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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
Is it just me but every time I hear the OWS people going on about how much greater the disparity is between the rich and the poor I think back to the seventies when my single parent mum brought me up with no money and times for the poor in the seventies seemed way worse than they are now.
We had no phone, no TV and no car which was in no way unusual in the UK, we generally lived on canned meat, corned beef and spam, or offal, tripe, liver kidneys etc. I don't think I ever had a steak until I moved here in my mid twenties!
There were times, many many times, when we couldn't afford to put coins into the gas or electric meter so had no heat or light and most of my friends went through the same. My mum patched up my clothes, as did every other mum.
I ask this question because obviously things were harder in the UK than in Canada, but even with that in mind it seems to me that things have never been better for the poor than they are now, my foster kids parents, most of who are 'poor' have TV's, cell phones, food in the fridge and none of them have ever had their heat or services cut off except for the pointless cell phones they seem to waste much of their welfare on, all seem to be able to afford playstations and take the kids to McD's fairly regularly.
Is it just me or does being poor now look immeasurably better than being poor 30 or 40 years ago?
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I think it's more an issue of access to owning a house and entering the job market. This is easier than it has been historically, but harder than it was in the 1980s. My grandfather was born in a ghetto in Eastern Europe. However, my father got a high paying career almost instantly after graduating school and was then able to put a downpayment on a house right away. This happens rarely now.
Perhaps part of the problem is that we are using the 1980s as the measuring stick. This period of prosper was built on bad debt - that haunts us today - and may not be attainable again in the future.