Shakes makes a good point-jobs are much harder to find, pay less, and have no security today. Unless you work for the government, there are no pensions, and zero security. Since we now import most of what we use, there are no factory jobs anymore-and when was the last time you could get work as a seamstress or tailor (except for the very high end, there are none anymore). This is a very troubling trend-there are no entry level jobs where you can learn a trade. Now you can work in a fast food joint, and make minimum wage for years. When I was a kid, Boston was full of small factories making everything from light fixtures to raincoats…now all of that stuff is made in China.
Huh? By virtually any measure you can dream up, the environment in the US (and most other industrialized nations) is in vastly better shape than it was 50 years ago. The only real exceptions I can think of are urban sprawl and climate change, but things like smog, acid rain, water pollution, ozone depletion, habitat destruction, and even roadside litter have been vastly reduced.
Well, that’s me, and a bunch of my friends, and we don’t want to go back, either.
Would I rather be 25 again? Hell yes. But I’d rather be 25 now than back then.
Born in 1951. I agree yes and no. Today we worry about climate change, then we worried about nuclear war. When my father came home from work he was home, me too in the early 1980s. Today you are always at work. However, then I’d run from store to store looking for something, today I can find it at home on the web. (Yesterday when Christmas shopping I found a gift for $20 less on line.)
All in all better, but I’m doing well. If I were newly out of college, loaded with debt, and unemployed I might feel different.
I was thinking primarily of habitat degradation and destruction. While I agree that destroying habitat through direct action has become more difficult to do in the US, degradation and destruction continue to occur.
Offhand, I think of the Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades and Florida Bay as examples of severe environmental degradation in the past 50 years.
That is what I was going to say. The 90’s were great and I would happily go back to it. Any other time, not so much.
For me, it’s largely about hobbies.
I’m a railway- and steam-train nut. 60 / 70 years ago (an era of which I have, aged 65, first-hand memories – I’m in the UK, which kept rail steam traction longer than North America did), the great majority of trains worldwide were steam-hauled, and a far greater rail mileage was in everyday service, than is the case today. I’d love it if the above-described, still obtained today (and I’m aware that steam locomotion is a miserably inefficient way of turning fossil fuel into traction).
I’m also a nature-and-wildlife buff. 60 / 70 years ago, IMO the world’s wildlife was – overall, with many complicated pros and cons – more numerous and in better shape, than today – not because people then, were more caring about it and active on its behalf, than now; just because there were fewer people, less well-equipped to wreak havoc.
In other respects, I reckon that life – in the First World anyway – is for most, better now, than it was then.
Yeah, I was thinking about the 1990s too. It’s certainly not my ‘back in the day’ since I graduated from college in 1976, but the mid to late 1990s were a hell of a lot better than now. (Not the early 1990s, though - they stunk. It wasn’t fun getting a PhD in math in 1993, and not being able to make 25K/year.)
Now is better by far, if only for medical advances. Unless you’re a moron anti-vaxer, there is a loooong list of diseases you don’t have to worry about.
If it weren’t for open heart surgery, which is now practically routine, my husband would have died twenty years ago.
The list goes on and on.
Better, no. Simpler, yes. There weren’t as many choices to make, and products were largely uncomplicated. Products today are, for the most part, better, and options are seemingly endless. People were less obese: I only remember one or two kids who were fat in my high school of nearly 2,000 kids. Entertainment for kids was primarily outdoors, not in front of a screen; I consider those two things to be ‘better’. It took hard work to get a fraction of the same information that you can obtain with the click of a mouse today, which, while it taught the value of work, certainly wasn’t better.
Dentistry is better! I say that free and fully and without reservation, let, or hindrance.
Movies - iffy. Technology & writing are MUCH better, but the art of making spectacles out of limited resources, backdrops, & soundstages, using atmosphere & symbolism, and telling compelling stories without graphic profanity, sex, or violence sometimes seem to be lost art forms.
My grandmothers both lived to be 91 (they died in 1990 and 2007) and in the late 1980s, when my sister and I were young adults, they both happened to be in town for Christmas, and they told us that modern women have no idea how good they have it. Men have it better too, but women REALLY have it better than they did in past generations.
I am Gay - so the answer to “Was it really better back in the day?” is a resounding NO.
Geez - when I think back of those days and the bigotry and hate and fear of being arrested or fired or disowned from your family, I sometimes wonder how I managed to survive.
Other than being younger and healthy, with your whole life ahead of you and all things new and different, “the good old days” are usually selective memories of good times but blocking out those other more dismal memories.
Born in 1949. There were great times as a kid. You could escape the house and run and play until after dark. Houses were unlocked. Cars had the keys in the ignition.
But the best time to live is now, today.
For many people the “good old days” is whenever they happened to experience their mid 20s-early 30s. For someone born in 1985, they will probably look back in 30 years at 2013 being part of the good old day. I know I can find myself occasionally feeling overly nostalgic for the late 90’s. But upon further reflection, It’s not much to do with society being “better” it’s that I was in my mid 20’s with tons of friends and little serious responsibility. It’s always a good time to be young. (mostly)
The one thing I think may have been better in the old days was job security. And by old days I’m referring to late 40’s-early 70’s in the U.S. A moderate amount of back of the mind nagging stress would be relieved if I could plan my life with with a reasonable expectation of uninterrupted employment until retirement.
I’ve been with my current company for 6 years, I survived 2008 and I feel pretty safe but there’s always that worry in back of my head. “Maybe I shouldn’t take that trip, maybe I should pad my savings more, I may need it in 3 years”.
I realize the mid-20th century American economy was probably an historical aberration unlikely to ever return, but it’d be nice.
I agree - but only if I went back to it with the knowledge that I should exercise my damn options! :smack:
Things better now: cures for many diseases that were formerly incurable (diabetes used to be a very painful death sentence, and so were most cancers); fewer people in nearly all countries living with starvation and extreme poverty; more democratic countries and fewer dictatorships; fewer countries ruled by foreign empires; technology makes it easier to move, travel, and communicate with people in distant places; end of most racial and gender segregation; and most importantly, the end of communism.
Things better back then: much greater personal freedom as far as starting businesses, eating, drinking, and smoking when and where you wanted, etc…; no “war on drugs”; lower crime rates; better manners and day-to-day kindnesses; people didn’t have their faces stuck in two-inch-wide screens all day; more chances for children to grow and explore on their own, as Kimballkid mentioned.
That depends on how you rate. A white supremacist today might be very pleased by the number of black people kept in prison as part of the “war on drugs”, while a black person might be very upset about it. While there are some ways in which life has gotten better for blacks, there are other ways in which it’s gotten worse.
Loooong list of diseases we don’t have to worry about anymore?
Name 3.
Polio
Smallpox
Tetanus