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2016-04-07 Home Front: Culture Wars

1956: "America Peaked Back Then and We've Been In Decline Ever Since"

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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-04-07 08:52|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ] Top

#1 So how did it all go so wrong?

Something, something, about urban growth. How many cities ranked at one million, how many at ten million. The urban bubble grew and forgot what kept it sustained. What sustained it became magic. Flip a switch and you got light. Go to a store and see it loaded with food. Nothing is understood how it all got there. It's magic. Let's not forget it's also about the decline in education to grasp all that. So let's close down the icky stuff that makes it all happen.

Posted by Procopius2k 2016-04-07 10:47|| 2016-04-07 10:47|| Front Page Top

#2 Rent-seeking.
It kills every empire, unless vigorously fought.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2016-04-07 11:32|| 2016-04-07 11:32|| Front Page Top

#3 I dunno - I think the decline started during the disco era.

Posted by Raj 2016-04-07 12:14|| 2016-04-07 12:14|| Front Page Top

#4 By disco era, the damage was already done.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-04-07 12:37|| 2016-04-07 12:37|| Front Page Top

#5 America as conceived by the founders was wrecked long before the 50's. Wilson's progressive amendments and FDR had pretty much obliterated our Constitutional form of government. Everything since then has just been us getting used to the new regime.

Posted by Iblis 2016-04-07 13:12|| 2016-04-07 13:12|| Front Page Top

#6 1968

Posted by Shipman 2016-04-07 14:17|| 2016-04-07 14:17|| Front Page Top

#7 In 1956, you retired at 60, but you probably died five years earlier. You lived in a shoebox, and thought a Levittown Cape Cod of less than 900 square feet was a palace. You drove a rolling stamped-steel piece of shit that drank oil by the gallon. Your relatives drank and drove and died like flies on underbuilt highways. Your children were eating lead paint chips. Europe was surging economically because they were starting to get a handle on "rebuilding from rubble and starvation". The US was fat and stupid from ten years of being the only major undestroyed industrial economy left in the world. Taxes were through the ceiling, and everybody who couldn't figure out how to legally shelter their income cheated like bandits. A sickeningly high percentage of the economy was run by gangsters, and big corporations ran much of the rest. Everybody chain-smoked. Everything stank of tobacco. Pollution was terrible - Pittsburgh was practically mainland-China-level lethal.

Posted by Mitch H. 2016-04-07 15:06|| 2016-04-07 15:06|| Front Page Top

#8 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing.

Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-07 15:15|| 2016-04-07 15:15|| Front Page Top

#9 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing.

Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-07 15:15|| 2016-04-07 15:15|| Front Page Top

#10 Pining for the past through rose colored glasses. Happy days was a movie, not a reality for most Americans. In the city housing was cramped, and not very safe. in rural America outhouses were still in use. People were not as healthy as today. And cars were cars? Really? They looked cool but 40,000 miles was the end of its life. Today 40k is when we change tires. When folks restore a 50s era car they replace the entire drivetrain. But then I do love a girl in a poodle skirt and pony tail...

Posted by 49 pan 2016-04-07 15:55|| 2016-04-07 15:55|| Front Page Top

#11 So America peaked when the world was still mostly wrecked and recovering? I'd say most stats from that era are an anomoly that should be ignored for this sort of thing.

Y'know, if that analysis were entirely true, they wouldn't need to pass laws to shut down coal plants, coal mines, and fracking, it would just dry up on its own.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2016-04-07 16:17|| 2016-04-07 16:17|| Front Page Top

#12 The biggest difference between then and now was in the pervasive sense of endless optimism for most of the population.

That was the year we moved out of NYC to NJ because my parents hated the public schools in the city and wanted us kids to have a better life.

A lot of good things were around. The biggest cliff off which we fell was base in civil rights, or lack thereof. After the desegregation of the Army in WWII there was a chance to get it right. It was tricky but doable. A number of events made it too hard to overcome the cynical manipulation of LBJ and his cohort.

Now, the rampant optimism is cynicism and pessimism. Material products are much better but does that mean anything important?

Posted by AlanC 2016-04-07 16:18|| 2016-04-07 16:18|| Front Page Top

#13 A number of events made it too hard to overcome the cynical manipulation of LBJ and his cohort.

LBJ...The whole country went nuts after JFK was shot. Then we got Vietnam, the Great Society, taxes, inflation, hippies, Affirmative Action. Dunno if we ever recovered from that. Wilson and FDR might have been bad but LBJ really got us sliding down that slippery slope.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2016-04-07 16:53|| 2016-04-07 16:53|| Front Page Top

#14 Libbers say all the women were on Valium then. Good times and a great hardworking people.

Posted by Dale 2016-04-07 20:22|| 2016-04-07 20:22|| Front Page Top

23:54 Bill Clinton
23:52 Bill Clinton
23:13 Bill Clinton
23:10 Bill Clinton
23:09 james
20:30 charger
20:25 charger
20:22 Dale
19:00 Capsu78
17:51 Nguard
17:47 Alaska Paul
17:03 Pappy
17:00 Pappy
16:57 Ebbang Uluque6305
16:53 Ebbang Uluque6305
16:48 Procopius2k
16:47 Procopius2k
16:38 Pappy
16:18 AlanC
16:17 Thing From Snowy Mountain
15:55 49 pan
15:46 Frank G
15:32 Skidmark
15:16 Skidmark