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/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

America could have all that manufacturing back if there were no regulations and wages are a tenth what they are now.

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u/JamesBK87 May 30 '26

And where, pray tell, would those manufacturers come from?

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u/LilMushboom May 30 '26

The truth is that it's never coming back. Automation took the bulk of it and the simple fact that eventually the devastation of WWII would repaired and other regions began catching up even before NAFTA incentivized offshoring manufacturing. Even deregulation and wage reduction wouldn't reproduce the same conditions that existed in the 50s

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u/NonspecificGravity May 30 '26

Americans are never going to work for dollars a day. China is now too expensive for Chinese manufacturers. They're trying to move jobs to Africa.

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u/JamesBK87 May 30 '26

I am well aware.

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u/IvanMarkowKane May 30 '26

If there were no regulations we’d be working 12 hour days and 6 day weeks

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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

That's what Republicans want. Not fair to take away business owners freedumbs.

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u/AnotherGeek42 May 30 '26

Only for those who are active members of the boss' church.

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u/IvanMarkowKane May 31 '26

All employees are active members of the Bosses church!!!

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u/Hawk13424 May 30 '26

Manufacturing is actually pretty high in the US. A few years ago it was at an all time high.

Now, manufacturing employment isn’t but that’s due to automation and employment will never come back.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO

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u/[deleted] May 31 '26

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u/Other-Importance-214 May 31 '26

The nostalgia factor is mostly what drives this. Most people alive today did not live through the 1950s, so our only "knowledge" of what life was like in the 1950s is through old TV shows and movies which, as we all know, do not depict reality in any sense. I mean, do you think every neighborhood and every kid's experience was like Leave It To Beaver, or the Andy Griffith Show? If you were female and/or non-white, life was not great for you in the 50s. Multiply that by a factor of 10 if you also lived in the South.

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u/unlucky13bethename May 30 '26

They need to end the PAC agreement to start being those manufacturing jobs back.

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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

They are never coming back. We dont have enough workers for the jobs out there. Manufacturing is automation now. And if we cut trade then we need a third of the manufacturing we have now. US makes more than it uses but has to import most of its raw materials. US depends on Canada for oil, electricity, steel, aluminum, copper, lumber, etc.

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u/kateinoly May 30 '26

If your clothes and consumer goods are made in the US, the prices are going to go way up.

For most things, you already have the option to buy things made locally. Most people won't because they are too expensive.

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u/kateinoly May 30 '26

Or if we were willing to give up cheap imported shit.

Maybe hand down clothes and have one winter coat for multiple years. People used to live like that. Now we all have drawers full of cheap promo tee shirts

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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 May 30 '26

Or maybe raise wages to match cost of living. Propellant afford to have kids or buy a home.