Let's bring back the best of the 1950s!

[MineralMan]

Lots of people seem to believe that the 1950s were the heyday of life in these United States. I see nostalgia for those days all the time on the web. I lived through the 1950s as a grade-schooler, so I remember them quite well.

There were a lot of problems in that decade. A lot. I wouldn't want to revisit those days, in terms of civil rights, women's rights, children's rights, or a lot of other things.

However, there was one thing from the 1950s I'd love to see again, and would like to propose that we do roll back to the 1950s in one respect:

Restore The Income Tax Structure of The 1950s!

Yes, indeed. That's something I'd sure like to see. That's progressive! Doing that could fund the paydown of the national debt, enable single-payer health care, and much, much more.

So, when you hear someone whining about the good old days of the 1950s, tell them that you support bringing back the taxes of those days. See what reaction you get...

[glowing]

1. Didn't the wealthy people have to pay a lot of income tax?

I think its time they begin again. This country could actually pay for the Depression that most of these Wall Streeters have caused.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. It seems like a lot more people were able to buy and keep houses then. That would also be nice.

[panader0]

4. In most households, only the husband worked

and was able to provide for a house and a car. No fast foods either.

[tjwash]

9. The manufacturing infrastructures of Japan and Europe were obliterated by WWII back then

That's why there were lots of jobs. Thank Hitler and Shōwa for all of that, not some magical "yankee ingenuity" that Americans enjoy masturbating over.

[panader0]

11. Good point.

[Warpy]

17. That was great for the husband and kids but not so great

for a lot of wives who were going stir crazy. Remember, there was only one car and he used it to get to work during the week, leaving her stranded with the kids. If she was lucky (like my mother was), she could walk three quarters of a mile to a bus stop while the kids were in school and go someplace for some grownup conversation that didn't revolve around kids and cleaning.

There had been a concentrated national effort to get women out of the workplace in the mid to late 40s to make room for returning GIs and the workplace was not about to let them back in until forced to. My engineer mother turned school teacher in the late 50s just to avoid turning into an axe murderess if forced to stay in that house much longer.

Women have an equal lack of choice now, with those who really do want the household economy of garden, canning, backyard chickens, sewing, and the rest of the support for a family full time being forced to go scramble for a paycheck because pay for men has dropped so far since the 50s.

Only upper middle class women have any say in the matter of whether or not to pursue a career inside our outside the home. The lack of choice for the rest of us is as stark as it was in the 1950s.

[MineralMan]

22. You're absolutely correct. I don't want to return to the 50s in

any other way than having the wealthy pay their share.

[quiller4]

28. "One car" not on the block I lived. In 1956 Dad bought himself a new

buick for himself and a 1951 for my Mom. Ours was a middle class neighborhood. Few Moms worked but all had their own vehicles by the mid or end of the decade.

[Warpy]

30. My mother got hers in 1959

Ironically, she really didn't need it any more, since we'd finally moved to an area where she could walk to the market, the bank, the library, the theater, and her job.

However, the late 40s to the late 50s were the time when women were completely ghettoized in the new suburbs and many of them were miserable.

[madamesilverspurs]

79. My folks had a '39 coupe, ugly black thing,

stick shift, starter button on the floor that you had to press with the same foot that was pressing the accelerator, door frames that would blister your hands in summer and peel your skin off in winter, and a remarkable tendency to vapor lock in the middle of traffic. So Mom was thrilled when Dad drove into the driveway, on her birthday, in a brand spanking new 1955 Ford station wagon. Thrilled, that is, until Dad informed her that she no longer had to share the coupe with him as he would be driving the station wagon. Three or four years later Dad got a company car, retired the coupe and gave Mom the keys to the station wagon. But I don't think she ever got around to forgiving him for that birthday non-present...

[rzemanfl]

36. Everything is relative. Before WWII there were laws that made

it illegal for married women to work in some occupations.

What I find amazing about the '50s is that you could walk into a car showroom and with no computers anywhere choose between several trim versions of the same car in two door, four door, sedan, hardtop, wagon, convertible, pick from a multitude of colors and color combinations, pick the interior color, choose between several engines and transmissions, pick your real axle ratio(!), wheel covers, tires and somehow actual humans figured out how to get it to you. Then the next year you could get one that looked a lot different-not that that was a good thing.

[Warpy]

39. I remember losing teachers in the middle of the year

not because they'd gotten married, but because they'd gotten pregnant while married. Yes, as soon as the rabbit died, the OB-Gyn would call the employer and give the good news and the next day, Mom to be would get her pink slip, and not the kind she liked to wear.

Women with children weren't allowed to be near, ahem, school children until the late 50s, when my mother jumped at the chance.

A new car in the neighborhood was a huge deal back then, all the kids gathered around in awe of the thing for a couple of days. In other words, it didn't happen all that often. Back in the 50s, a new car stuck out like a sore thumb, especially when they started to give art school grads a crack at body design.

My own folks were frugal and usually bought used cars, preferring to put every dime they could spare into the stock market. That frugality is paying off for me now because I'm living on the income from the investments they made back then.

[jtrockville]

74. Carpooling was popular in my 'hood. Moms were stranded 1 out of 4 weeks.

4 dads rode together. Each dad drove 1 out of 4 weeks. Moms had the car the other 3 weeks. Seems to work out pretty well.

[cutlassmama]

34. Exactly.

[MineralMan]

7. Yep! The tax structure was very progressive, indeed.

The ordinary working person paid virtually no income taxes at all. The bank managers, though, and all other wealthy people of the day paid income taxes at rates up to 90+%.

My parents, with one person working as an auto mechanic back in those days, bought a house, then upgraded to a nicer house in 1957, when I was 12 years old. Auto mechanics made about $2.50/hr. in those days.

Incomes are higher today, so the structure would have to be normalized to current incomes, but the concept would be the same. The average working person would essentially be free from income taxes, but the wealthy would pay a much higher rate than the approximately zero percent they manage today.

There was even a 10% excise tax on luxuries back then. I remember buying a little pearl pendant for my first real girlfriend in the early 1960s and being shocked that I had to pay a 10% excise tax on it.

Our tax structure was very progressive.

[frazzled]

10. No, fewer were home owners then

55% were homeowners in 1950, vs. 67.5% in 2008, according to this chart and article.

http://mortgagestats.blogspot.com/2009/02/century-of-home-ownership-rates-1900-to.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. Really? Thanks for that info! Another golden era myth gets blown away by facts.

[Cleita]

24. There were no homeless to speak of then because social

welfare programs subsidized rent for the poor. 67.5% ownership means nothing if you don't know how many homes each family owns. I live in an area where vacation homes, which would make nice single family homes, go empty most of the year while people who work in this area are crowded into trailer parks and homeless shelters. A better statistic would show how many are primary single family residences and how many are the secondary homes of the rich. I think your stats would show a different demography.

[frazzled]

58. The percentage of people living in poverty in the 50s was nearly double today's rate

From the National Poverty Center: http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/

How has poverty changed over time?

In the late 1950s, the poverty rate for all Americans was 22.4 percent, or 39.5 million individuals. These numbers declined steadily throughout the 1960s, reaching a low of 11.1 percent, or 22.9 million individuals, in 1973. Over the next decade, the poverty rate fluctuated between 11.1 and 12.6 percent, but it began to rise steadily again in 1980. By 1983, the number of poor individuals had risen to 35.3 million individuals, or 15.2 percent.

For the next ten years, the poverty rate remained above 12.8 percent, increasing to 15.1 percent, or 39.3 million individuals, by 1993. The rate declined for the remainder of the decade, to 11.3 percent by 2000. From 2000 to 2004 it rose each year to 12.7 in 2004.

[Cleita]

61. But they weren't living on the street because there was a basic

welfare system that has been considerably weakened since those days. They were mostly single women with children and minorities because decent job opportunities weren't open to them back then. You would be surprised today how many DUers are presently homeless today or have been homeless in the last twelve months. Many of them just don't talk about it on the forums but they do tell many of us of their homeless situation in PM's. Back in the fifties the state would have gotten them shelter like a regular apartment, not in the homeless shelters that are more like Dicken's poor houses that we have today.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Potsie ..... izzat you?

[MineralMan]

12. Yah, pretty much, you betcha.

My family was very similar to the Nelson Family, though. I was called Rich, and my brother was called Dave. Not Ricky, but close.

"Hi, Dave!" "Hi, Rich!" "Hi, Mom!" "Hi, Dad!"

Uff da!

[Stinky The Clown]

18. My brother still characterizes our family as ....

.... Leave it To Beaver. Him, the youngest, being "the Beav"

[MineralMan]

20. Bunch old geezers we are...

[Odin2005]

5. Soak the rich!

[Nite Owl]

6. It's so funny when the cons

call JFK a conservative too because he lowered taxes, they never mention where they were at the time. Imagine if we tried to raise them now to what JFK lowered them too, all hell would break loose.

[vademocrat]

8. Yes - strong labor unions!

[MineralMan]

13. That, too!

[Cleita]

15. Also the unions were strong in the 1950's. Just about everyone's dad,

in the working class neighborhoods I lived in, belonged to one. It meant they could afford a house and a middle class life style to go with it. One salary supported a family. This way you get the good paying jobs that increases the taxes for government social programs. I knew poor people in the fifties but none of them were homeless because the government welfare programs subsidized housing where the families couldn't afford it. Poor kids got free school lunches too, so that they didn't go hungry.

[Celebration]

16. sorry, uh

The taxes were so high then that the Laffer curve actually had merit at that point. I wouldn't mind seeing the marginal rate higher, but we don't want to tax ourselves into a worse recession.

[walldude]

19. The only good thing about the 50's was the music.

Fats Domino, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Dion, Chuck Berry, Bill Hailey, Elvis.. Kicking in doors, breaking down barriers, blurring the lines between black and white.

The rest.. meh.

[eleny]

21. Remember when the doctor made house calls?

Ours even wore a 3-piece suit. Talk about service.

But really, it was good when you didn't have to get dressed and drag yourself to the office. I suppose most families, like ours, didn't have a car. So it made sense back then.

I like your idea of rolling the tax rates to the Eisenhower numbers.

[MineralMan]

25. Oh, yes...I remember house calls.

Old Dr. Kerr used to drop by with his penicillin shots quite often when we were kids. We had every childhood disease except diphtheria, I think. And every one of them meant a nasty needle in the butt. That was before they knew about the risks of overuse of antibiotics.

Today, kids grow up without the chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and polio. That's a very, very good thing. Again, I don't want anything from the 50s except for the tax structure.

[Cleita]

27. I do. I was shocked the first time I had to drag myself out of bed with

104 degree fever and hop on the bus, no doubt infecting everyone on it, to go to the doctor to get some scripts for medicine.

[HopeHoops]

35. Our pediatrician made house calls for our newborns - '91, '93, '95.

They were all born at home and two or three days later, our doctor showed up to check them out. She only charged $10 extra for the visit. That's really unusual, even for then.

[davsand]

23. I'm good with bringing back that tax structure, however OTHER aspects, hell no!

There are social aspect of the 50's that I pry NEVER see the light of day again--like back street abortions, attitudes toward premarital sex and attitudes about any aspect of human sexuality.

Can we maybe have the financial 50's and the current social attitudes (or better!)



Laura

[MineralMan]

26. I said the same in my OP.

Just the tax structure. Nothing else.

[davsand]

37. You just know, however, that some of those guys WANT that social structure again.

I have to admit, my knee jerk response to the 50's is SO very visceral that I can barely see any way to twist somebody's tail with a discussion about a return to the financial aspects without making that social disclaimer.

I have become not just an old fart, but a HUMORLESS old fart.

:hi:


Laura

[SharonAnn]

60. Don'e forget polio, Help Wanted Men and Help Wanted Women Ads

Women couldn't be admitted to various good universities (Princeton finally went coed in 1969?).

[MindPilot]

29. Credit card, consumer and auto loan interest was deductible.

Credit card rates were capped at 12%.

It was possible to support a family on a single income. A single person could actually live decently on minimum wage and that lasted well into the early seventies.

[AngryAmish]

46. Country club memberships 100% deductable

Business expense. Home offices. Work cars. No AMT.

I make I lot of money. I would love those tax rates.

[saltpoint]

31. U.S. Americans' standard of living did go way up in the 1950s but

not as sharply as their dependence on tranquilizers, the sale and use of which skyrocketed over the same period.

[MineralMan]

32. Praise be to Miltown™

First on the market in 1955, it became the drug of choice for millions of anxious folks.

[saltpoint]

33. Yes. The relocation to the burbs and the new car and the

television and the wall-to-wall carpet didn't make up for the absence of community, so the big dose-up of tranks commenced.

[Cleita]

42. Prescription pad abuse can be remedied.

Women's rights issues had a lot to do with the housewife blues and the predominantly male doctors who prescribed the tranquilizers. Those things can be addressed. Just because you want to bring back laws that helped the general population thrive doesn't mean you have to go completely back to the way things were.

[saltpoint]

43. The tranquilizers were not only prescribed to women, Cleita.

The point about materialism vs. spiritual satisfaction stands, IMO.

[Cleita]

49. True the men got some too because of job stress.

One thing I do know is that you can't drop out of a poor society and pursue spiritual satisfaction. It takes an affluent society to be able to support those people who want to drop out, otherwise in todays economy you just end up homeless and maybe even in jail.

[saltpoint]

50. I was not commenting on today's economy. I was responding to

conditions in the 1950s, per the OP, and observed that there was an unsettling correspondence between material gain and spiritual dissatisfaction.

[Cleita]

53. I don't think it was the material because most people had enough but

not too much. It was the social structure of the time that caused the dissatisfaction, gender division, class division and race division. The good thing was that people had met their material needs after the Great Depression and so were able to dwell on those issues that gnawed on them from the subconscious. It was from the material security of the fifties that the revolutionary ideas of the sixties were born of gender equality, race equality and class equality. I was a closet feminist before Gloria Steinem wrote about it. It was because I could observe the women of the fifties tied to their aprons, mops and frying pans that made me want more. When I went to college I realized that many career paths were closed to women unless they were so outstanding they were allowed to compete with the men who often were of more mediocre achievement in comparison. This is why the powerful like the Republican ideal of keeping the poor masses struggling for survival. Then we don't get crazy ideas like that because we are too busy trying not to starve.

[saltpoint]

64. The period in which U.S. Americans made the (wrong) guess that

material well-being could buy them spiritual satisfaction (small 's' there on 'spiritual'), was frighteningly dull.

Males and females neither one were encouraged toward individuality.

Gas was cheap. Social scrutiny was almost non-existent. People feared communists. Southern governors unleashed attack dogs on men and women in many Southern cities who had the audacity to march for equality in the streets.

Somewhere along the fault line of the stand-of-living increase came a necessity to tranquilize very significant percentages of people who were the beneficiaries OF that stand-of-living increase.

[Cleita]

65. Not only was gas cheap, but it was full service and a station owner

could make a living while employing young men to help run it.

[saltpoint]

66. The big cars they serviced are just now being forced into more

economical proportions.

But the drive out to the burbs is getting longer and longer.

The next decade, I strongly hope, will witness a mass migration back into the core neighborhoods of cities.

[Cleita]

69. That could be done if the government had the will to give people the

money they need to buy up deteriorating housing and build new homes there. They also need to take care of the poor who populate those neighborhoods so that they too can get some decent housing. Police and fire protection need to be expanded and improved too so that people and the businesses, like markets, who sell to the residents will want to move back in to those neighborhoods. It can be done with leadership that keeps community in mind, but not as long as lassez faire capitalism is allowed to rampage unchecked in real estate and banking.

[saltpoint]

71. It would be an exciting project if Obama could coordinate -- very likely

through Housing and Urban Development AND Transportation -- rehabilitation of already-standing buildings for housing the poor, but generally to lure folks back into those core neighborhoods.

Unions are stronger when those neighborhoods are stronger. Same goes for women's issues and educational imperatives for school systems.

I listed Transportation because light rail seems to me to be the most important and effective way of united those rebuilt neighborhoods, not to mention that it is environmentally preferable to automobiles.

[Cleita]

72. Don't hold your breath for this term.

Obama is way down in the BushCo dirt pile trying to dig our way out of it. Maybe in his second term. Of course if the Republicans get back in power, it will not happen.

[saltpoint]

73. Any excuse to bash a Republican is in my opinion a valid excuse,

so let me buy the next round on your condemnation of said Republicans.

Well played, and a Happy New Year to you, Cleita.

:toast:

[Cleita]

75. Thank you and a Happy New Year to you as well. n/t

[AndyA]

38. I wish we could also bring back the clothing and manner of dress from that era.

I thought people looked pretty good back then.

I'm sick of going out to eat and seeing some guy's armpit hair sticking out because he's wearing an athletic shirt.

I'm sick of cut offs on airplanes, and dirty unwashed hair in public.

What is it with guys who just don't like to shave? Either grow a beard or don't, but the constant stubble look is old.

It seems people have stopped caring about their appearance. And that's fine if they don't care what others think of them, but they should have enough respect for others to realize that most don't find sweaty armpit hair appetizing when they're eating in a restaurant. :puke:

I hear there's a bit of a revival due to the TV show Mad Men. I think that would be a good thing as so much of what I see people wear today seems uninspired.

JMO.

[Cleita]

40. I can live without girdles and being forced to wear skirts and high

heels all the time. However, back then it was expected that you wore the right clothes for the occasion, like clean and neat street clothes if you went out to go shopping or eating in a diner. More dressy clothes if you ate in a nice restaurant or were going to church and of course party clothes for social occasions.

[Mari333]

45. every old woman I know over 70 who wore high heels back then

have severe foot pain and their calves have shrunk.
I gave all my high heels to a drag queen I knew in Chicago in 1970.
From then on, I never wore them again.

[MineralMan]

41. Oh, man, not me...

At least not from the early 60s. I remember being a teenaged boy, trying to figure out the complexities of girls' clothing back then. Uff da!

No pantyhose, so even skinny 16 year old girls wore some sort of girdley thing to keep their hosiery up. What a back seat nightmare those were. Almost as effective as medieval chastity belts, they were.

These were important issues for adolescents in those days. Truly.

[Mari333]

44. girdles?

UGH I dont think so.
I guess you are talking about men, I hope.
Underwear for women back then weighed about 20 pounds.
and I remember.

[AndyA]

62. I wasn't being *quite* that specific.

Women did have nice looking, comfortable clothing back then. Not every outfit required high heels and binding under garments.

I was thinking more along the lines of people actually taking the time to look nice instead of throwing on a pair of dirty flip flops on their dirty feet and going out shopping or to eat.

[tammywammy]

56. I love dresses from the 50s

I've bought many vintage dresses from eBay, I love the style.

[MineralMan]

57. I still like the look of the Gunne Sax stuff from the 60s.

Some nice styles in those days, I think.

[tammywammy]

59. I also love 50s pin-up girls

I find them hilarious. This is my next cross stitch project:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=390x2956

[EFerrari]

47. Some of us ARE the best of the 50s!

lol

[MineralMan]

51. Indeed!

[Kansas Wyatt]

48. It wasn't that the Wealthy actually PAID the high income tax...

Instead, they REINVESTED back in the economy with money they would otherwise have to send to the U.S. Government for income taxes.

If you were rich, which would you do:

Expand your business or open another business, hire more workers, buy more equipment, modernize your factory, build a new factory, donate money to improve your community, etc. etc. so that you keep ownership of your earnings and make it look like you made less than you actually did after all of these investments into the economy, which also happened to spread the wealth around and kept your taxes lower?

-or-

Send the U.S. Government a very large income tax payment?

The high income tax rate for the wealthy was not for the government to get the money, just to put it in other people's hands... It was to force the wealthy to reinvest back into the economy. That is the dirty secret the Republicans never tell you, when they scream about halting the economy if you tax the rich too much. High tax rates force the wealthy to actually do what Republicans claim they are already doing, but really aren't.

[MineralMan]

52. A very, very good point. Either way, the high tax rate was in

place during our most rapid growth. Hmm...

[lpbk2713]

54. Party line telephone service?

No thanks. I'll pass.

[MineralMan]

55. You seem to have missed the body of the OP.

The only thing in play is the tax schedule.

[Cleita]

68. That didn't last for very long in the fifties. When lines were laid in new housing

developments, there were party lines but they were replaced within years with private lines you could pay extra for and eventually private lines for everyone. Party lines were more common in the thirties and forties. In the fifties MaBell worked hard to eliminate them.

[glen123098]

63. Didn't the 50s have like a 90 percent maximum tax rate?

I don't know about that. I think that may be too much.

[Cleita]

67. Yes, but it was only on the very wealthy and most never paid more

than 30% because there were generous deductions they could take. So it would be a really stupid rich person with a really stupid accountant who would pay the full 90%. Still it was enough to redistribute the wealth of the nation making enough to keep public works, education and social programs running efficiently. I had a few gripes back then but when I think about it, compared to how things are now, I was really lucky. My first job at minimum wage was one I could live on. I resented the tax deductions but I really got most of my taxes back at the end of the year. The economists really had the demand side of our economy working really well and it helped people raise families and aspire to have their children do even better. My cousins and I were the first in our families to finish high school and go to college. We could do that because of the post war economy left to us by FDR, Truman and Eisenhower.

[glen123098]

76. I guess the beatles must have have a bad accountant.

"There's one for you, nineteen for me. " I'm only 23 so I don't know much about the 50s. It seems like the problem could be better solved by fixing all the tax loopholes the rich use to get out of paying taxes. And I don't know how anyone could live on the federal minimum wage nowadays, unless it was like three people crowded in a one room apartment all sharing a car.

[bobbolink]

70. The other thing to restore.

COMMON COURTESY.

[TheWatcher]

78. +1,000,000,000,000,000

:)

[bobbolink]

80. .

:hi:

[TheWatcher]

77. You do make a good point.

On the other hand let's NOT bring back ALL of the 50's









HOWEVER, if I could resurrect ANYTHING from the 50's it would be this: