I think we are just less happy. We have more stuff now by far than we did back then. More people have more stuff. Poverty is much different than it was back then in terms of what people actually have.
America wasn’t better by most metrics (we have more things, we live longer and healthier, gays/women/minorities have way better lives, technology has made life so much easier) but we certainly are becoming less happy as a society.
Not to go off on a side rant but it’s probably technology and the internet. We are starting to becoming even more clear about the picture of life online and what it is doing to us as a society. In general it is making us less happy. N=1 and all but from time to time I essentially completely disconnect. You won’t see me posting here, I deliberately will send almost 0 e-mails, etc. A lot of this is because of my job but somehow I’m much happier during this time. Ironically when I have more free time and less supposed stress I surf the internet more, watch Netflix, post on t-nation and other places etc and doing things that I “enjoy” doesn’t really make me feel any better.
That was the year of my birth! All I really remember is being pushed down a claustrophobic pink hallway and somebody slapping me. It was so traumatic that I blacked out for a couple of years.
When I came to I was wearing a velour leisure suit.
I’m sorry the south is/was backwards. The changes for blacks in the last 70 years have not all been rosy. This from black economist Walter Williams:
"From 1900 to 1954, blacks were more active than whites in the labor market. Until about 1960, black male labor force participation in every age group was equal to or greater than that of whites. During that period, black teen unemployment was roughly equal to or less than white teen unemployment. As early as 1900, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites; today it’s about 30 percent longer. To do something about today’s employment picture requires abandonment of sacred cows and honesty.
The typical answer given for many black problems is racial discrimination. No one argues that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. But the relevant question is: How much of what we see can be explained by discrimination? I doubt whether anyone would argue that the reason for lower unemployment, higher labor force participation and shorter duration of unemployment among blacks in the first half of the 20th century was that there was less racial discrimination. I also doubt whether anyone would argue that during earlier periods, blacks had higher education and greater skills attainment than whites. Answers must be sought elsewhere."
Border control, drugs , crime and expensive healthcare only hurts whites? Not sure where you live but I still live in Texas and this is a problem for all races.
1900-1915: Continuation of Nineteenth-Century Patterns
As was the case in the 1800s, African American economic life in the early 1900s centered on Southern cotton agriculture. African Americans grew cotton under a variety of contracts and institutional arrangements. Some were laborers hired for a short period for specific tasks. Many were tenant farmers, renting a piece of land and some of their tools and supplies, and paying the rent at the end of the growing season with a portion of their harvest. Records from Southern farms indicate that white and black farm laborers were paid similar wages, and that white and black tenant farmers worked under similar contracts for similar rental rates. Whites in general, however, were much more likely to own land. A similar pattern is found in Southern manufacturing in these years.
[…]
While the concentration of African Americans in cotton agriculture persisted, Southern black life changed in other ways in the early 1900s. Limitations on the legal rights of African Americans grew more severe in the South in this era. The 1896 Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson provided a legal basis for greater explicit segregation in American society.
[…]
1916-1964: Migration and Urbanization
The mid-1910s witnessed the first large-scale movement of African Americans out of the South. The share of African Americans living in the South fell by about four percentage points between 1910 and 1920 (with nearly all of this movement after 1915) and another six points between 1920 and 1930 (see Table 3). What caused this tremendous relocation of African Americans? The worsening political and social conditions in the South, noted above, certainly played a role. But the specific timing of the migration appears to be connected to economic factors. Northern employers in many industries faced strong demand for their products and so had a great need for labor. Their traditional source of cheap labor, European immigrants, dried up in the late 1910s as the coming of World War I interrupted international migration. After the end of the war, new laws limiting immigration to the US would keep the flow of European labor at a low level. Northern employers thus needed a new source of cheap labor, and they turned to Southern blacks. In some cases, employers would send recruiters to the South to find workers and to pay their way North. In addition to this pull from the North, economic events in the South served to push out many African Americans. Destruction of the cotton crop by the boll weevil, an insect that feeds on cotton plants, and poor weather in some places during these years made new opportunities in the North even more attractive.
[…] Unemployment
On the whole, migration and entry to new industries played a large role in promoting black relative pay increases through the years from World War I to the late 1950s. However, these changes also had some negative effects on black labor market outcomes. As black workers left Southern agriculture, their relative rate of unemployment rose. For the nation as a whole, black and white unemployment rates were about equal as late as 1930. This equality was to a great extent the result of lower rates of unemployment for everyone in the rural South relative to the urban North. Farm owners and sharecroppers tended not to lose their work entirely during weak markets, whereas manufacturing employees might be laid off or fired during downturns. Still, while unemployment was greater for everyone in the urban North, it was disproportionately greater for black workers. Their unemployment rates in Northern cities were much higher than white unemployment rates in the same cities. One result of black migration, then, was a dramatic increase in the ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment. The black/white unemployment ratio rose from about 1 in 1930 (indicating equal unemployment rates for blacks and whites) to about 2 by 1960. The ratio remained at this high level through the end of the twentieth century. [emphasis mine]
Excellent info. I brought up unemployment and labor force participation rate to illustrate that not all is better, and it’s not just whites who have lost ground.
I consider being gainfully employed a big part of happiness and contentment for people. Even if the work sucks and you’re struggling at least you have some sense of purpose. Plus being busy 40+ hours per week keeps you from having the time to dwell on the ugly stuff in your life and get into trouble.
The Chinese Communists understand this very well. That’s why they subsidize the hell out of their industries. People working don’t have time to riot and overthrow the Politburo.
Where is @zeb1 to argue that living in urban areas controlled by Democrats is bad for you? Lmao.
First of all, this phenomenon is present everywhere, not just in the US.
I grew up under socialism - not the Scandinavian type espoused by Bernie but actual hammer-and-sickle stuff - and it was…well, interesting. Daily blackouts, shortages of literally everything, including consumer goods and gas, not to mention that you had to wait in line for hours for everything and pull strings to buy disgusting chocolate-substitute which was basically sugar mixed with hydrogenated vegetable fat and some artificial coloring to make it look brownish.
But I digress.
The point is, the people I grew up with now live comfortable upper-middle class lives - they do Crossfit or run triathlons, agonize whether to switch to organic vegan pea protein powders, buy antique furniture, play old games on Steam ironically, travel to exotic destinations, drive expensive cars yet they’re unhappy. Looking objectively, the quality of their lives has increased dramatically, not to mention they have so many options…
I think the Internet and social media are to blame - everyone now compares their lives to the best and most fun moments of others’ lives proudly displayed on Facebook as well as the idealized version of how one’s life should be imposed by the dominant cultural framework.
I don’t think Trump is a white supremacist but I saw this and added all up together looks well not good.
“And he fails utterly to even entertain the possibility that Trump is himself an avowed white supremacist.
Which he clearly is.
Someone does not live a life careening from housing discrimination against Black applicants, to public musings on eugenics and the superiority of one’s own genes, to a crusade against exonerated men of color, to a birther campaign against the nation’s first Black president, to a presidential announcement address steeped in racism and nativism, to a campaign slogan that’s dogwhistled white supremacy, to anti-Semitic tweets and sloganeering, to an attack on a judge because of his ethnicity, to an entire campaign exploiting racial and xenophobic fears, to a presidential agenda centered around toxic attacks on immigrants and Muslims and demonizing cities with significant Black and/or immigrant populations, to defending Confederate monuments, and everything that has come before and in between, if one is merely obtuse.”
Going to reiterate that I don’t think Trump is a white supremacist, as I just thought the paragraph was interesting.
Fuck does anyone know anymore though we just had a Nazi parade with more than one person in daylight.
The NY Times just did an article by black folks in Trump’s inner circle. It was the surprisingly fair.
They talked to the black woman he dated for 2 years. She said he wasn’t racist at all. The worst thing she ever heard him say was he was surprised to see black folks at a tennis match.
I guess he donated to Jackson and Sharpton in the 1980s and provided one of them with free rent.
So he may be out of touch old white guy, but not a white supremacist.
Don’t let the testimony of people that know him get in the way of your narrative.
Can anyone think of someone MORE vindictive than an ex-girlfriend? Other than an ex-wife of course. If anyone was going to out him as a racist it would be an ex in the friggin New York Times.
I guess the question is whether or not anyone actually cares if Trump isn’t racist in his personal life. If you intentionally garner the support of a group, and make that group stronger, are you not inherently supporting that group? (Apply this to literally any group, not just Nazis)