1980's with higher income, or today with lower income?

[reepicheep]

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201 ... -mas-macho

I'd rather live in the 1980's.

But I tend to romanticize historical periods that happened before I was born. I would time travel regardless of the income incentive.

[GandK]

The 1980's is an historical period?!?

Bahahahaha!

[Tyler9000]

From the article:

Officially, if your income had dropped in half over the past three decades, you'd be in dire shape. But in fact, this thought experiment suggests you're actually happier. So maybe income hasn't dropped in half in any practical sense.

It's not even a maybe. The basic premise that real incomes are half today what they were in the 80's is demonstrably false. According to the census bureau, median real incomes are up to 10% higher than they were in the 80s.

https://econographics.files.wordpress.c ... intile.jpg

The best I can figure is that the author looked at the inflation rates and calculated what $10k in income starting in 1989 would be worth today: $5200. But he doesn't understand that median pay increases over time as well. Perhaps he should ask for a raise. Comparing the median salary today to the same inflation-adjusted value back in the 80's means he's comparing the median lifestyle today to one an entire quintile higher back then. Of course that sounds better!

I get the argument that not every new gizmo necessarily makes your life better. But the author's understanding of inflation-adjusted income is terrible and it majorly screws up the point.

[Ego]

Graduated high school in '85. Mrs. Ego was given a mobile phone by her employer in '94. It is hard to explain just how much this fundamentally changed the nature of work. Before this moment employers almost never bothered their employees while at home. It is also hard to fathom just how much the internet has changed life....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uquRzrcwA18

I like this quote from the article.

In other words, it's all a matter of what you're accustomed to. If you've been sleeping on the ground all your life, you have no trouble sleeping on the ground. Who needs a bed? If, like me, you've been sleeping on a bed all your life, you'd become a wreck trying to sleep on the ground. You'd pay a considerable sum of money just for an air mattress and a blanket.

[reepicheep]

The 1980's is an historical period?!?

Bahahahaha!

Anything before I was born qualifies.

[rube]

I hope the 'early' from ere is related to the time you became aware of ere and the actual time when you become are 'r' instead of ones physical age .

I haven't looked up how the median local income was back then and it is now and that relates to the col. then and now.
But regardless I believe the current time gives me more EASY accessible opportunities to live frugal / make side money etc. then in the 80's (from somebody who at age 19 encountered 'the Internet' in 1995 when it was still quite rare for the common person).

[Chad]

I graduated high school in '91. I will take today. The internet is just too useful and buying stocks (including mutual funds) back then was very expensive. Though, I wouldn't have minded snagging some 30 year US Treasury bonds for 12-14%.

@Ego
I don't answer my cell outside of normal business hours. I always let it go to voicemail and then call back in 30-60 minutes if necessary. I always happen to be "doing something" when they call. They learn.

[7Wannabe5]

@reepicheep- Do not romanticize the 1980's! It takes more than a half-hour in the morning to get your hair to look like that and socially acceptable designer jeans were around $30 a pair and you were required to wear them so tight that you had to lie upside down on a staircase and use a hanger to zip them. And technology costs were so high that if you needed to talk to your boyfriend who lived in a different area-code to make plans to meet at the roller rink so that you could watch your mood ring change color as you slow-skated to some dreadful ballad by Journey, you had to walk down to the grocery store and stand by the payphone and wait to accept collect call from him because your frugal father suffering under the burden of too many teenage daughters put a lock on the land-line dial phone and you hadn't yet figured out how to do the Morse Code trick that would allow you to make calls without the dial. Also, in order to earn enough money to buy those designer jeans, you would have to spend 15 hours @ $2/hr. babysitting for two horrible little boys who would put their Star Wars album on the stereo and then try to kill each other with plastic light sabers.

[Chad]

@7Wannabe5

Journey wasn't so bad....

and then try to kill each other with plastic light sabers.

...and that was awesome! Though, I don't remember you babysitting me.

[Ego]

And technology costs were so high that if you needed to talk to your boyfriend who lived in a different area-code to make plans to meet at the roller rink so that you could watch your mood ring change color as you slow-skated to some dreadful ballad by Journey, you had to walk down to the grocery store and stand by the payphone and wait to accept collect call from him because your frugal father suffering under the burden of too many teenage daughters put a lock on the land-line dial phone and you hadn't yet figured out how to do the Morse Code trick that would allow you to make calls without the dial.

Reminds me of that Meatloaf song they played at our roller rink. Today you'd be expelled if you played it on a college campus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-hxWRbdP48

@chad, those 30-60 minutes of knowing that someone is waiting for an answer would drive me up a wall.

[GandK]

The 1980's is an historical period?!?

Bahahahaha!

Anything before I was born qualifies.

Sorry... I couldn't help but laugh. You crazy young'uns!

@Chad: I graduated in '92. Roller rinks... yeah... anybody else remember queuing up excitedly for the Limbo song? And I missed most of the big hair thing, @7wannabe5. I was right on the edge of the grunge wave... leggings and plaid flannel and Nirvana.

My first investments as an adult were in '97, right after I finished my 4 in the USAF. My funds went up nicely until the market tanked in the spring of 2000. That was scary. I lost interest in my financial affairs for nearly a decade. Until I ended up here, basically. The good news was that G and I missed the next drop in 2008 entirely because we'd emptied our savings a few months beforehand to finish off his law school debt.

Aside: I'm camping... lying on a cot in a tent as I type this, waiting for the rest of the family to wake up. We're on the shore of Lake Michigan in the middle of nowhere, yet I have 4G Internet. This is nothing like the '80s!

[Chad]

@chad, those 30-60 minutes of knowing that someone is waiting for an answer would drive me up a wall.

Normally, it would drive me up a wall too, but I have trained myself to not let that happen. I refuse to let my employers eat much of my free time on a regular basis for mostly useless/pointless after work contact (get a life). Obviously, I make an exception if there is a special/important project in progress.

[reepicheep]

Also, in order to earn enough money to buy those designer jeans, you would have to spend 15 hours @ $2/hr. babysitting for two horrible little boys who would put their Star Wars album on the stereo and then try to kill each other with plastic light sabers.

Back when faux fur cuffs on jeans were popular in 1999, but my mom wouldn't buy me any, I earned $2.50 an hour as a Mother's Helper in order to buy faux fur fabric at Wal-Mart and sewed on some spotted leapord cuffs myself.

I might have done alright.

[7Wannabe5]

@chad- "nah,nah,nah,nah,nah...nah,nah,nah,nah,nah" I rest my case.

@ego-"Bat Out of Hell" was one of the first 20 albums I received from the Columbia Record Club. Unfortunately, although I did shortly thereafter become a member of DREAD (Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco), I must admit that the very first album I received from the CRC was Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing."

@GandK- Yeah, I think we all switched over to proto-grunge about the same time "The Breakfast Club" was released. My INFP sister was so very Ally Sheedy. We all wore men's long underwear bottoms under little dresses in college. It was funny because that was basically the same look we sported in the early 1970s because little girls still wore dresses but we lived in Michigan and liked to play on the monkey bars.

@reepicheep- My DD24 was very disappointed in high school that I hadn't saved any of my 80s wardrobe for her to use for party dress-up. If you ever want to go retro, here is my semi-frugal recipe for early 80s "Charlie's Angel" hair.

1) Wash your hair, comb straight and center-part.
2) Using little black comb, make perpendicular part about one inch back from hairline and comb forward. Snip bangs at about chin level.
3) Continuing to part hair at about 1/2 inch intervals pull each section straight up in the air and snip to match length of bangs until you are about half way across your ears.
4) Blow dry while vigorously shaking head downwards and occasionally brushing all the hair back.
5 ) Meanwhile, you should have been heating up the set of multiple size hot rollers you purchased at thrift store. When your hair is dry. roll all your hair towards the back except for the bangs which you roll under towards the front, using the smaller rollers in the front sides and larger rollers for bangs and back.
6) Wait 15 minutes. Heat up curling iron you also purchased at thrift store.
7) Take out rollers. You will look somewhat like Shirley Temple at this point. Use the curling iron to solidify or touch up any areas where curls are limp.
8) Shake your head forward to release curls. Then tousle with your fingers as necessary to create "natural" look.
9) Apply serious coat of non-aerosol hair spray and then either spray yourself with "Love's Baby Soft" or "Jovan Musk" to hide the smell of the hairspray.
10) Don't forget the purple eye shadow!!

Because I am evil and I generally date men who were born well before me, I still sometimes do my hair in this style without resorting to cutting my hair and I always get compliments -lol.

[Tyler9000]

@7wannabe5: your description of the 80s was so nostalgically glorious that now I can't help but to finish my time machine and go hang out at the roller rink. I remember they had an arcade with Moon Patrol!

[Dragline]

Sounds like "Hot Tub Time Machine" at a roller rink instead of a ski resort.

Graduated high school in '83. Although I have many fond memories, I would not have any desire to relive that era (or any pre-internet era for that matter). I do remember wasting a lot of money talking on expensive land lines on long distance relationships.

Whatever world you inhabited in the 80s was simply much more limited that it is today.

But this does ring off bells in my head about something I like to call "The Golden Era" fallacy. In every time and place, there are people who argue that life would be better if we only went back to ____. Due to the way people age, 30 years ago is usually quite popular, at least culturally if not politically. In the 1980s the nostalgia was for the 1950s and early 1960s. The Golden Era fallacy is usually debunked because it was usually only "golden" for certain people but not for others. For example, the 1980s was a golden era for travel agents and stock brokers, but not for their customers.

BTW, I am typing this from a boy scout camp where there is no phone service, but they have piped in some internet to share.

[jacob]

This question can be rephrased as in "would you rather live in the upper class of a developing country or the middle class of a developed country".

I was in Poland in 2003 and to me it was a bit like stepping 30 years back in time in terms of looking at the people (nobody is overweight, in 1980 the average American weighed 20 pounds less than today---picture that if you can, taking 20lbs off of everybody); many people smoke and drive without seatbelts (no safety worship, low future preference); but when you go to the supermarket or market you can buy real food/produce that makes the 2015 style "farmer's market" look downright pathetic in comparison. The furniture. Old electronics still in use. Walking---everybody walked---into stores, all the goods are kept behind the counter and you ask the clerk for "two 60W light bulbs"; no plastic wrappers. It was possible to get on the internet too, but it generally wasn't treated as a full time hobby of pressing tab-reload-tab-reload-... Oh, and people talked to their friends and knew their neighbors.

I also flew into the future going to Tokyo in 2000 and seeing all these people staring at their cellphones on the subway. I mean what were they looking at. Apparently the first gen smart phones. And it turned out later that the attraction was universal as Americans and Europeans went on to do exactly the same thing 10 years later when coverage caught up.

Another time travelling experience can be had by flying from Northern Europe to North America (US) and looking at the infrastructure. Seeing all those electric wires, mast transformers, and phone lines still in the air ... unfixed pot holes in the roads and one feels distinctly back in the 80s too. On the other hand, being the center of the universe, like the British Empire 100 years ago, you can access stuff from all over the world. If it's made, you get it here first and if it's worthwhile/has universal appeal you're most likely to find it here. Same goes for culture to an even bigger degree. Universities, research, cutting edge techmology... and Lady Gaga. They didn't have lyrics like this in the 1980s, now did they?

Hello, hello, baby, you called?
I can't hear a thing
I have got no service
In the club, you say? say?
Wha-wha-what did you say, huh?
You're breakin' up on me
Sorry I cannot hear you
I'm kinda busy
Kinda busy
Kinda busy
Sorry I cannot hear you I'm kinda busy

I'd totally go back ... if nothing else then to see one of these again in my backyard instead of yet another subdivision that was subsequently built to accommodate and contain the growth of stuff and people.

PS: Usenet was established in 1980.

[George the original one]

High school graduation in 1980.

While going to college, I also worked part time for an electrical engineer who used an Osborne 1 and printed with a daisy-wheel printer. Built a Kaypro with 8" floppies. I had internet by 1986 at m2xenix.com... didn't everybody who mattered? Bang paths were the norm and you wanted to be close to the backbone. 300 baud dialup acoustic modem, upgraded to 2400 baud direct connect by 1988. Operated a FIDONET node, too. Nicholas Wirth was done with PASCAL and MODULA-2 was in full swing. C++ was a new thing that didn't appeal to me. FORTH appealed to me and I wrote a few things in it; probably the most intuitive programming language I ever used, but, alas, the world didn't adopt it. Digital Research GEM on an Apricot F1 with MS-DOS v2.

Fake car cellphone antennas were available to impress folks. Few people had handheld cellphones until the '90s (Motorola brick, anyone?). HDTV had been defined & demonstrated, but wasn't available. DISH-style satellite antennas became available in rural Canada, but not USA. Cable was "57 channels and nothing on", but there were hardly any ads interrupting your viewing pleasure.

Fun cars started re-emerging about 1984 from the dreadful '70s regulations with better economy, safety, and performance. Honda CRX, new Corvette (C4? C5?), Toyota MR-2, Shelby GLH & GLHS, Mazda RX-7, and, finally, Mazda Miata.

[jacob]

Operated a FIDONET node, too.

Hey, me too. 2:238/820 (as far as I remember)

[jacob]

An equivalent question to ask is ... would you rather make $30000 now or travel forward to 2050 and make $15000?