
The 1950s Are Greatly Overrated - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-01/economic-growth-in-the-1950s-left-a-lot-of-americans-behind
======
rpiguy
It doesn't matter what statistics this professor digs up on the 1950s - the
50s are remembered fondly for the general sense of optimism, confidence, and
national pride. Yes it was better for white people, but that doesn't change
anything. Suburbia was born, millions of families moved from poverty stricken
rural areas, and America felt as though it could do anything. Break the sound
barrier, go to space, cure Polio.

Liberal professors obsessed with identity politics and historical revisionism
just wouldn't get it.

China is going through the same kind of boom today. 75% of the country is
still quite poor, but seeing the other 25% lifted from forced, agrarian
poverty into a comparatively wealthy middle class fuels optimism and national
pride. Doesn't matter that the growth leaves out the Muslim poor or most
Tibetans, etc. This will be remembered as a golden age for China.

~~~
eesmith
Noah Smith is a columnist. He was a business school professor, but is not now.

"Fondly remembered" means you are deliberately choosing a lens of nostalgia.

Also, Korea War and the Cold War's threat of nuclear war. The second Red Scare
and the McCarthy trials. Segregation. Red-lining. Sundown towns.

Eg, "Suburbia was born" in part due to white flight from the cities, and
subsidized by government policies which supported white people over black.
Levittown, "widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout
the country" (quoting Wikipedia) only sold homes to white families.

As a reminder, the Soviets got to space first. At the beginning of the century
they were one of the poorest countries in Europe.

~~~
rpiguy
No it is just sour grapes. "It doesn't matter that most people remember it
fondly, they shouldn't" gist of the article is ridiculous. Cut me a break.

I will repeat it was peak America. Interstates, television (and the cultural
cohesion it briefly engendered), post war confidence, manufacturing boom,
steel boom, automobile boom, petroleum boom, and a huge swath of people going
from having no to little material security to having a path to security.
Nostalgia in this case is thoroughly based in the zeitgeist of the time.

There is no reason it should not be looked as a great time in American
history.

Soviets put a satellite up first, but couldn't feed their people and crammed
everyone into cinderblock apartments.

Racism has existed since the beginning of time, is rampant today, across all
cultures and races. Because we were still struggling with civil rights as a
nation is no reason to not celebrate our accomplishments.

I was the child of a mixed marriage and my parents experienced their share of
racism. I grew up in a farm town where no one could say my last name correctly
even though it is literally spelled out phonetically. I hate racism, but I am
strongly averse to viewing history through the lens of race.

~~~
eesmith
It was peak America mostly for straight, white, Protestant men.

It was not peak America for gay people. Or for blacks. Or for women. Just a
few years later, America was worried about having its first Catholic
President.

But, who wrote the stories, and directed the films, and set the cultural
memories about that time?

Why weren't the Roaring Twenties peak America? Quoting Wikipedia:

> This period saw the large-scale development and use of automobiles,
> telephones, movies, radio, and electrical appliances being installed in the
> lives of thousands of Westerners. Aviation soon became a business. Nations
> saw rapid industrial and economic growth, accelerated consumer demand, and
> introduced significantly new changes in lifestyle and culture. The media
> focused on celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars, as cities
> rooted for their home teams and filled the new palatial cinemas and gigantic
> sports stadiums. In most major democratic states, women won the right to
> vote. The right to vote made a huge impact on society.

Why isn't now peak America?

~~~
8456523
>It was peak America mostly for straight, white, Protestant men.

>It was not peak America for gay people. Or for blacks. Or for women.

It makes me sad how often discussion of any particular social question on this
site gets derailed into a discussion of identity politics.

In 1950, Americans owned 75% of all the cars in the world. Surely, black
Americans owned cars at a lower rate than white Americans did, but they
probably owned cars at a higher rate than whites in Sweden, France or the UK
did. The point is that there are major influences on prosperity that cannot be
reduced to the same old identity-politics tropes.

~~~
eesmith
So why is car-owning a relevant statistic for "peak American"? Why not, for
example, miles of passenger-rail tracks?

Can that measure be extended to judge "peak Germany", when in the 1880s
Germany had 75% or more of the world's production automobiles? No, clearly
not.

All of this is a question of how you want to choose your numbers.

I'll point out that this isn't a "this site gets derailed into a discussion of
identity politics" issue for two reasons:

1) The term "American" is identity politics. Benjamin Franklin is rightly
called "the first American" because of his identity politics concerning
colonial unity.

2) the opinion piece itself mentions "the pervasive racism and sexism", so
further discussion of that topic is _on track_.

~~~
rpiguy
1920s were not peak America. Post WW2 left us as the only untouched industrial
power and our share of global GDP was incredible.

The US was 90% white in 1950, if it was a good time for white people than it
was a good time for the vast majority. Civil rights were moving the right
direction, I’d rather be proud of the progress on Civil Rights at that time. I
won’t judge the period for not having gay friendly policies. There were no gay
friendly countries in the 1950s, lol.

~~~
eesmith
Then why weren't the 1990s peak America? Post Cold War left us the only
remaining superpower, with military bases all over the world, and unparalleled
economic influence over other countries. There was the relief that nuclear
Armageddon was no more, the optimism that the internet boom would lead to
social improvement, the prosperity of the stock market boom (remember 'Dow
36,000'?), the promise of VR and nanotech just around the corner, and much
more.

That's the entire problem with this topic - it's easy to pick stats which let
you conclude that the 1950s was "peak America". But at least as easy to pick
other stats which conclude it wasn't.

Your definition of "peak" can only be applied to the most powerful countries.
For example, when was peak Iceland or Finland? That suggests it's a pretty
weak definition.

I can't help but think that your phrase "good time for white people" omits out
the white women who had to deal with the widespread sexism and misogyny of the
era. What fraction of those women had to deal with “the problem with no name”,
as Friedan called it - "the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and
early 1960s" quoting Wikipedia?

Your phrase "a good time for the vast majority" doesn't ring true.

If 100% of the 10% black population, and 60% of the 45% white female
population, and 4% of the 45% gay white male population faced discrimination,
then that's 39% of the population.

That's a majority, yes, but not a _vast_ majority. And that's just back-of-
the-envelope numbers. What about a white men who wanted to marry a black woman
but couldn't because of anti-miscegenation laws? A white man in a position
like Loving, in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia)
, was certainly not having a good time in the 1950s.

If 1% of the population is in abject slavery, in order to make the other 99%
very happy, is that truly just? I would prefer to think I would be one of the
ones who walks away from Le Guin's Omelas.

~~~
rpiguy
The 1990s were not like the 1950s. Most of the 1990s were a depressing grunge-
fueled flannel fest. Manufacturing jobs really started to accelerate out of
the country as we signed a multitude of free trade deals. Funny how most
people only remember the last three years or so, when the economy recovered
and the internet kicked-in. I call this the post-Spice Girls period.

Inso far as the 1950s you just don't understand what it was like for that
generation who went from sharing two room shacks as children to 1500 square
foot houses. Going from ice boxes to refrigerators, from routinely not having
enough to eat to shopping at supermarkets. It was truly miraculous and that
fueled national optimism, expansion of manufacturing, and wildly enthusiastic
futurism.

The fact that there were anti-miscegenation laws in effect in the 1950s does
not detract at all from this age of miracles. Yes certainly condemn the laws
they were terrible, but those laws were struck down, progress was made. That
is what matters.

>> If 1% of the population is in abject slavery, in order to make the other
99% very happy, is that truly just? I would prefer to think I would be one of
the ones who walks away from Le Guin's Omelas.

I never said the 1950s were America's most just age that is a completely
different discussion.

~~~
eesmith
My point again is that it's easy to cherry pick what you think is important.
For every measure you come up with, to say that the 1950s is "peak America", I
can come up with two that say it isn't.

I was an adult in the 1990s.

I definitely remember the late 1980s with the fall of the Berlin Wall and
dissolution of the Soviet Union. I remember the hopes of the so-called "Peace
Dividend." I remember the excitement in the tech community of nanotech (eg,
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_84.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_84.html)
from 1990), and worked on VR projects in the mid-1990s (including in a lab
with the sticker "My other computer is a holodeck").

So I have no idea what you mean by "depressing grunge-fueled flannel fest",
nor why you imply my comment is only about the last few years of the decade.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom)
points out:

> The 1990s economic boom in the United States was an economic expansion that
> began after the end of the early 1990s recession in March 1991, and ended in
> March 2001 with the start of the early 2000s recession during the Dot-com
> bubble crash (2000–2002).

Or, across the Atlantic, since you mention Spice Girls
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Britannia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Britannia)
:

> Cool Britannia was a period of increased pride in the culture of the United
> Kingdom throughout most of the 1990s, inspired by 1960s pop culture. The
> success of Britpop and musical acts such as Spice Girls, Blur and Oasis led
> to a renewed feeling of optimism in the United Kingdom following the
> tumultuous years of the 1970s and 1980s.

These don't speak of a decade mostly full of depression.

You write "you just don't understand what it was like for that generation who
went from sharing two room shacks as children to 1500 square foot houses".

What makes you so presumptive about what I know?

Very few people met your description. The average new 1950s home was about
1,000 sq feet. It wasn't until the mid-1960s that new homes averaged 1,500 sq.
feet, much less most of the population.

Going the other way, most people in the 1920s did not live in two room shacks.
The best numbers I found are in "120 Years of U.S. Residential Housing Stock
and Floor Space" at
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/#pone.0...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/#pone.0134135.s008)
in S6 File. Figure G is "Figure G. Floor space per capita, 1981-2010" (that's
a typo: the data starts in 1881).

In the 1920s, the average floor space per person was 445 sq. feet. In the
1950s it was 525 sq. feet. Bigger, certainly, but not huge. For that matter,
in 1895, it was 400 sq. ft.

What is the basis for your "two room shack" to "1500 square foot houses"
transition?

I don't think you get how miraculous things were in the 1920s. Which is odd
since I quoted Wikipedia's comment about it earlier.

Or how miraculous they were in the 1890s. People who grew up with horses as
the fastest thing around could ride trains. There were telephones and
phonographs, and electric lights. Newspapers were publishing telegraphed news
from around the world within a day of it happening. Entire new industries were
springing up, and with it new methods of organization. It was a time full of
"national optimism, expansion of manufacturing, and wildly enthusiastic
futurism."

Each of these could also be called "peak America."

You write "I never said the 1950s were America's most just age".

I never claimed you did.

What I claimed was that I don't accept "if it was a good time for white people
than it was a good time for the vast majority" as being a morally valid
justification, and I showed that "vast majority" is greatly overstating what I
think are reasonable estimates of the actual numbers, and I conjectured it was
likely because you overlooked the sexism faced by white women in that era.

