This just occurred to me: On the 1950s sitcom the Honeymooners Ralph Kramden worked for a bus company which either was part of the city government or had a long-term contract with the city. he and his wife lived in a two-room apartment in a large tenement. His friend Ed Norton worked in the sewer (definitely a city employee) and lived in the same building. Kramden's bank account was $75. When they reprized the roles for a tv special over 30 years later their status had not improved. Was that all you could afford on a DPW paycheck in the 1950s through 1980s? How are people in those professions living now?
The median annual wage of transit and intercity bus drivers was $35,520 in May 2010 but it's a public sector job full of benefits such as health and life insurance, sick leave, and free bus rides and full-time drivers may also receive paid vacations, a retirement plan and dental insurance.
So the Kramdens should have been living in a much larger apartment in the 1950s and preparing to burn the mortgage on a modest urban house in the tv special 30 years later. What type of profession should he have had to realistically represent that living arrangement?
[video=youtube;3A7VCBagRAw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A7VCBagRAw[/video] The Kramdens lived in an apartment house at 328 Chauncey Street in Brooklyn and it may have been be hard to find an alternative living arrangement in that urban area and living in an apartment was an ordinary choice for the working class whose living standards have not improved much since the 1950s and bus drivers and nurses are not expected to get on the housing ladder without being subsidised by the government in the form of housing benefit.
Thank you so much. (I have no doubt Kramden would have supported Barney Frank.) Staying with television though, in that same era the Ricardos of I Love Lucy were living in a two-family house with a long-term lease. Ricky was an orchestra leader who traveled internationally. Lucy went with him only when the sponsor paid her way. They took vacations in England, France, Cuba and the American south. Ricky appeared in one Hollywood movie, but they never moved. Was that realistic?
