Quote:
Originally Posted by Chrysalis
wages were low but so were living costs.
People may seem better off today but think where most people would be without easy credit.
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Living costs were ludicrously high. The basics of food, clothing and other day to day items were not only costly but in many instances of rubbish quality.
The only thing which stands out as cheap is petrol but cars were of rubbish quality, expensive to keep going and required a substantial DIY capability. That all changed with the 70's oil shock and everything about running a car became a financial headache.
Mass production of the levels of today's efficiencies took decades to arrive with the transition from hand assembled rubbish to robotics. Massive imports of foreign goods especially in the high tech area is a relatively modern phenomena and in white goods and electronics prices are comparatively as cheap as chips.
My parents generation had known the reality of real hunger. My father's motivation was to avoid the return to that situation whatever the costs and he worked into his mid 70's driven by the scars of earlier life. Many of the earlier boomers are driven to avoid a return to a life of little more than survival in what today is classed as poverty. You had to go through it to know it.