For fun, watch the movie “The French Connection.”

Besides still being a great film with plenty of action and suspense, you get to marvel at the fact that, at one time, the police seizing 60 pounds of heroin was headline news around the world.

“The Eiger Sanction” has entered the chat…

[off topic]

“High Crimes” is a novel about a disgraced Olympian who gets a job as a corpse retriever on Mt. Everest. The families of dead climbers pay her to find and bring back the frozen bodies of their relatives.

https://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1930/dark-horse-collects-sebela-moustafas-high-crimes

Read the rules.

If you want to argue the minutia of building codes of the past, I’m sure there’s a sub for that.

I don’t think that the 1960’s life style was ‘lesser’ than today’s by any means.

Check “Hell’s Angels” by Hunter Thompson. There’s a chapter where he runs down the economics of being a hippie/biker/drop out.

A biker could work six months as a Union stevedore and then go on the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boy freind.

There was a popular travel series. The first book was “Europe on $5.00 A Day.” Eventually, they had “Paris…” “London…” and other great vacations all for $5.00/day.

Sporting events, movies, and concerts were much cheaper.

If you wanted distraction, there were book stalls and news stands everywhere.

When I make a random observation I like to put “[off topic]” at the start.

I make the $1.00 minimum wage/$11,000.00 house argument a lot because it so clearly shows how far down we’ve gone.

A lot of people try to refute it by pointing out how much “richer” people are today.

I was confused because I thought you were trying to address the main point, not adding an aside

See?

Yes.

That’s exactly what I was saying

Unless you’re trying to say that all the advances made since 1960 are a direct result of inflation, nothing you posit makes any sense.

Talk to the people who were around at the time, or look at books or essays.

Archie Bunker was often cited as a ‘middle class’ figure.

lemme technical comment.

I’m Dagwood and I was arguing that we’d actually had a ‘middle class’ where the average wage earner could move ahead in the world by working 40 hours a week.

Sohoriots was arguing that the middle class was an illusion.

I think you were trying to commnet to Soho and not me.

Okay?

You do know that there are people walking around your town who were alive in 1970, right?

. There actually was a time when you could have a pretty good life with a simple job.

In 1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average US home was $11,000.00.

No. There actually was a time when you could have a pretty good life with a simple job.

Look up “Hells Angel’s” by Hunter Thompson. There’s a chapter where he runs down the economics of dropping out circa 1970. A biker could work a Union stevedore job for six months and earn enough to live on the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her musicain boyfriend.

That was before Nixon started printing paper dollars to pay for Vietnam and Ronald Reagan cut taxes for the rich.

And had money to go to the nudie bar…

We need to stop using the term “middle class.”

Back in the day, middle class meant Archie Bunker/Al Bundy supporting a family of four with one job.

Today it’s two college graduates struggling to keep up with the bills.

We’re in Tsarist Russia; a huge mass of serfs, a small set of professionals, and an aristocracy that controls 90% of the wealth.

The only reason Russia became a threat is that they had Trump there carrying their water.

Also, if Trump had the brains of a Fredo Corleone he would have realized that none of the kompromat Putin had on him would matter once he was in office. The CIA would swear up and down that it was ‘fake news.’

Just remember this : when Mitt Romney called Russia our greatest threat in 2012 the GOP rushed to his defense. A decade later they were openly admiring Putin.

I try not to be ‘that American’ who thinks everything works the same all around the globe.

Good luck

If you’re in the US start applying for Civil Service jobs. City, state or federal.

You won’t get hired quickly, but when you do get hired you’ll have a great union and solid benefits.