The past, History, is a passion for me. Few things raise my ire more quickly than giving a false picture of yesteryear for contemporary polemics.
Take off the Rose Colored Glasses
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
How many 2nd (and 3rd) jobs this reader worked, well into the early 2000’s, for the princely hourly sum of $9/hr.
(Not complaining: was happy to have the work. And likely many others here as well. )
This is an all too common theme I have seen in Zuckerberg’s Wasteland and elsewhere. You g adults think that the should be able to have it all when they start their first real job and find out they can’t. Then comes the whining.
People born in the 1970s had it about the same as the generations before them.
Life isn’t a beer commercial full.of incredibly good looking young people hanging out at a beach resort laughing and having loads of fun while holding a bottle or a can of beer. Poor Amelia is just finding this out and reality has slapped her in her face. Oh, but whining on Facebook is so much easier than doing something about it….like getting roommates, a second job, a used car and learning how to cook, clean, shop and sew.
Someone born in 1975 would have arrived at the age where work replaces school as your principal activity ca. 1996 and would have arrived at the age of a typical first time home buyer around about 2010. My circle of acquaintances in 1996 was amply supplied with neophyte professors and early career lawyers who would have been poleaxed at the notion they weren’t hustling. The ratio of home prices to nominal incomes was lower in 2010 than it is today – because there had been a ghastly market crash after the previous bubble in home prices, which was most injurious to people born around 1970. That would include our friend Mr. Price, who might give the tweeter a primer on adventures in short sales.
When I started teaching in 2004, I made 30k. My wife (also teaching) made 28k. I cleaned pools every spring and summer for 4 years after. That was hard work, though it paid surprisingly well. Things were tight, and they always were. But neither of us ever expected anything differently, and I suspect that’s what’s lacking among the yutes.
I can recall a column by Mike Royko published ca. 1987 contemplating a newspaper piece he’d seen profiling late adolescent / young adult population offering anxieties and complaints. He wasn’t particularly cutting, just offered an account of his own situation ca. 1954 and the disposition he and his wife had toward it.
My bride and I lived in an apartment the first two years, then in 1981 felt fortunate to get an FHA mortgage on a 950 square foot bungalow in South St. Louis at a rate of 13 percent. Prevailing market rate at that time was around 16% IIRC. The monthly payment was about $450. Our cars were both 10 years old, my bride worked as a substitute teacher, and with my law firm associate’s salary of $20,000 and appliances bought from estate sales (e.g., a reliable and sturdy gas stove for $30, a 1960s vintage Frigidaire with a tiny freezer for $25, and a window air conditioner for $100), capital costs were fairly low. We did our laundry down the street at the coin op laundromat and ate a lot of Mac and cheese, and we got by. We didn’t feel deprived, but we certainly didn’t have the Life of Riley this clueless woman imagines. We knew that attaining a reasonable degree of economic security would take a while. Apparently that vision no longer prevails.