this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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I mean, this is how far our standard of living has fallen in the US.
Like, back in the 80's and 90's it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of. It was so normal that even a brainless loser like Homer could do it.
Also because back then, kinda fat = automatic loser
Frank Grimes pointed out the insanity/luck of his living situation and your last part is true today “bumbling oaf” is still an archetype
Ah, good ol' Grimey (as he liked to be called).
To be fair a nuclear operator can typically afford to support a family of 5 even today.
This. The show routinely makes fun of the fact that Homer is completely unqualified for his job and seems to keep it because he amuses Burns. They had a whole episode recently about how Homer got a new job over a nuclear engineering PhD because he Cyrano'd the interview via Fink. Meaning his job title likely commands well over $200k, though it is implied that Burns pays him somewhat less than that.
The show quit caring about money because it's not interesting. The early seasons have money as a constant issue. It's just not that interesting to she them constantly needing money, so they just stopped.
Except that idea was completely undone by Malcolm in the Middle... The Simpsons just didn't do it right.
Simpsons did it just fine for years, Malcolm was only 7 seasons, Simpsons is on season 35.
That said, suburbia was built on borrowed money from the future , and the reason why most cities are broke.
It has nothing to do with suburbia.
It has everything to do with the politics of Thatcher and Reagan. Their policies of annihilating unions, human rights and creating tax cuts for the rich by passing on the taxes to the working and the poor created this dystopian reality we now have.
If we cut out the rich and restore what we used to have for rights and protections, we can try to save ourselves from extinction.
The two are related. Oil money supports both the suburban Ponzi scheme and also Reaganite deregulation.
My point is, for a city, every square foot of street has an operational cost, and on top of that infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every x years (I think around 20 ~ 25).
While the upfront cost of said infrastructure tends to come from subventions when building a new development, the city needs to cover the costs for both operations and rebuilding once it's needed.
Why does this matter? Well, detached single-family houses provide lower revenue per square foot of street than middle housing or mid-rises, eventually creating a hole in the city's pockets.
I'm not explaining it very well, but I'll suggest taking a look at this:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/6/21/whats-the-sweet-spot-for-building-housing-inexpensively
Climate Town - The suburbs are bleeding America Dry
If cities had money, they could build public housing or promote affordable options.
The suburbs are just another part of tax cuts for the rich. They're subsidized by the tax money from more dense parts of the city, which tend to be more poor (and usually filled with ethnicities other than white people - hence the term White Flight).
Singke family homes with big grassy lawns and McDonald's parking lots bring in less tax revenue and cost more money in city services per square foot of land than apartment buildings, being a net drain on the budget. So, there are higher taxes on the poor so that the wealthy suburbanites don't have to see them.
I’m more convinced the human race is gonna die off the way futurama predicted it. The one named “I Dated a Robot”
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
I wonder what "pretty normal" is, according to actual numbers
I remember growing up in the 90's, my classmates and I all thought that one of the other kids was a liar because he said he didn't have a yard (he lived in an apartment). It didn't make sense - everyone else in the class of 30+ kids lived in a house with a yard, so he must just be making stuff up. Obviously that's anecdotal evidence, but still. It was weird for a kid not to live in a single-family home back then.
You'd have to look at the size of the middle class back then, as that's what the "American Dream" scenario is based on there, but as a kid born in 1990, I can say that when my dad was looking for apartments when he was around college age in the 60s, the rule was not to rent an apartment that cost more than 25% of your salary. By the time I was around that same age in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it was 50% of your salary. Now, it's closer to 120% of your salary for those same apartments.
No, I meant 80-99 AD
Many style manuals allow referring to decades with apostrophes before the s, and no apostrophes before the abbreviated year
Could you provide some example style manuals that say that?
I can give you a stack exchange: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13631/is-an-apostrophe-with-a-decade-e-g-1920-s-generally-considered-incorrect
In your reference, I think this summarizes the issue nicely:
Too also quote:
NY Times seems pretty reputable and they like the grocers' apostrophe, your example is some random person's summary
It wasn't normal
Up until Reaganomics hit, 'Middle Class' was defined as one Union job supporting a family of four. In 1980, $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office, middle class was two jobs to keep the house going, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
I was an adult in the mid 80's. I was there
So you remember that American housewives started looking for jobs in big numbers after the Oil Crisis of 1972. Before that, only the poorest people needed two jobs.