Top tax rate of 90% (it’s currently 32% IIRC)

Most families only needed one income to cover living expenses, and many families could afford to buy a house with one income.

but that made them a bit passive so they embraced the powers that be. There was a box in your home, programming you every night. Prosperity was a kitchen with electric appliances. At least Zoot suits were gone.

People's jobs weren't outsourced to China. Mexico, and India. The things we bought were produced by our neighbors

In the aftermath of WWII the U.S. was a big winner. We had the resources and the credibility to help rebuild Europe and Japan. The federal government poured money into research and development at home.

This economic expansion produced jobs and the new discoveries and products produced more efficient homes and lots of new industries. Suburban development allowed people whose families had always lived in tiny apartments to afford a three bedroom detached house, with a garage, backyard and patio, filled with new appliances. For a lot of young people growing up in the 50s, it must have seemed like a good life.

There were well-known downsides. Black and brown people were unfairly barred from the new advantages. Women were expected to give up their jobs and stay home with all those new appliances. That life was isolating and suffocating for many women. There was an increased rigidity around gender roles. Gay people were considered to be mentally ill. The focus on "progress!!" was dehumanizing. A lot of returning GIs had untreated mental health issues.

But the economic prosperity led to improvements in civil rights, environmental protection, consumer protection, and health.

Taking a long view, I see our current situation as a reversal of post-WWII expansion. We're in an economic contraction and we're facing global warming. Under Trump, the federal government has abandoned its roles for good and taken on an authoritarian role.

And we're not reacting well as a species.

But very socially restrictive, trying to return to the 'norms' that were idealized before WWII forced TPTB to encourage women to work outside the home and give more jobs and freedoms (temporarily) to minorities. Of course, if you were poor, these ideal norms were a fantasy anyway. But media and politicians spent a lot of focus on showing that females, minorities and the young should go back to knowing their place. The 60's revolution happened because for a lot of us, the 50's sucked.

And what was in the movies and print was a far cry from reality.

The 1950's romanticization represented a dominance of the US as a global power which was espoused in films in very masculine roles. Women were beautiful, but passive or quiet.

In real life - it was a fairly poor culture. Yes, there were union jobs which allowed people to own a house in suburbia and take their one vacation to the "Jersey shore", but it was also very rough for many. My dad mentioned that where he was in Idaho was really no different than the Great Depression era. People scrambled to get by. The great life was always somewhere else. He said he left the only work he had available to him of loading potato sacks into railroad cars in the middle of winter to join the Army because it not only paid more, it was less work. I've heard similar stories from others who lived in Chicago and Atlanta in that time period.

L-

& that was based on the progress we'd made over the decades. Slavery was abolished. Black men got the vote. Women got the vote. Labor got a voice. Gays got recognition & rights. For decades repubs actively worked against all that progress, but we persevered & eventually we voted in a black man for president! That really pissed off the racists & fake Christians, & they've ramped up their war on progress & have been quite successful so far.

In the 50s?
The workforce in Chicago was heavily union, as well as most of the entire Chicago market.
During the 50s, at least 30 cities popped up where none existed as suburbs were developed given the middle class buying power.
My dad came back from the army (occupying troops in post-war Italy) in '52.
He got a job at a dairy paying $6,500 at the entry level. That would be $78,000 for an entryl level job.
HS diploma, one year of seminary college, and an entry level job for today's equivalent of near 80 grand.
My mom worked as an executive secretary making today's equivalent of about $52,000, for a woman in the 50s.
I think your anecdotal information is wildly inaccurate. Idaho is Idaho, but you extended it to Chicago which is silly.

Chicago was extremely segregated and redlined in the 1950s. Blacks, Latinos, and anyone not associated with specific industries were likely non-unionized and also likely poor.

1950 represented the end of the Great Migration North; it also represented the start of White Flight to the suburbs.

I was born in 1956 in the Chicago market.
My dad had black coworkers. Many black men worked at Caterpillar, the utility companies & the city.
You are lecturing someone who was there on how things were.
You should quit before you embarass yourself further.

There are a lot of factors why families are so disconnected these days, but IMO, work invading & taking over our private lives is a big one.

There were a few decades right after the labor movement, when a family could not only live on one income, they could thrive. If the "family values" party & the zealots that vote for them really cared about families, they'd create an economy for all where it doesn't take two adults 3-4 jobs to make ends meet & your kids spend more time with other people than family. I really think that's what people miss & they've been duped into believing that trans kids & immigrants are the ones who took that away from them. SMDH that so many of our fellow citizens are that stupid but apparently they are.

When you read this quote, remember the repubs have been actively working at dismantling public education since the 80s.

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." -Karl Rove

We’d just saved the world. There were good paying jobs. Alcoholism and spousal abuse was rampant because age couldn’t go anywhere (divorce), get much of a job outside of the home or credit or own a car or a house, and dinner was ready at 5:30 and she’d made herself “presentable”. Wisdom was dished out from dad and the kids followed it or they’d get beat and they knew it.

Oh and them coloreds knew their (second) place.

It’s instilling a fake world where white men ruled. “Leave it to Beaver” was a middle of the ratings pack my mother doesn’t remember. It was cheap to take into syndication because of that. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen “Father knows best” (which I referenced above) in syndication- it was a ratings monster so it’s expensive to put back on the air. Beaver was basically a copycat of Father.

so all I know about the 50's is what I saw on TV reruns. Everybody seemed to be white. The man was the absolute master of his household. On TV, everybody seemed to have enough money. I know this was not reality, but it's what I saw on the old reruns.

Some special things, not likely to be repeated: artificial shortage of labor due to limited participation in the labor pool by women and blacks led to high paychecks for white workers across a broad spectrum of jobs. This artificial shortage was augmented by a real shortage, as the Depression saw record low birth rates, which meant fewer adults to participate in the labor pool.

There were, however, a number of low-paying positions (mostly self-employed under the table kind of things) that could bring in a few dollars for those who were excluded from the mainstream labor pool, and because prices were also low, a few bucks from shining shoes or washing clothes could actually pay for rent (in a slum) and groceries. I doubt anyone could support himself shining shoes today.

The Baby Boom created a large market for children's toys and goods, which generated a lot of revenue for the makers of same. But big-ticket items such as cars and major appliances were in a bit of trouble, because there were such a small number of actual households buying their products. This is when planned obsolescence became a thing, as well as marketing the idea that one should replace such big-ticket items, especially cars, every couple of years not because they weren't working anymore, but just because you felt like it. That allowed the manufacturers to turn a substantial penny on what was really artificial demand.

Much of the US industrial plant had been modernized during the war, while worldwide, industrial plant was largely destroyed by the war. This had two paradoxical results: short-term, the US became manufacturer for the world, as we had the plant to do it. Long-term, it meant US industrial plant would fall behind the rest of the world in quality, as every other country (well, not the UK) had to pretty much rebuild theirs from scratch.

There's a few "special" things for you.

-- Mal

But it was significant: Millions of workers were home from the war, and they wanted Stuff -- homes, cars and, especially, Tele-Vision. There was a job for every man who was still able-bodied. Indeed, a lot of them were without jobs at first because there was somebody to fill every one available. But that changed. As demand for Stuff grew, so did the number of jobs to make it. They were relatively well-paying jobs, too, because post-war Stuff was inexpensive.

But taxes took away a lot; we had a war to pay off (and then another one), and then we had something new: a "cold war." All that not only cost us, it scared us. Our ally¹ in WWII had become our arch-enemy almost the minute the war was over, and they'd gotten ahold of (were given, really) the plans to build the thing we'd² built that was supposed to mean No More Wars, Ever, as long as we were the only ones who had it. But then we weren't, and everyone was afraid -- a fear that grew throughout the decade, and beyond it. But, at least there was Tee Vee to make us forget about that for a couple of hours every night.

Good times, good times?


¹ "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

² "We" being largely German and Hungarian physicists who'd escaped the Nazis in the early '30s.

My (single) mother was a widow, and she owned our home. Her widowed mother lived with us and was child care, cook, and laundress, and occasionally, made our clothes. I knew we weren't rich, but I also didn't feel poor. Mom was an excellent money manager and taught me a lot - some of which is still useful, though a lot is not. I never saw her worried about how to pay a bill. She worked for Stanford, and in those days, children of employees got a free ride on tuition, and I knew that was a huge thing. But words like "special" or "glamor" or even "Culture" just feel out of place to me thinking about it.

Trench coats and fedoras are sexy.

The 50s and early 60s especially.

I never finished "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" because of Bezos (canceled Amazon), but I was mostly watching as fashion porn.

The cars were pretty dope as well.

The muscle cars!!! Vrrrrrrrrmmmm!!!

I had a guy tell me one time that I was as good looking as a '57 Chevy, and I was in puppy love heaven!!!!

wasn't coined until 1965. In the '50s, it was hard to find anything with even 250 horsepower. Tha "revolutionary" '57 Chevy 283 with throttle body fuel injection was rated at 283 horsepower -- the first time horsepower equalled displacement in an assembly-line car.

Two hundred and eighty-three horsepower was brag-worthy back then, but it was putrid just a few years later.

I was born late in the decade. I was simply reliving a memory that had made me smile.

SMH…

Accuracy in automotive history and pointing out the same. There were some relatively fast cars in the '50s, but no muscle cars before the '65 Pontiac GTO.

The term "muscle car" defines a certain type of build. It isn't simply a fast car.

See? You've learned something.

Dad was in total control of everything. Dinner time if he was mad the entire meal was thrown on the floor. Women were just supposed to take the abuse. Grandad locked Grandma out of the house because she went to see a documentary about Ireland at church and he didn't want her to go. Mom had to beg him to let her in. Women had it so hard.
Nothing special. Hard times.

...kissing your ass goodbye. Yes, it was a very romantic time.

I was born in 1950 so I remember a good part of the 50s but from a child’s perspective. What Hollywood and TV gave us was a sanitized version of what America looked like. The Ward and June Cleaver household where June dressed up to do housework, Ward always wore a coat and tie and was the sage of the household. IOWs, the idealized concept of the middle class family. What Hollywood and TV left out, for the most part, was the racism, the misogyny, and the struggles of many who weren’t white and in the middle class.

All about how Black people were LEGALLY excluded from much of the post-war prosperity. Couldn’t get FHA mortgages. Not allowed to buy homes in the thousands of Levittowns built for returning veterans and families. And if they dared to move into such a development, police just stood by and watched while the house was vandalized by mobs. This wasn’t all that long ago. Black families were unable to benefit from equity and resale value of such homes.
Infuriating, eye-opening book.

And women, and minorities “knew their places.”

The trouble today is too many of them don’t like to share, at all.