this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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There are some very old contracts still not terminated around. From Netherlands before William of Orange, or from England before Cromwell. Those of nation-states (WWII lend-lease of the famous ones).
The US is not even close to that. Your comment be proof of that, you don't even understand how life was there and then, despite that being history of your country portrayed well enough in many movies and books.
That said, there are, of course, complications to be expected.
You are repeating information spoon fed to you by the ones that have changed the inflation rate to understate it, which has led us to become compound fucked to the 50th power.
A minimum wage job, 1 minimum wage job, paid for a family in 1950. Bought a house, a cheap car, doctors, dentists, optometrists, other professional services people can't do themselves, even able to go out to eat for a burger.
After the changes, it's become less and less true, by the 1980's it was undeniably true that wages no longer paid for what they did. By now it is a joke, they tell us our buying power has never been higher, by the numbers that is true.
I know it feels warm and safe living up the backside of the billionaires, but there is no future going further up, come straight back and join us in the sunshine brother!
Didn't that magic 1950 salary came out of like abusing the rest of the world in different ways though? Like the petro dollar, forcing everyone to dance to your tuba and so on?
It partly came from taxing the hell out of the rich. Reagan put a stop to that in the 80s.
The petro dollar wasn't even a thing until the 70s.
The high living wage came from unions. And government taxing higher incomes progressively more, and taxing corporate profits more than personal paychecks, that made obscene profits progressively taxed more. It was caused by people that worked jobs being able to buy the same goods they produced, increasing output all around.
I don't know what you are even trying to talk about here. Conflating vague foreign policy with living wages. Seeing as foreign policy got worse as living wages evaporated it would suggest you are off base there.
Yes, in 1950, damn right. Now do 1930.
Still better than 1930.
I dunno, there might not be any sunshine stored for me, but it's still not 1930.
What is your point? Mine is in the post war years we achieved the most prosperous working class the world has ever known, and the most progressive taxation which had no small part in that, and in the ensuing decades brought reason and justice even more to the economy, on a scale unprecedented before that, and the rest of the western world followed.
That in 1971 that all changed and they've taken that all away piece by piece in an organized campaign(s). So what are you even talking about?
Mostly for white people, and mostly because the US had built out an enormous industrial base to win WWII, and also was in the unique position of not having been destroyed by the war.
Which is the typical ad hominem to respond to the unanswerable charge that the rich have taken our middle class lifestyle and replaced it with poverty, reduced even the wealthy to just getting by status. Use emotional arguments, and slander, to obscure the issue.
The one here, that because injustice existed it doesn't count that we all had a higher standard of living that the rich took away from us, doesn't make any sense though does it?
Explain to me, how it negates recognizing the rich have taken from working people, because society wasn't egalitarian when working people extracted the highest standard of living ever?
…I don’t understand your comment, I think. Is pointing out historical facts ad hominem? My (small) point was that I’m not certain that the sudden prosperity that some workers in the US enjoyed was entirely sustainable. That said, the development since the seventies or so has definitely gone hard in the other direction. I’m not competent to comment on the causes, but successful deunionization, destruction of the educational system, and overseas outsourcing of everything productive are probably in there somewhere.
Your point, is the same as anyone that wants to discount that we have been robbed of a living wage, and the facts don't back you up, you change the subject to bigotry that existed.
I don't understand your comment, tell me how racism that existed changes how our living wage was taken from us?
No time in history was without some kind of prejudice, you are dancing around it now.
Not sustainable, for working people to get a living wage you are saying. They really did a number on you huh?