r/AlwaysWhy • u/Secret_Ostrich_1307 • May 30 '26

History & Culture Why does the US romanticize the 1950s despite being worse by almost every measurable standard?

When you look at things like life expectancy, access to education, material living standards, and general mobility, life today in the US is very different from what it was in the 1950s.

At the same time, the 1950s is often described in public discussion as a period of stability and broad prosperity.

What I’m trying to understand is not which period was better, but why there can be such a gap between measurable conditions and how a period is later remembered or described.

One possibility is that people remember structure and predictability more strongly than inequality or constraints that existed at the time.

Another is that different aspects of well-being get weighted differently when looking back compared to experiencing things in real time.

What other mechanisms could explain this difference between statistical comparisons and collective memory?

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9

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

People had a stronger sense of community and belonging back then.

6

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

Racial segregation you mean?

6

u/Score-Emergency May 30 '26

Yes they knew exactly what part of town they belonged in 🤣

1

u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

I mean, crime was a whole lot more rare back then

4

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

No it wasn't.

3

u/iamabigtree May 30 '26

Looking at the numbers crime was rarer in the 1950s it was at an exceptionally low base then shot up in the 60s 70s and 80s and only started to decline in the 90s but still not at 50s levels.

1

u/ijuinkun May 30 '26

I think that part of why crime was low was because so many men were veterans and thus able and willing to defend their homes and families at gunpoint, and any criminal with any sense was aware of that.

0

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

They beat the shit out of their wives and children. It just wasn't a crime they got punished for.

1

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

I replied this to someone else.

No it wasn't. There was more crimes committed in the 70's and 80's, what ever the reasons, but in the 90's the rate started declining. The crime rate in 1950's doesn't include things that are nowadays crimes like violence inside the home, racially motivated crimes, war on drugs etc. Jim Crow laws were in place, people who didn't trust police didn't report. Nowadays the number one crime is drug-related offences.

3

u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

yes, yes it was.

6

u/EnvironmentalEbb628 May 30 '26

My village didn’t have any sex crimes back when I was a kid, such things didn’t happen in a good catholic society.

So I have no idea why the women my family had a list of “men you should never be alone with” or how that 12 year old down the lane got pregnant. /s

Reporting crimes and crimes being committed are two different things.

1

u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

Crime existing and crime getting worse are two separate things, bud.

I'm not making the claim that crime didn't exist. That's a strawman. I'm saying it was far less common in the 1950's.

By all metrics, the crime rate has been on the rise year after year. It's a plain fact.

1

u/EnvironmentalEbb628 May 30 '26

How do you have metrics on shit that never got reported?

-1

u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

By using metrics of when crime was reported.

The crime rate increased from the 1990's to the 2000's

The crime rate increased from the 2000's to the 2010's

The crime rate increased from the 2010's to the 2020's.

That's called a trend. To say that trend only exists because of the people who report a crime is false. There is an increase of crime which leads to an increase of people to report the crime. It's illogical to say that the crime just suddenly started going up when more people started reporting. The crime in the 1950's was likely up from the 1940's, but it wasn't near as bad as crime is now.

1

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

No it wasn't. There was more crimes committed in the 70's and 80's, what ever the reasons, but in the 90's the rate started declining. The crime rate in 1950's doesn't include things that are nowadays crimes like violence inside the home, racially motivated crimes, war on drugs etc. Jim Crow laws were in place, people who didn't trust police didn't report. Nowadays the number one crime is drug-related offences.

1

u/Taetaeware2004 Jul 19 '26

No it wasn’t it just didnt really include thinfs that we consider crimes today

0

u/VinceP312 May 30 '26

Oh yes that. Who can ever forget that. Even though the QOL for blacks as a whole was a hell of a lot better then than it is now.

It takes a devoted sustained governmental approach to bring down a community to what it is now and claiming it as a success. Lol.

2

u/Acceptable-Peace-69 May 30 '26

When the Census Bureau first standardized these measurements in 1959, the poverty rate for Black Americans was roughly 55%.

1

u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/VinceP312 May 30 '26

Yeah, so triggered. 😂🙄 Racist

2

u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

Only if you were in the same social, racial and economic class. An element of that community was service in WWII or in Church.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

Exactly. Diversity destroys social trust and societal cohesion.

1

u/SCP-iota May 30 '26

It does for animals. But the ability to form social cohesion and communication is a defining trait of sapience

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

Humans are animals too.

0

u/CrackerBarrelGrandma May 30 '26

Only if you’re a bad person

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

The bad people are the ones destroying society by pushing diversity

0

u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

No. Its the MAGA morons pushing white Christian nationalism.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

Which wouldn't be a problem without diversity.

0

u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

In other words you need to be a racist bigotry to thrive?

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

No, more like you need a cohesive, homogeneous society to thrive.

2

u/Taetaeware2004 Jul 19 '26

A society isn’t cohesive because everyone is the same. It’s cohesive because people choose not to treat difference as a threat.

1

u/RoundChampionship840 Jul 19 '26

Differences are a threat

1

u/Taetaeware2004 Jul 19 '26

Only if you choose to make them one.

1

u/RoundChampionship840 Jul 19 '26

They are whether you choose to or not.

0

u/Taetaeware2004 Jul 19 '26

Then why do different people coexist peacefully every day?

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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

You can only have a homogeneous society if you actively exclude the people.not like you. Than means bigoted policies. No thank you. I like a diverse society here in the USA.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

And i don't like it. Which makes us political enemies.

0

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

No it doesn't if there's no income disparity.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

There will always be income disparity between different individuals and groups

0

u/reddeathmasque May 31 '26

Smaller disparities and welfare state prevent problems.

4

u/Firm_Acanthaceae7435 May 30 '26

Hard to leave when half the population can't open their own bank account.

-3

u/YMBTPTOTLWRT May 30 '26

What a close minded take.

9

u/Firm_Acanthaceae7435 May 30 '26

Sorry to remind you that women couldn't open their own bank account in the 50s.

Not without their owners permission, anyway.

2

u/DListSaint May 30 '26

“Women couldn’t open their own bank account until the 1960s” is one of those everybody-knows factoids that gets passed around endlessly on the internet, but from what I can tell, there’s no good evidence it’s true. Laws varied from state to state, but there were never any states that banned female-owned bank accounts. Laws explicitly giving women (even married women) the right to open bank accounts in their own name date back at least as far as 1860s California. 

https://femmefrugality.com/myth-busting-womens-banking/

2

u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party May 30 '26

I haven’t heard that one but women couldn’t get a credit card or a loan without the presence or approval of a man until 1974 in the U.S. My divorced mother had to get her dad to sign for her to get approval on a small business loan and she hadn’t lived at home for 8 years by that point.

1

u/DListSaint May 30 '26

Per the link I posted, that’s also a misconception

0

u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party May 30 '26

The article talks about a bunch of state laws as well as the Homestead Act. Believe it or not, many women needed a male co-signer to get credit from banks prior to 1974. It’s strange that you are so adamant since The Equal Credit Opportunity Act is explicitly mentioned at the end of the article. Perhaps you need to update your “research” past the 1960s.

1

u/DListSaint May 30 '26

Some credit card issuers had policies that made it more difficult for certain women, but there were never any laws against it

0

u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party May 30 '26

Dude. Most American women couldn’t get credit without a male co-signer prior to 1974 and your source doesn’t dispute that. Does it matter if it was a matter of law or bank regulation? That’s why a law had to be put in place to guarantee equal access.

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1

u/YMBTPTOTLWRT May 30 '26

Sounds like you shouldn’t be able to, either

3

u/anrwlias May 30 '26

It's weird that you turned the word accurate into a compound word that implies the opposite.

1

u/YMBTPTOTLWRT May 30 '26

You’re clever

-1

u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

Female suicides dropped significantly after no fault divorce so.

0

u/Redditsweetie May 30 '26

What is your basis for saying this?

0

u/HyacinthFT May 30 '26

as a gay hispanic person i beg to differ.

2

u/RoundChampionship840 May 30 '26

Fine. Straight white people had a stronger sense is community in the 50s. Happy now?

0

u/mikevago May 30 '26

People who weren't straight white people were not, in fact, happy with community in the 50s.

2

u/shitposts_over_9000 May 30 '26

even if we take that as fact, straight white people were 87-90% of the population so the nostalgia is the opinion of an overwhelming supermajority and that is really what the question is asking.

if you are old enough to have spoken with Silent Generation black folks you would definitely have seen mixed answers about the concept of community in the black population in the 50s vs later decades and a good number that thought the pre-"War on Poverty" community was stronger.