Posted on 07/28/2012 3:55:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent with the average family income at $6,000 a year.
Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley's record "Return to Sender" and went to see "Lawrence of Arabia" in movie theaters. At home, "Wagon Train" was the top TV show.
Years later, the film "American Graffiti" featured the ad campaign "Where were you in '62?" Well, I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.
My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.
In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.
Also, we now have close to nine million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about five million. Here's my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?
The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the Nanny State.
Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is now eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of "where's mine" has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edward Winter Group once sang: "Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich "pay their fair share." And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.
Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.
And the second corner is the growth industry.
On this day in 1962 I was preparing to depart Clark Air Base in the Philippine Islands. I was one day short of my 20th birthday.
Where was I in ‘62? Out in Hawaii, crapping in my diaper. My dad was stationed at Kanaehoe Bay.
I was in a diaper, running around the ‘cane fields.
From a kids perspective, Mom was usually home when we got home from school, we could go anywhere in town just so long as we were home for dinner, when we got sick the doctor would stop by and give us a shot of penicillin, we could entertain ourselves without needing batteries or electric power by using cardboard boxes, sticks, scrap wood, shovels, hammers,etc, we could go to the movies and get candy all day for less than 1 dollar, drive in movies. As a kid I had much more freedom than my kids ever did.
So that's what I do in '62! (Just for rhyme's sake)
“Our standard of living is much higher now than it was in 1962.”
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That is quite subjective.
How is the standard of living much higher? From what I see, it is worse.
Is it because you now have cable TV and Internet, or a better car?
I can assure you, public education was far superior then
it is today.
The media was more balanced then it is today.
We did not have an illegal Communist for POTUS.
Premarital sex and homosexuality was in the closet.
Drugs were limited to a small outcast segment of society.
One would never see an illegal immigrant.
I am, of course, speaking only for myself.
If the American culture was as it was in 1980, I would not mind still living there.
I don’t begrudge a safety net for people truly in need, but why should that be the government’s business. Charity is a private affair. Once you open the door to government wealth redistribution, aka a safety net, there’s no end of it. Programs always expand. That’s just the way it is. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be a safety net, but that net should come from private entities, like churches, and it should be entirely voluntary.
What you are seeing today is the latter stages of a government controlled safety net. There’s no political will to take the steps necessary to slash it, and it keeps growing as more and more people come to the conclusion it’s foolish to not take advantage of it. Everyone ends up wanting to get their slice while the getting is good, but all they’re really doing is stealing from their neighbors.
Oh, BTW! The number one song during my down time: “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” by Neil Sedaka! (Lot of radio time)
BTW, I was born out there in 1962, so no jokes about it being my first year of college. I crapped my diapers in college 18 years later. {8^D
Then home for some leave before reporting to MCAS Beaufort, SC. In October, the Cuban Missile Crisis sent my squadron to Key West flying “photographic missions”. Our brand new F8U-2NE’s came back with blackened gun ports and greased missile racks, plus some new holes.
On 31 December,1962 I was honorably discharged from the Marines. That night, I proposed to my future wife. We will celebrate 48 years of marriage in December. 1962 was certainly a busy and momentous year.
I was born in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. My mother was wondering if there would be a home to go to when we left the hospital. Of course that was when you got to stay in the hospital for a week after delivering. Ive been causing trouble ever since!
I disagree.
There have been so many technological advances since 1962.
Huge bulky computers that costed millions of dollars and no internet.
Why would you want to go back?
I was 5 years old. We lived on a ranch during the summer, and lived in a really rural and remote town in the winter. The ranch didn’t have electricity, nor plumbing, or phone. We got plumbing in 63 and electricity in 64. My dad had to pay to have the electric wires run to the house. We got a “party line” in 1967.
There was no TV reception (in fact there still isn’t to this day). We had very little money - far less than the average income. I had two school dresses, and a Sunday dress and a couple of pairs of hand-me-down overalls for work and play.
We were our own entertainment. We sang, made candy, played games and worked hard.
Life was better then.
In eighth grade planning to enter the seminary. I ended the year at St. Vincent’s Seminary in Cape Girardeau, MO.
Because back then people earned their standard of living. Now the gummint gives it to half of them every month. A family on perpetual welfare today has a higher standard of living than our family did in 1962. We had BW TV, one radio, one phone, a record player, no AC. We just got our first car in 1960.
And now people demand it and we hand it to them out of our own pockets.
It's an attitude decline, not a material decline.
I'm not sure that our standard of living is higher now than it was in '62. We have more "stuff" but there is also a decrease in quality of life - working moms, daycare, fast meals.
How exactly has the country been in decline?
If you have to ask that question it shows that you know very little of what life was like in the US in '62.
In 1962 if I wanted to buy a computer it would cost me millions of dollars.
And the computer I would get would be huge and consume large amounts of energy.
Now I can buy a decent computer for $500 and it will consume much less energy while being smaller and will much more features.
You can’t miss what you never had. I wouldn’t miss the internet because it wasn’t available. We were a much more moral nation then and Susie didn’t have two mommies. My teachers read the Bible in the mornings and said a short prayer. You didn’t have to defend being a Christian. There were no school shootings. TV shows were not trashy. Music didn’t need to be beeped on the radio. Neighbors knew each other and their children played together and no one in my high school was pregnant and the school didn’t have a day care for students’ babies.
I could go on, but I think you get my point.
VX-6, McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
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