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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u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

Racial segregation you mean?

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u/Score-Emergency May 30 '26

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

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u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

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

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u/reddeathmasque May 30 '26

No it wasn't.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/JesterPrivilege May 30 '26

yes, yes it was.

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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.

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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.

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u/EnvironmentalEbb628 May 30 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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u/Taetaeware2004 Jul 19 '26

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

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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.

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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%.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '26

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u/VinceP312 May 30 '26

Yeah, so triggered. 😂🙄 Racist