. In the 70’s, cars were loaded down with emissions control hardware before the engineering was really up to it, and new bumper regulations made cars ugly. In the 1980’s, cars were indistinguishable lumps of metal, and in the 1990’s the styling vogue was the bland egg-shaped car and ‘cab forward’ design. But that’s ancient history. Styling and power are back in a big way, and modern materials are allowing designers to do a lot more now than they could before. Look at the Saturn Sky or the Pontiac Solstice - those two cars are absolutely gorgeous - they look like $150,000 cars, and that’s what they would have been a few years ago, because we couldn’t make shapes like that on an assembly line. But now we have new hydro-forming technology that can stamp out body pieces with radical compound curves, and the result is beautiful and cheap. > [@](#): > > Today cars are safer and slipperier. Their computer-controlled systems help to make them more efficient. As I said, my 1.8 litre engine put out 95 hp. What’s a 1.8 litre engine put out today? But most modern cars’ styling seem a little uninspired. Some of them I like, most just look utilitarian to me. I don’t think they are that slippery any more - in fact, we’ve taken a bit of a step back from that. The ‘Drag coefficient is everything’ design school was big in the 1990’s, which is why we got all those soulless eggs on the road. Now designers realize that at normal highway speeds, you don’t need the ultimate in Cd to be efficient. So the designers have more freedom. We have a 2.0L engine in our car. It makes 227 HP. I remember when a big milestone was “1 horsepower per cubic inch”, first achieved, I believe, with the Chevy 283 back in the 1950’s. Now we can more than double that, with ease. [/quote] So what _was_ The Golden Age of Automobiles? I couldn’t tell you. As you point out, the efficiency of today’s cars point to now. But I like the styling of 1960s European sportscars. Other people will say the '57 Chevy is the _ne plus ultra_ of automotive design. Someone else may say it’s the Tucker. 😉 [/QUOTE] Strongly disagree. Try to put nostalgia behind you, and compare today’s cars with those of any past era. Look at the designs. Look at the value, the power, the handling. Pretty much any aspect of the state of the auto is better today than it has ever been. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/49 "2005-11-09T05:34:08Z")
For those comparing the 60s generation to the youth today…what qualifies one as Gen X or Gen Y? I was born in 1980 – what does that make me? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/50 "2005-11-09T14:34:45Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > For those comparing the 60s generation to the youth today…what qualifies one as Gen X or Gen Y? I was born in 1980 – what does that make me? 80’s baby? Gen-Y. I was born in 1976, and I’m right between the two. Gen-X is old enough to have been in the workforce during the dot-com boom of the 90’s. Gen-Y is young enough to have a home computer their whole lives. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/51 "2005-11-09T15:54:16Z")
As long as we’re on the subject I was born in 1962. Am I a boomer or Gen-X? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/52 "2005-11-09T16:04:41Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > As long as we’re on the subject I was born in 1962. Am I a boomer or Gen-X? You’re the tail end of the Boomer or the beginning of X. > [@](#): > > demographers have put the generation’s birth years at 1946 to 1964, despite the fact that the U.S. birth rate actually began to decline after 1957 Generation X was born between 1965 and 1980, but sometimes 61-81. There is some grey area. Do you identify more with Boom or X. I was born in 66 and with 3 older boomer siblings I identify more with the Boomers. Jim ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/53 "2005-11-09T16:52:09Z")
> [@jrfranchi](#): > > Do you identify more with Boom or X. I was born in 66 and with 3 older boomer siblings I identify more with the Boomers. I too, was born on the cusp. I definitely identify more with Gen-X. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/54 "2005-11-09T16:55:36Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > I too, was born on the cusp. I definitely identify more with Gen-X. So do I. My music comes from the eighties and nineties, for the most part. I’ve had some bad experiences with hippies. And, like many others here, I resent the narcissism of a lot–by no means all–of the boomer generation. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/55 "2005-11-09T17:05:01Z")
Here’s [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X) on the subject … > [@](#): > > It is mostly related to the Western culture and demography and generally refers to persons born in the 1960s and 1970s, although the exact dates of birth defining this age demographic are highly debated. Born after baby boomers, it has also been described as a generation consisting of those people whose “teen years touched the 1980s”, though many people that are considered part of the generation had their teenage years during the 1990s. > > The term is popularly associated with the people born between 1961 and 1981, although this is disputed. Another common description of Generation X includes within it those people who grew up in a period of transition (1945–1990) beginning with the end of World War II and the decline of colonial imperialism and ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Thus, the transition between colonialism and globalization is thought to separate the Baby Boomers from the Baby Busters, a sub-generation of Generation X made up of the earliest born members. There are some older Generation Xers who frown upon the classification of those born in 1980 or 1981 as being part of Generation X; these individuals often prefer to classify Generation X as those born between 1964 and the mid to late 70’s. I don’t care what Wikipedia says, though. 80’s babies are not generation X. I think some people just got confused and think of “Generation X” as synonymous with “young people”. Calling an 80’s baby “gen-x” just because he’s young is like calling a baby boomer part of “the greatest generation” just because he’s old. The generations are dynamic, people! As folks in them age, the stereotypes have to shift along with them. My $.02. YMMV. Etc, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/56 "2005-11-09T17:16:13Z")
Yeah, 1968 was, like, the greatest year ever. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786/57 "2005-11-10T05:15:08Z")
I don’t fit in with any particular “generation” as currently defined. Look at how arbitrary the endpoint dates are. I was born in 1959, as the BB was tapering off, but man it sure took a lot of years to taper off. Those of us born from '57 or so on never really felt like we were in the same cohort as the older Boomers, the ones who did all the cool stuff in the '60s. By the time we got to be old enough for the fun, it was all long over, it was Jimmy Carter time. Those of us born as the BB tapered off don’t really count and don’t fit in anywhere. We’ve been ignored. But Maya Lin, award-winning designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, was born in 1959 like me, so we have our achievers too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-peak-in-the-1960s/329786.md?page=2)