# Were the any ways in which "the olden days" were better than today? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 23, 2019, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947 "2019-04-23T18:00:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/61 "2019-04-24T04:51:45Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > I’d love to hear about this… Stats don’t have much life as stories, and I’m very curious being born in the early 80s. My greatgrandfather (born c. 1900) was a cop. A good cop and a good man, from everything I know about him, even if he “had his things” (like everybody); for example, he lived most of his life in Catalonia but not only refused to learn Catalan, he wouldn’t accept hearing it in his house. But his service record was absolutely pristine and he eventually reached the highest non-com grade in that service. I never got to meet him, but I understand he could put enough sarcasm into _acosado a preguntas, el preso confesó_ that the air over the sentence would corrode 24k gold (“after intense questioning, the prisoner confessed”). The intense questioning would often involve some stiffness and, if the questioner wasn’t very good, bruises and broken bones. He was definitely not in favor of intense questioning, as he reckoned that taking a detour into a bar for a pair of sodas (for him and his partner) and a beer (for the prisoner) worked wonders if the prisoner did in fact have something to say, and that intense questioning leads to people saying whatever they think will make the pain stop. But he was a rarity among his coworkers: intense questioning was the way of the day, as it had been for the previous centuries, in most police bodies worldwide. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/62 "2019-04-24T04:53:38Z")
The reasons we remember the 50’s so idyllically are _emotional_, not factual. The humor author Bill Bryson has written an autobiography of his childhood in the 1950’s in white America. He describes the wonders of those times: > [@](#): > > No wonder people were so happy.Suddenly they were able to have things that they had never dreamed of. > It was the last time that people would be thrilled to own a toaster. > When you bought a major appliance, you invited the neighbors over to have a look at it. > > When I was four, my parents bought an Amana Stor-Mor refrigerator, and it was like an honored guest in our kitchen. I’m sure they would have drawn it up to the table at dinnertime, if it hadn’t been so heavy. > When visitors dropped by, my father would say "Oh Mary, is there any ice tea in the Amana? Then to the guests he’d add significantly: “There usually is…it’s a Stor-Mor.” > > “Oh a Stor-Mor”, the male visitor would say, and raise his eyebrows knowingly, in the manner of someone who appreciates quality cooling. “We thought about getting a Stor-Mor ourselves, but in the end we went for a Philco Shur-Kool. Alice loves the E-Z Glide vegetable drawer, and there’s room for a full quart box of ice cream in the freezer box. That was a big selling point for the kids! > They would all have a good laugh at that, and then sit around drinking ice tea and talking appliances for an hour. > **No human beings had ever been quite this happy before.** ” Bryson also describes the optimism of the 50’s: the future looked good. Science was making great strides. Anything was possible. Diseases were being eradicated (polio). Mosquitos were being killed with DDT, and the new miracle substance called asbestos was making buildings fire-proof --they even wove it into children’s pyjamas for safety. You could afford to buy a new house on valuable property in Nevada—within sight of the open-air nuclear testing grounds. Life was good, and getting better!!! What could possibly go wrong? (The book is called The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid". A great read!) ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/63 "2019-04-24T09:01:50Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > The reasons we remember the 50’s so idyllically are _emotional_, not factual. Agreed on that. Not that I was alive then, but from things people who were have said, they seemed to have a much more optimistic youth than me and my peers born in the '80s did. Yes, things were far less safe, but people worried about it less; for those people who didn’t die or get injured in a horrible accident, things were more free and fun. Exploration and discovery is also a big change; most people barely travelled away from their area, but for those few who did, it was far more exciting and adventurous. You could visit places and see things you’d never heard of, meet people who had never met anyone from your country before who were _thrilled_ to meet you. The world’s smaller now, and you can look everything up before you travel. More people get to go, but the thrill of discovery has kinda gone from all but the remotest corners of the world. Likewise with science; the easy discoveries have been made. A life’s work ‘back in the day’ could add huge strides of understanding to a topic, now it might nibble away at a corner of one of the problems. And you can’t just get funding to mess about trying to see what’ll happen. Not that most people could, but a lot of discoveries seem to have come from people doing just that. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/64 "2019-04-24T12:20:41Z")
Back in the good ol’ 1950s we didn’t have cellphone zombies running into things because they’re staring down at their phones, or idiots getting into accidents by texting instead of looking where they’re going. Nope, all we had to worry about while driving was those sex-crazed\* leather-jacketed hotrodding youths with switchblades. \*less of that now, because people spend more time using their electronic devices/watching Netflix endlessly. So it’s a wash. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/65 "2019-04-24T12:38:05Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I’d call this pretty extreme. > > [When the Great Smog Smothered London | HISTORY](https://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago) > > This too. > > [Smog Deaths In 1948 Led To Clean Air Laws : NPR](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103359330) > > … Do you know what the plural of anecdote is? “Anecdotes.” Here’s some data: > **[National Climate Assessment](https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/extreme-weather)** > > The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. Here’s the introductory paragraph: > [@](#): > > As the world has warmed, that warming has triggered many other changes to the Earth’s climate. Changes in extreme weather and climate events, such as heat waves and droughts, are the primary way that most people experience climate change. Human-induced climate change has already increased the number and strength of some of these extreme events. Over the last 50 years, much of the U.S. has seen increases in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, heavy downpours, and in some regions, severe floods and droughts. Back to the OP, and his(?) mention of other time periods – realistically speaking, any time before the '50s in the US was just worse and worse – moving backwards, you have WW II, the Great Depression, WW I, other depressions and recessions, more disease, extreme poverty, child labor, more wars and slavery. The rest of the world was just worse than the US in the '50s. The Roman Empire was a local maximum, with hundreds of years of regression after that, but probably by the 1300s or maybe a century later, Europe was better again. I don’t know anything about what was going on in China, Africa, or India at the time – maybe they were having the best time ever, but I doubt it. The fifties in US were sort of a local maximum as well, at least for white Americans, with more material riches than ever before, low crime, low wealth disparity. Crime went up from there and back down again, wealth disparity has been generally climbing since then, but material riches continue to grow, as does life expectancy (until recently, in the US). However, I’d rather be around now than then – many terrible diseases are gone or nearly so, cancer treatments are verging on miraculous, crime is down again, no real risk of nuclear war, and I have access to almost every song ever recorded and all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips. Right now, I’m engaged in a interesting conversation with people from all over the world. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/66 "2019-04-24T12:43:42Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I’d call this pretty extreme. > > [When the Great Smog Smothered London | HISTORY](https://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago) > > This too. > > [Smog Deaths In 1948 Led To Clean Air Laws : NPR](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103359330) Those were extreme events, yes. But they were extreme because of pollution, not weather. [Thermal inversions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)) are nothing new; they still happen today, but we don’t see extreme killer smogs like London/Donora because we don’t spew nearly as much pollution into the air as we did back then (notable exceptions to this include China and India). ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/67 "2019-04-24T12:54:08Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > In the past there was still hope for a better future. Now there isn’t. Everybody kill themselves. **Der Trihs** says there’s no hope. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/68 "2019-04-24T13:06:32Z")
In 1970 red delicious apples were a little smaller but they were firmer and didn’t taste like rubber. So that was better. Public schools weren’t an official farm for the prison industry. Schools and parents generally did their own behavioral modification without the aid of law enforcement. If you ended up in jail anyway, it was because of something you did outside of the protection of the school/parents. Also, schools focused on educating kids rather than teaching them how to pass tests that keep the school funded. I want to agree with **Der Trihs** ’s assertion about there used to be more hope for a better future, but I don’t think I can. I remember losing religion as a kid at about the same time I was becoming aware of the Cold War. I was still going to church when I believed there was a greater chance of the world getting nuked than of God actually existing–And I wasn’t SO sure about God that I was willing to call bullshit on that whole scheme. At least today we can be pretty confident in believing a full on nuclear apocalypse isn’t going to happen. If you die in a war it will be because you signed up to roll those dice, not because you were too underprivileged to avoid being drafted. And 50 years ago I don’t believe we had anything like the technology and science to achieve the level of “better” for our future. All we have to do is decide as a society that we want better, and that we’re willing to invest assets and compromise with one another to get it–we’re so close to that, despite being constantly stirred away from each other. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/69 "2019-04-24T13:49:51Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > The US federal Government sponsored scientific research for the heck of it was pretty good too. An excellent point. Nowadays Republicans would tell us we can’t afford that sort of thing, you socialist, because it’s necessary to pass more tax cuts for the wealthy. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/70 "2019-04-24T13:52:06Z")
Iron lungs…brrrr…man, those give me the willies. What did you do if Sis was in one of those things and there was a power outage? Just roll the whole thing to the curb for the weekly compost pickup? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/71 "2019-04-24T14:04:38Z")
There were a few things. Kids could and did walk to school by themselves (I actually had to cross Rte. 1, but there was a light) and we played outside incessantly. Public transit was infinitely better and my family didn’t have a car until my last year of HS (1953-54). Unions were much more powerful; the right-to-work states had not yet started the race to the bottom. And most important for me: the Ivy league school I went to (Penn) cost on $700 a year in 1954–it went up $100 a year for rest of the 50s before its startling rise in the 60s–and I was able to work my way through without costing my family one cent (except for putting up with me living at home). Even so, I was pretty lucky with the job I had. One other point: even though the president was Republican, both parties kept the interests of the country foremost and worked together on improving things. This is entirely gone with one party interested only in its own agenda, mainly to enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/72 "2019-04-24T14:30:58Z")
I dont remember anyone with peanut or gluten allergies back in the 70’s. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/73 "2019-04-24T15:02:36Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I dont remember anyone with peanut or gluten allergies back in the 70’s. Without vigilance and Epipens, nut allergies are sort of a self-correcting thing by the time other kids are old enough to notice a problem. And I think the gluten kids were just the ones we knew to be “sickly”. And isn’t wheat different (crazy higher gluten content) today from how it was then? Most kids knew their way around a firearm because a lot of rural/suburban schools actually had a block of instruction on them, including a range day. Guns weren’t quite as romantic & mysterious as a result, which IMHO has something to do with kids making bad choices these days. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/74 "2019-04-24T15:18:14Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > I want to agree with **Der Trihs** ’s assertion about there used to be more hope for a better future, but I don’t think I can. Yeah, the assertion about hope is nonsense, of course. The world gets better. It does it in fits and starts. It sometimes goes backwards. But it gets better. Anyone who thinks there’s no hope should trying being a person of color. Or some form of queer. Or sick. Or from the developing world. My own cancer would have killed me dead in the 1950s. Or most likely the 90s. Instead my oncologist told me I wouldn’t enjoy treatment - I sure didn’t - but that I’d be better after it was over. My cancer was considered an inconvenience instead of a death sentence. The whole ‘no hope’ thing is the conceit of a privileged few in a wealthy and comfortable environment. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/75 "2019-04-24T15:19:04Z")
Back in the '50s, a local farmer, Clarence, used to come around once a week. He had a truck full of live free-range chickens, and my mom would go out and pick one. Clarence would wring the chicken’s neck and get rid of the feathers, and leave us the chicken. My job was to clean out the innards, still warm. Those chickens had so much flavor, not like the crap we get today. Clarence also brought us eggs. They had so much flavor, and some with 2 or 3 yolks. We had a large vegetable garden in the back yard, so a lot of the food we ate was absolutely fresh. Nothing like today’s supermarket food. There were also fields behind our house, where we picked apples and blackberries for home-made pies. We did lots of canning, so we had veggies and jams throughout the year. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/76 "2019-04-24T15:36:44Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It’s often said that some Trump voters want a return to the 1950s, That’s not true. Yes, it’s often said, but that’s not what’s happening. Most of them weren’t around in the 1950’s, but even with the qualification that this thread could be about any previous time (which is kind of moving the goal post), they’re not thinking about a specific time when things were “better.” “MAGA” is just a vague notion designed to ignite a self-generated sense of aggrievement and lost self-entitlement of white men, who increasingly can’t take for granted that barely getting a high school diploma will guarantee them a comfortable middle class living, and who increasingly are in the same boat with everyone else now. Trump quickly learned that by spouting simplistic ideas of returning to some undefined past he could corner that electoral market. He doesn’t even have do anything to actually make things different. He just claims that suddenly everything’s better now, and they believe him, and will continue to support him. They wouldn’t know the 1950’s even if he could magically deliver it to them on a silver plate. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/77 "2019-04-24T15:47:37Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > and of course the work force at the time disproportionately was made up of men; it was vastly harder to get a job if you were a woman, and the jobs you could get were much more limited. I’ve always wondered how the unemployment rates would look if the job market was as overwhelmingly male now as it was in the 1950s. In other words, are we maybe comparing apples to oranges in some sense- yes, the jobs paid more on average, but the low unemployment may have been simply because we were only drawing from half the population for most jobs. Beyond that, I think that “the olden days” were better for children in some respects. Mostly in the realm of unsupervised play and learning to be independent. Today’s kids are sort of cocooned up- nobody just lets their kids go roam around the neighborhood anymore. For one thing, if they did, their kids would be the ONLY ones out there, so parents who aren’t otherwise helicopter parents are apprehensive about turning their kids out on their own without a relatively large peer group. Second, other people get wound up about it- I’ve read several accounts of parents getting in trouble because their kids walked to school alone, or with a sibling- some school districts expect parents to escort their kids to school, even if they’re walking a block or two. I also think times were better without all the nonsense that social media stokes-people weren’t nearly bombarded with so much BS from dipshits on instagram or facebook or wherever about how awesome their lives are and whatever cool thing they’re doing. A steady diet of only seeing other people’s contrived life highlight films will assuredly skew perceptions of what’s normal and what’s not, and I think this is one way that things were definitely better in the past. Of course, all these things are one side of the coin- social media has positives too, as does being more protective of your children. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/78 "2019-04-24T15:50:41Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > And American. > > A lot of the reason that the 1950s was so gang-buster for Americans, economy-wise, was that the vast majority of the rest of the world was either incredibly impoverished or had its industry mostly destroyed by WWII. Right. America not only had no damage to it’s industry but built it up quite a bit. Americans got used to a factory job that lasted 30 years with a real pension at the end. Those days are gone forever. _No one_ can bring them back. WW2 happened and wont happen again. Good things- gas was cheap. Food was plentiful and cheap in America.Full employment. People werent worried about pedophiles. Allergies were more or less limited to hayfever. Bad things- everyone smoked. The air was bad in many cities. Atomic war was a real worry. Pedophiles were still common, just that the media hadnt started reporting them on a daily basis yet.Food was bland as hell. Kids had polio. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/79 "2019-04-24T15:54:26Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > College and healthcare were incredibly cheaper. You could pay for college by working part-time during it. > … > > There was a brief respite from people advocating for pure Communism due to how obviously evil the Soviet Union was. Yes, I did that. Yeah, now we get Commies saying “_Real_ communism has never been tried”!:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/80 "2019-04-24T16:02:41Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Do you know what the plural of anecdote is? “Anecdotes.” Here’s some data: > … The plural of anecdote is \*data. \* > **[Don't forget: The plural of anecdote is data](http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/)** > > This purpose of this point is to preserve the true meaning of Raymond Wolfinger’s oft-misquoted aphorism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947.md?page=5)