Letters to the Editor
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@Betty Boop re: minimum wage/milk
Your post got me pretty interested in what things cost relative to wages in the days before we lived on credit, so I looked up info for 1950. Actually, a gallon of milk cost MORE than the minimum wage: 82 cents for milk, 75 cents for work. (The average yearly income was $3,216.)
People simply did not accumulate the way they do now, in terms of home size, cars, clothes, entertainment, appliances (and certainly not electronics), eating out, books and records, you name it.
Back in the 1950s, "propaganda" was a word heard nearly every day, but somehow only applied to that nasty nation behind the "Iron Curtain." What would be the correct word for the process by which we've bought in to how much STUFF we must buy, buy, buy, and now, now, now. ..
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I wouldn't be too hard on her for going to her father
Personally, I'd much rather borrow money from my parents (and pay it back with interest) than borrow from some faceless corporation (and pay it back with interest). Why shouldn't my parents get my interest payments, instead of some faceless corporation?
Beware - part of the trap the credit-card companies are laying for you, in order to suck even more money out of you, is convincing you that every other source of credit is shameful. Why capitulate to them so readily? Why not, instead of the adolescent rejection of parental love and concern, view the parental offer as just one transaction in a long history of helping each other when help is needed?
My parents are putting me through law school. There, I've said it. Shameful. Horrible. Awful. It would be so much better if I went to Citibank like a "real grownup". But I'm keeping track of how much they've paid, and once I graduate and get the sort of job that my degree qualifies me for, I will pay them back, and then some.
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@quiet type
"What would be the correct word for the process by which we've bought in to how much STUFF we must buy, buy, buy, and now, now, now. .."
"Rampant consumerism" works for me.
Ok, so milk was relatively expensive, and probably lots of other foods were, too, but did you check out the cost of basic health care and housing in the 50s? Runaway consumerism is very real, but it seems to be the basics that are holding more people down these days.
Conservatives always like to quote how the poor have color TVs, so they can't really be poor. That's a stupid statistic, because you can get a color TV for $100, and it lasts for years, but rent is much, much more than that every month for anyone living anywhere near a city here, and health care is a similarly stratospheric expense.
Buying a cheap color TV is a one-time expense costing a fraction of the single month's rent. Of course just about everyone has a color TV. I wouldn't say it's a particularly useful sign that life is getting easier or better in the US.
Besides, I don't think black and white TVs are even available anymore, except as portable units.
They just like quoting the golden oldies, and that claim has been around since the 60s.