by I_Like_Plants » Thu 22 Mar 2007, 01:19:14
At least the first few are more like 50 years ago, and not having a job didn't necessarily mean not eating - you see, families stuck together more, we were not yet the "Fuck You Generation". You got old, instead of your family kicking you out onto the street, they'd let you stay with 'em even if you didn't have a job any more. Unheard of now.
I'm getting to where I take all this "How horrible it was back then and how wonderful things are now" propaganda as just pure bullshit.
Real examples of how people really lived are rare but out there - an example is Lee Harvey Oswald. His life has been examined so closely, that life among American proletarians of 50 years ago is inadvertantly revealed. Oswald didn't go hungry, although they lived at the lowest level of squalor. Oswald's mom always owned the house they lived in, and traded up over time. Oswald had time to play on the streetcars, read, think, and explore. This was a hardscrabble, roughing-it family, but they had far more security than people living at their level now - basically being at their level now means being one of the homeless families flooding the shelters these days.
