Living in the USA: 1970 vs 2020, better or worse?

Hi, I'm 70, and was a young man in the 70s.

Oh, it was much worse between the generations. We were into the new music, andi if you 20 years older, you were listening to Paul Anka, Sinatra, had short hair and drank scotch, worked a job, had a wife and a mortgage, etc. Most of my male friends had long hair.

If you were in your 20s in the 70s, as I was, you were living in the moment, taking drugs, and saying '**** you' to societal norms.

Now, not all of us were like that, but the ones that were, were getting a lot of publicity, the hippies, the social unrest, the protests, etc.

But, the truth is far less exciting, most people weren't that much different than they are now.

The unexciting and non publicity majority back then were just about as unexciting and non-publicity seeking as they are now.

 

Try to be a little more generous because 1972 was no slouch either.
From "The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD, here's the Master of Space and Time - LEON RUSSELL.

 

To be honest I have enjoyed music from all eras. Everything from Jim Morrison and the Doors to Gaga to Ava Max. I am sure I could find medieval music I find appealing. But your comment about 1971 is absolutely wrong! If you are going to talk about the best music from the 1970s your discussion would be incomplete unless you include a little 3 man band from Canada called "RUSH".

 

I think your comments are dead on. I remember hippies from that generation portrayed negatively by society at that time. There was always the image of lawlessness, rebels, dirty, drug and substance abuse, brainwashing satanic music etc... associated with the group. Not too much different than how the older generation views some groups now...

 

I was just talking about the year. I left lots of albums out. 1971 was a pinnacle for top albums by so many artists.

Here's two more.

Who's Next
Aqualung

 

Well, I guess if Vietnam isn't going on, everything is just hunky dory.

 

I alway's liked The Who but I was about to say I had never heard of Jethro Tull beyond recognizing the name and associating it with music. I did click on the Aqualung youtube video and admit I have heard the song before. Maybe in movies.

 

Totally possible today.

No phone, no internet, no netflix, no car payment...

Minimum wage @ $8.25 pays a full time worker $1,320.00. Almost all areas of the country, that is enough for housing and food.

 

I hate jumping in the middle of conversations because I may have totally missed the substance of your discussion but $1320 is the gross pay. How much of that is take home? How many cities would you not be able to cover rent with the left over amount?

 

In actuality, at that pay rate, with a single exemption, the tax payer will get all of the money back at the end of the year.

WIth that said, who says they need to live in a city? Cities are inherently more expensive simply because of market forces, supply and demand. More people/less land = more cost

 

You can't pay rent with money you get back at the end of the year.

The majority of the population lives in cities. There is were the majority of decent paying jobs are and where opportunities for increased pay and career advancement are. You cannot compare career options available in cities and small rural communities. No one forces young people to leave rural communities they do so for the greater opportunity.

 

That was the media hype about that group. Having lived among them, it was far from the stereotypes portrayed in the media, it was, more of a spiritual, live by the moment, happy go lucky, free for all, thing. But this idea we were 'unclean' is crap. We had jobs, we worked, we had apartments ( mostly sharing old houses ) we were like everyone, but we found work we could do and still be ourselves, like a friend of mind opened a water bed shop, a lady friend of mine made jewelry and sold it at flea markets, others worked in social programs, some were in college, some were in art school, I was not doing well as a musician, doing odd jobs, etc, to get by. Oh, and hippy health care was the 'free clinic' (there were several spread throughout CA but O'care is way better, I've experienced both) and, of course, Planned Parenthood for the ladies. But, I saw both men and women at the free clinics.

 

We aren't talking about good paying jobs... we are talking about minimum wage jobs.

Nobody is leaving more affordable rural areas to move to cities for a minimum wage job. If so, they are making a mistake.

We are talking about if it is possible to survive on minimum wage to rent an apartment and have food for a single person. It is not impossible.

 

And yet everybody of both parties are extremely unhappy and fearful. And I don't think it is related to the interstate highway system. Instead of berating these unhappy people you might want to consider why they are unhappy.

 

You have some interesting points in this post but I find them difficult to thresh out from your invective diatribe in the rest of this post.

I can assure you that our colleges are just fine in spite of comedians in cars getting coffee that complain about the audiences lack of sharing their sense of humor. Secondary education btw refers to high school, not college. Typically, academia refers to our institutions of higher education, colleges and universities. Which of these are you talking about when you make the claim that here in the US we have "the most illiberal secondary learning system in the world." Are you referring to our high schools or our universities, or both? What basis do you have to claim sufficient knowledge of "learning systems" around the world that provides you with the confidence to assert that those in the US are the most illiberal of all? More illiberal than Singapore or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are they?

Do by all means share your secret knowledge of what socialism is.

Go try and get a degree from a college at a university and see how much coddling you'll receive, pfffttt....

Regarding the Vietnam war your response is "Ok, and?" I'll give you a chance to revise this flippant response if you so choose. I am well aware of our neocon forever wars and I fully agree that our all volunteer force structure coupled with our lockdown of media coverage has our nation apathetic and checked out of our military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of these wars were ill advised based on our experience in Vietnam and we repeated the mistakes made in Vietnam by backing local personnel in political contexts for which we had no real understanding, aka nation building. One thing is all but certain though, there will be some women in Afghanistan that will very likely soon miss our presence in their society. Simultaneously, another certainty is that the health of people living in places like Fallujah will remain impacted by the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium ammunition for decades to come.

I pretty much agree with your next three paragraphs.

I disagree that Biden is equivalent to McConnell. You might want to reread the OP if you are under the impression that I compared Biden to Ike.

You are welcome to argue your point that 2020 is worse than 1970. I agree with several of your points in this post as well as a few other points that have been made in this thread, primarily with respect to economic metrics. I think that your characterization of my comparison as being nonsensical lacks perspective and depth in several other key aspects of the many concerns that comprise the world of politics.

 

I got head lice from my gf who worked in the Berkeley Free Clinic. Those hippies couldn't have been that clean. One of my roommates was a follower of Jim Jones and literally drank the proverbial kool-aid. I lived about two blocks from the house where Patty Hearst was abducted and was interviewed by a rent-a-cop trying to find her.
And we routinely rattled our brains with remarkably cheap LSD. Did you know Charlie Manson when he hung out at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic?

Yes, those were the days.

 

I appreciate the time you put into your response. When time allows I’ll respond in a manner that is worthy of the effort you put forth in your counter to my post.

 

On net, better for standard of living, worse for liberty.

 

I was roommates with Paul Watkins' brother, whom I will not name. Paul was one of the early Manson followers, got out before the murders, wrote a book, "My Life With Charles Manson"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watkins_(Manson_Family)
I was also roommates with the mother of a famous rock star, whom I will not name ( would give away my identity ), who proposed to me.
Thing is, because I turned her down, she married someone else, and her kid went onto become famous. I've thought about approaching him and saying to him, 'hey, you owe me, dude. had I married your mom, you wouldn't have been born, so where's my cut? " (Just kidding, funny how life turns out).

Just because you encountered a freak with lice, doesn't mean we were all like that. .

 

Cole Porter's 'Anything Goes' was written in 1934, and 'Love for Sale' was written in 1930. Interesting references nevertheless. Wikipedia has some interesting back story on both of these songs. Random observation here but Kate Capshaw's opening performance of 'Anything Goes' in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is spectacular.

I suppose I may have come across as being a bit critical regarding you not mentioning more about the impact of Vietnam on life back then, but it was not my intent to criticize your post other than wanting to know more about your thoughts on that aspect of life in 1970. I was 6 in 1970 and nothing compared to the Vietnam war on the nightly news. It freaked me out.

The contrasts during the 60s and into the early 70s, man, they were stunning. And imo they contributed greatly to the quality of the music. There would have been no Gimme Shelter written without the insanity and tragedy of Altamont, for example. Woodstock/Altamont. Apollo/Vietnam. Camelot/Assassination. Civil Rights Act/Assassination. Interesting dynamics at play.

Earlier in the thread 1971 albums were mentioned, but I think that 1969 was the peak year.




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I think there are arguments that can be made that 2020 is actually worse than 1970 in many ways. Trump's abuse of office along with GQP collusion makes the tricky Dick era look like a Gong Show failure. Several members have pointed out the significant gap that has increased between the cost of living and the compensation and opportunity for work between these two points in time. The insidious consequences of economics that enables the success of our all volunteer military paradigm that has also enabled our society to abdicate responsibility for our irresponsible military actions in places that we have no practical interest in. Our inane and conflicting alliances with both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

My point in my OP still stands though, particularly with respect to members of this forum and the crap they post as their concerns as they continue to support or apologize for their previous support of Trump. Antifa, BLM, Portland, Cities, blah, blah, blah, etc ad nauseum. The outstanding racism some of these <insert Brit profane word for vagina, plural> display here is simply astounding. There is one member that complained that State Farm replaced a white guy with a black guy in the role of Jake-from-State-Farm. I'll unfortunately not likely ever forget that absurdity.

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Whoa, glad to hear you escaped Scientology dude. Are your sisters still into it? What a batshit crazy 'religion' that crap is. I had a run in with those people back in the 80s, in Westwood....

 

You are correct in one sense, I misspoke, and in my haste I used the incorrect terminology for higher education.
I should have take more time to clarify my position.

Easy enough, it’s a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates the means of production, distribution, and exchange be controlled by society as a whole. In the US there’s allot of confusion between socialism, and social services on the left, and right.

I have two degrees, one in Range Management, and the other on Bachelor of Science Welding Engineering Technology. You seem confused by the word coddled. That’s ok, it happens. I’m talking about the length a good portion of the illiberal left Academia go to to protect students from ideas Academia have judged to harmful for young adults. Centers of learning aren’t supposed to be like this.
Group think is corrosive, and runs counter to the ideas of Western Enlightenment. If you don’t believe me, you can disagree with President Obama.
Vox
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness
Obama on liberal college students who want to be "coddled": "That’s not the way we learn"

My response was not flippant, nor would I retract it
If I gave that impression, let me reassure you that was not my intention.
Other than that, I think it’s safe to say we hold some common ground on opposition to American Imperialism.

Both Biden, and McConnell are the same creatures of the same semi functional, and legalized corrupt political body we call congress, and they have been in it a long time before Biden left the senate. Maybe I went a step to far by conflating your words with punditocracy delusion comparisons of Biden being the next Ike, or FDR.

You are correct, I could have chosen a better way of criticizing your opinion, and even taken more time to get some clarification, instead of making assumptions.

 

Living in terms of what?

 

Life....

 

I'm 70, all my three sisters were older, and have all passed away. Me and my two brothers are all that is left.

Scientology is a cult, in every sense of the word.

 

Sir, you have skipped responding to a host of other questions posed by your assertion that the US has the most illiberal "learning system" in the world. I maintain that I am correct in the other points I mentioned as well and you, Sir, are responsible to back your opinion with examples of how the universities in the US are the most illiberal institutions of higher education in the world. You can take all the time you need.

Interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but by this do you mean that your position is that the right's characterization of the left's platform as socialist is a bogus assertion?

Again you can't seem to resist using condescension in your post. I'm confused by the word coddled? Were you specifically coddled by your TAs and Profs obtaining your degrees in range management and welding technology? Did your experience in the classroom in pursuit of these degrees include little sidebar extra credits for offering your opinion in conformance with some leftist ideology in support of socialist agendas? Bullshit. Your welding classes required nothing of these things. And your range management degree most certainly did not require that you passed a class in critical race theory.

I have no need to pay any attention to you on this forum. Your post most certainly was flippant and now you make no apology for it. You apparently lack an understanding of the Vietnam war and the toll it took on our society.

Nope, Biden is nothing like McConnell even taking into consideration the degree to which our 536 elected federal officials are compromised.

Thanks.