But America was a very stratified society leading up to the WW2 era, and upon return home there emerged a very large middle class, where it was now within the grasp of every (white, originally) American to aspire to a level of wealth that was once less attainable.
it seems to me that a lot of the struggle for equality amongst ethnicities in America (i.e. Irish, Italians) has resulted in them becoming perceived as white people.
I don’t mean in an architectural sense, but just that being abroad expanded the cultural horizons of millions of people who might otherwise had never left their hometown. People’s perceptions had shifted.
Not just from being overseas. My father’s battalion had people from all across the US - Pennsylvania dairy farmers, guys from the south, who he as a born and raised New Yorker had never met. And they probably hadn’t met many people like him. All these people went through basic training and other forms of hell together, and depended on each other. I suspect it opened a lot of eyes.
One thing that surprised me reading older literature was to realize that “twin” beds used to commonly sleep two adults. Like, two men sharing a cheap room, who would sometimes sleep in opposite directions (so one guy’s head was near the other guy’s toes) to give them a little more space.
And my MIL shared a room with her brother as a child.
I think it has a lot to do with changing social norms.
My wife and I live in an 1800 sq. ft. house, which we bought 13 years ago for $240K after moving up through two other houses. It’s now worth about twice that. We are retired and our total annual income is about $75K, which is less than I earned myself before I retired. We live quite comfortably…we have a 2017 car and a 2007 car, we don’t eat out very often (maybe once or twice a month), and we are careful in our expenses for vacations, hobbies, and so forth. If we rolled back the clock about ten years and I was still working while my wife did not, we’d be just fine. Except…
The two elephants in the room would be, of course, college funds for our two kids and health care. I attended an Ivy League school in the 1970s and total cost (tuition, room, and board) was about $6K/year. Not now. And my health plan from my employer was a decent one. Now that I’m on Medicare, I’d hate to think the cost would be if I had not yet reached that age.
The rise of electricity and (they go together) indoor plumbing didn’t occur that long before WWII. Without them, a detached house could put you further from your essential water supply. The first volume of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography has a terrific description of how hard life was, especially for women, without electricity-pushed running water. I think Caro included this Jimmy Carter quotation:
The Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935, when only 10% of farms were electrified. By the end of WWII, about 40% of farms were electrified. Seems hard to believe, but that’s the case. By 1950 the number had risen to 70%, and by 1955 about 90% were electrified.
Rural and urban electrification happened earlier. When the Rural Electrification Act was passed, non-farm rural and urban homes were already about 80% electrified, and by 1955 virtually all of them were.
Proving that nothing is as permanent as a Washington bureaucracy, even though electrification was pretty much complete by 1960, the REA still exists. In 1994 its name was changed to the Rural Utulities Service. It celebrated its 85th birthday in 2020. However, it must be said that between 1935 and 1955 it was probably the most productive government agency, and made a big difference.
We’ve been waiting on that in southern NM for longer than it took to electrify the entire country. Although now we may be able to get some low earth orbit option. I should look into that again.
Rural town in New England: electricity came to this farm in the 1950’s – indoor plumbing was probably the 1960’s. The farm relied on a spring for water until the 1970’s. Wifi arrived in 2018, via a state-supported arrangement with Comcast.
The township next to this one still doesn’t have wifi.
Some of us still basically live in the 50’s and 60’s. I only use film for my photography. Don’t like the plastic digital cameras, nor the inferior image quality of digital. If there is a movie on antenna TV (more living in the 50’s, I don’t have cable) or showing at a cinema I won’t watch it for the same reasons.
Digital blows the highlights out, has poorly saturated colors, shadow detail is muddy and there is way, way too much acutance from too much contrast and a lack of detail otherwise. A movie shot w/ film needs a much higher budget because film and processing are expensive. If someone wants to spend that sort of money, they will also spend more for top notch actors and directors.
My smart phone is a cheapo tracfone that I only use to make calls on. I carry it w/ me in case there’s an emergency because it is impossible to find a public phone now. Don’t own a TV and haven’t for 40 years. Don’t drive, (again, for 40 years) and get around on my bike and public transportation. About the only thing I have that is modern is my laptop, and even that runs an obsolete Win 7 OS. Life is good.
TBF, though, no matter what modern technology you are or aren’t using directly, you’re indirectly using all the same modern technology as everybody else.
Your public transportation system runs with modern scheduing and communications software. Even if you make all your purchases with cash that you withdrew from your bank in person by handing a withdrawal slip to a human teller, your transactions are all recorded electronically and your account security is digitally monitored. The prices charged by your grocery store are based partly on their ability to use modern technology to track their inventory and purchases, and so on and so forth.
You’re not actually living a pre-digital-technology life; you’re merely cosplaying one in a digital technology world. Not that there’s anything in the least wrong with that, if that’s what you enjoy. But you’re not really avoiding the digital world anywhere near as much as you think.
It’s true it would be hard to get along without internet access, but the general idea that you could live on a single family income if you generally accepted the standard of living of 1958 is fairly true.
We have, I think, a pretty exaggerated sense of how wealthy people were in the 50s, probably due to TV.
I thought we demonstrated above that housing costs so much more now than in the 50s that that’s not generally true. Maybe in some rural areas that no longer have many jobs, or with a crazy commute that didn’t allow the stay at home mom to use the car for groceries.
Well, in the 50s, most people didn’t go to college, and public high school is still free.
And healthcare is tricky, because it matters how you define “live like they did in the 50s”. It’s true that some healthcare, like getting a bone set or taking insulin, costs more now. But a lot of the increase in healthcare costs is because there’s more healthcare than there used to be. Treatments ranging from Viagra through immunotherapy for cancer are just new.
However, food prices are generally less today in real dollars. Eggs are an exception, due to the recent spike.
Manufactured goods have gone way down. You couldn’t buy a new television or automobile today as bad as an expensive one in 1960. I think that low tech manufactured stuff, like hand tools, is also less now in real dollars, but haven’t carefully checked.
Of course, expectations have risen. For me, A/C is a necessity, as are long distance phone calls.
You might also have a hard time finding now the kind of motels and bath houses my family vacationed at. Now you pay more and get more.