2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Anyone here who directly benefited from or was the child of a middle class person during the 50s-70s [View all]doc03
(35,328 posts)in those days would be poverty today. Until I was in the 6th grade we lived in an old shack with coal heat. I remember when I was very young we didn't even have a water heater my mom would add hot water from the stove to our bath to warm the water. There was no air conditioning. Our car was loaded meaning we had an AM radio and a heater. I remember listening to Gunsmoke, Jack Benny and other shows on the radio. In the middle 50s we got a black and white TV, one local station came in fairly good and we could get a couple more from Pittsburgh that looked like there was a snow storm. In 1960 we moved into a new house, there was five in the family and
the house had 3 bedrooms one bath with a total of 1200 square feet. Now 2016 families are smaller on average but homes are well over 2000 square on average. They have whole house heating and cooling systems, every bedroom has its own bath. To be middle class today you can't drive a car with an AM radio and a heater. Now you have an SUV with, power steering, cruise, air, heated seats, heated steering wheel, rear camera, and bumper hitch to pull your boat and your RV. Then of course if you are middle class the man of the family much of the time has to have a $30000 Harley in the garage. So comparing the middle class of today to the 50s and 60s is like apples and oranges.