Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
I’m not so sure about the comment that whatever’s happening hasn’t translated into improvement in living standards. I don’t know how that gets measured and suspect that it is some complicated metric involving a mashup of data points. But I think back to when I was a little kid growing up in the ‘60s and living standards certainly weren’t high. We were far from rich and money was tight with just one income that wasn’t huge (Dad was in the military some of that time). We had second-hand furniture and lived in a small drafty old house that was freezing on cold mornings. I could go on and on but you get the drift. And my father, who was soft-hearted to a fault, often took some of our stuff to give to families he encountered who were even worse off than we were, so we weren’t some family at the bottom of the ladder. He told some tales of people he encountered in his work that were just heartbreaking. The social safety net back then, such as it was, had lots of holes.
At the risk of going down memory lane too far, I look at things these days and there is no comparison. I live in a house with 4-season climate control, have a great car, big-screen TVs connected to the internet that can show me pretty much anything ever produced on demand, etc etc. I see new arrivals here every day driving nice cars and renting or buying new accommodations. The education and skill levels of many people today allow them to enjoy lots of things were never dreamed about. I remember my childhood goal was to go to a Leafs or Habs game one weekend with my parents, and they often talked about doing that, but we never did. It was always just out of reach. Now people drop 5 figures on vacations to Disney or wherever without batting an eye. Adventuresome couples travel the world. It is a totally different world.
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That’s a reasonable and accurate take on it. My childhood was a little later, but all these things did exist. My family lived quite modestly as well, but there were still those worse off than us. As the 1970s progressed into the 1980s, I began to notice more larger homes being built and owned mostly by the ‘standard’ professionals like doctors, lawyers, architects, well known successful business owners, etc., but still most people I knew lived very modestly by today’s standards. For us, a big summer vacation was to pile the family into the car and drive to Maine or PEI. Nobody I knew took winter vacations in the sunny south. March break for us kids was a week off to play with our friends, not a trip on a jet.
Another thing on the luxury scale that you never used to see around here were exotic cars. As a young car enthusiast (as many of us were back then), I would look for Ferraris and Lamborghinis like those I would drool over in magazines, but there were none to be found. If you were lucky you might see a Porsche 911 or perhaps a big Mercedes sedan. A Cadillac was about the most common luxury car that one might see but even then not common. Today I can see all sorts of exotic cars on any given week in non-winter months. Luxury brands are the norm, probably close to 50/50 with the more pedestrian brands. Nobody would consider a car without A/C and power windows these days, not to mention phone pairing and the vast array of electronic gadgetry that is now commonplace.
All that considered, we did have it pretty good, though. We lived in an old, drafty house (I had a thermometer in my room that would read 10C on cold winter mornings - lots of blankets were necessary), managed a family of five with only one bathroom. Didn’t even think we needed more than one landline or TV, etc., but at least we were allowed to grow up as children, without all the negativity of the internet and social media. “Influencers” were people who actually accomplished great things that we kids aspired to emulate. I’ll just say it once… no autotune…. There were bullies at school, but that was often solved with a short bout of fisticuffs, or you just ignored them until they went away - the thought of some disgruntled kid coming to school with a semi-automatic never even crossed our minds. There were things that were bad or rough, but nothing that we couldn’t get through.
I feel bad for today’s young people in that they have so much crap and nonsense to deal with, that I don’t know how they ever manage to discover who they are. This aspect of the world seems to go almost unnoticed, as it’s just the way that it is… but it was created, and in many ways created to monetize peoples’ lives at their own peril. The housing and food affordability issues are icing on the cake, but the lack of quality of life goes far beyond that. As I said, we grew up in economic strife - truth be known my parents fought about money each and every day - but at least we knew a world that we were free to explore, not without risks, but with all the rewards of real friendship as we had our adventure outdoors. There weren’t “smart” phones for people to bury their face in while feeling obligated to communicate with others (sometimes people we don’t even know, as in this case) 24/7, and nobody was able to steal all we worked for at the click of a mouse.
So yeah, we had it so much better in so many ways, but I don’t look at that as a reason to hate us. Maybe use our experience to carve out a better future for your kids and grandkids, because where we are and where we could easily be headed is far from paradise.
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I must admit, I was looking for an opportunity to use this word that I recently invented (or didn’t invent in case someone else somewhere on the internet had already created it … I didn’t check).
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