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"I work 60 hours most weeks.
And somehow, I still feel like I’m struggling to get by.
At some point you have to ask yourself:
What’s the point of working this hard if you never get to enjoy your life?
Something needs to change."
TV isn’t a good barometer though. Most sitcoms have cafe service staff living by themselves in a massive New York apartment.
It’s been mentioned so many times.
Monica got that great apartment because her aunt [grandmother?] put Monica’s name on the lease when Monica was still a kid. Chandler was an executive with a couple of assistants and he could barely afford the smaller place next door.
And the reality is that up until 1968, a high school graduate in the USA actually did have a good chance of becoming a home owner.
When Nixon came in he doubled down on LBJ’s policy of paying for the Vietnam War by printing money and not raising taxes. This lead to inflation. The inflation got much worse when the Arab Oil Boycott hit.
Jimmy Carter hired Paul Volker to run the Fed. Volker’s plan worked, but only after Carter was out. Reagan took credit for the economic miracle, then turned around and gave the banks the right to print money with his deregulation.
By 1992, after four GOP Presidents, ‘middle class’ had gone from one job supporting a family to both parents working full time.
I was a kid in the seventies and a teen in the eighties my parents were a paralegal and a rocket scientist. I was an only kid. They both had to work to make ends meet.
My generation were latchkey kids, given no supervision. Deterioration of th American Dream had already begun.