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To be clear, this was for white (Irish and Italians don't count) men, and many black, hispanic, and native families could not afford to live the American dream.
I think you don't realize how recent OP is talking about...
Fuck man, even the 1990s a single income household with 3 kids could be comfortable.
You're talking about Irish and Italian Americans like you think it was the 1890s...
Exactly, I remember this from when I was a kid! We're not talking about pre-industrial America, pre-civil rights movement America, or even pre cell phones America.
This is relatively recent, and it's a tragedy that it's so normalized that younger gens would assume otherwise.
My father dropped out of high school, got a job a HP as a line worker (manufacturing oscilloscopes), got married, had 6 kids, 3-4 cars (depending on needs), and a house to fit all those kids. This was in the late 70s-90s (when the last kid graduated high school). Mother didn't work. We lived comfortably (not wealthy by any means).
My wife and I have 4 degrees between us, both work full time, have a single kid. We live about as well as my parents did.
The middle class dream! It absolutely feels like the bar to clear to be able to achieve this is significantly higher now.
Unless you're already wealthy, you have to pick one or more from the following:
- delay starting a family until more secure
- both parents work
- multi-generational household
- living farther from major cities
- having fewer kids than you might otherwise
add
- College Degree/s (even when many/most jobs don't really need it) with likely student loans
I supported a family of 4 on a single income from being a grunt in an autobody shop in 1999. We didn't live the high life, but we had a house, a paid off car, and took in-country vacations at least once a year.
The Simpsons seemed realistic in the 90s, with one shlob working as a chair moistener able to maintain a family of 5 in a four-bedroom house.
The 90's were choke full of their own issues and weren't some ideallic past. You could still get fired from a job if they found out you were gay, violent crime was at an all time high, and the 90's was the peak of outsourcing away all of the jobs that used to be able to support a family. Hell, a lot if country clubs only started allowing Jews in as members 20 years ago. The days of single income homes were more or less gone by the 70's. Thats why we see a massive spike in women joining the workforce then, since they couldn't afford to be stay at home moms anymore.
Now women can't afford to work because childcare costs as much as they would make at a job.
The 90s was just the declining slope from the 50s-70s post war economic boom. But even at the height of that boom, minorities and women were totally excluded. The subtext of "it was stolen from you", the "you" is white men.
Not only were the "good old days" oppressive for minorities, women, and LGBT, but also massive environmental degradation; Monroe Doctrine military adventurism; a government murderously hostile to left politics; all under the threat of nuclear extinction. Frankly this nostalgia is the lefty version of MAGA, and it's frustrating to see progressives looking backward.
Mate...
They were explicitly talking about economics, and nothing else.
I think the reason you're so upset, is you don't understand what people are talking about about.
Like, if I saw you on the beach and said "weather's nice today isn't it?"
And you started screaming at me about how pandas are endangered.
You're not wrong, just not relevant to the conversation.
At no point has anyone said that a single point of time was 100% perfect.
You heard it here folks, structural racism ended in 1989!
Naw.
Institutional racism exists still.
But in 2024 economically speaking it worse for all of us, regardless of race.
Like, if you were just making a dumb joke. Fine, whatever.
But if you honestly don't understand this, I can spare some time to help you
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They said Irish and Italians weren't considered "white" at the time...
That isn't the 1990s which is the period referred to in OPs post.
But whatever racial/ethnic group you're talking about, they were better off economically in the 1990s than the 2020s.
So whatever they were saying, was wrong. It's just a matter of how they're wrong depending on what they meant. We won't know what they meant till they clarify.
So I have no idea why you rushed to make an uninformed "joke" like you did.
But the more you type, the less productive this looks like it'll be.
My great grandfather came to America from Ireland and supported a family of 9 with a single income
And there were successful blackmen in the US from 1820- segregation. American history is full of social classes based on race and ethnicity with white protestant men on top. Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics faced less discrimination than their black counter parts, but they still faced red lining, discrimination in jobs and getting loans and had a massive economic disadvantage. Obviously they managed to raise families, otherwise we wouldn't have those ethnic groups in America today.
America has always been built in inequality, its just that the WASP middle class used to have have an underclass to feel like they were better than. Now there isn't even a middle class because the wealthy have taken everything.
So your original statement is wrong:
To be clear, this was for white (Irish and Italians don't count) men, and many black, hispanic, and native families could not afford to live the American dream.
Because my Irish great grandfather very much lived the American dream. That is because this statement you made is also wrong:
America has always been built in inequality
The richest Americans had a tax rate of 91% in the 1960s. That number has plummeted since and income inequality has gotten to where it is today as a result.
My mother worked to avoid boredom when my sister and I were at school. Good thing too, since it put her in a good position when everything but wages and computers got enormously more expensive starting in the '90s