I remember the America Michael Moore was talking about.

[mmonk]

The one where we worked on making our public school system first class, not bleeding it to ruin with vouchers and charter schools. The one with price supports that kept family farms going and producing abundances and surpluses we could use in trade negotiations as well as keeping us fed. I remember pensions instead of crashing 401 Ks and pensions that couldn't be used as assets to acquire by a competitor to use for cash. I remember school nurses. I remember large factories in most towns, no matter how rural, that kept a quality of life in place for its inhabitants and the main street businesses that fed off of it. I remember when the rich paid much more in income taxes than they do now and state and local governments that weren't bankrupt. I remember an America where everyone shared in its successes and led the world in different areas of production, not derivatives and slick get rich banking schemes. I remember when Reaganomics was called voo doo economics, not economics. I remember when people studied more disciplines than Business Management and were well rounded. I also remember inequality based on race, but I remember people working to fight that blight on America. The America now, seems to have a different perspective and direction as well as a different belief system. We seem now to want to resegregate the schools, push regressive taxation, dismantle public education, and privatize government services. If we are to really survive as being a first world nation, we have to change the country back into one of progression and a nation with a shared purpose.

I'm aiming this at the Moore critics. Maybe the movie will rekindle that kind of American spirit. The problem is that those of us that remember how an economy can work and be more democratic, are getting older and many younger Americans have grown up a good portion of their lives under the Reagan ideology and now entrenched power that can run Washington with its money influence in campaigns. We have to fight it with the same shared purpose that once made the country a great nation other than in warfare.

[HughBeaumont]

1. That America went bye-bye around 1979.

That's when the "Great Risk Shift" became the American Corporatist mantra (that is, shifting all of the risk from the wealthy to the middle/working/poor classes), the YOYO (You're On Your OWN) crew took over and the economy became non-diverse and wage-stagnant.

In other words, all of the economic characteristics of Republican and Centrist Dem rule, along with the failure crapcake known as Friedman economics (or "Disaster Capitalism") became the rule of law. Economies that make finance and debt instruments their focus almost always go bust. Speculation is no substitute for the old rule of mass consumption/mass production.

[mmonk]

2. Yes, exactly. The Chicago school is a failure kept away from the

American consciousness and being sold and repackaged as essentially American and the lie it is the basis for freedom.

[seabeyond]

4. there was also a social shift on who we are as a person. chicken or egg.nt

[NNN0LHI]

3. I can remember when one paycheck was enough to support a family of four

When I hired in at Ford in 1973 if I didn't like it there I could have walked across the street and got another job that was just about as good.

Those days are long gone.

Don

[mmonk]

10. That is true. And the choices keeping getting smaller

and the one someone chooses, less stable. It's folding in like a closing trap.

[Overseas]

18. I do too. And it was key to a more stable society.

I got really angry decades ago at people criticizing "the decline of morals" in American society without addressing the role that previous economic security played. Social critics blamed all kinds of other factors but would not acknowledge the essential role of secure manufacturing jobs in keeping families together.

That was the message of "Roger and Me" -- Moore was showing us the blight inflicted by the waves of US manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. He showed us honest workers trying to do a decent days' work being cast aside, and asked us -- IS THIS OKAY WITH YOU?

At the time, many people pretended that there would be other jobs evolving to fill in that gap. The Clinton Administration pushed retraining. Then the tech support and call center jobs were outsourced too.

And here we are, in our Plutocracy, with millions more desperate, being spun around in their anger by professional right wing bullies to shout against good government, instead of demanding more regulation and more progressive taxation.

Moore shows us the human face of the avalanche of foreclosures, and the fancy marketing that led people to fall for predatory (oops, I mean "subprime") mortgage refinancing. He also showed us the Shock Doctrine Marketing that induced our legislators to pour billions at the banks and finance companies that committed fraud, instead of pouring those billions into keeping our fellow citizens in their homes.

[cali]

5. This ideal you remember never existed.

Those large factories? They poisoned the environment hideously. Do you think life was better for GLBT persons 35 years ago than it is today?

I agree with the gist of your OP, but please, don't idealize the past. For many, it sucked just as much as the present.

[mmonk]

7. I'm not idealizing the past. I remember heading in the right direction.

We no longer are working to head in the right direction. Also, my op was more related to economics than laws concerning social justice.

[Selatius]

8. This is true, but by the end of the 1960s, we passed environmental regulations.

I remember when the Hudson River caught on fire because it was so polluted with chemicals. Today, it's a far cry from what it was back in the 1960s.

I wouldn't mind an economy focused primarily on mass production/mass consumption. We could take that, sans the racism and the inequality suffered both by people of color and GLBTs.

[Romulox]

12. Lack of gay rights in the 50s is NOT an excuse for corporatism today.

Please, don't idealize the PRESENT.

[Ineeda]

6. I remember that too

It was when our neighbors actually interacted with each other and pitched in when there was a need. When the only things kids needed were a piece of chalk for hopscotch, a length of clothesline for jumprope, second hand bikes or hand-me-down rollerskates...and friends...to be happy. It was when everyone in the neighborhood, even the most well-to-do, 'made do' without needing the latest and greatest. It sure wasn't a 'Leave it to Beaver' world, but it seems we cared more about each other.:-)

[mmonk]

9. Yes, more a sense of shared purpose.

It wasn't perfect by no means, but people took pride in the whole progress of a town. Now it's more us vs them and I've got mine, let them eat cake. We seem to be heading back into the 19th century.

[whathehell]

11. Me too...

and it is only the memory of that and the FDR-inspired ideals my parents passed on to me that keeps me going.

[livetohike]

13. Ronald Reagan ruined this country

The Republicans are still clinging to Reagan's failed economy and social experiments.

[Greyhound]

22. Don't forget teh many Democrats that voted for him and still support his

bizarre economic beliefs. We even have a few of them here.

[livetohike]

24. Brainwashed by Alex Keaton

:-)

[HughBeaumont]

36. Yes, and they're all floating in my Red X Toilet.

Reaganomics != Democratic Position. Get outta the tent, we got progress to make.

[HamdenRice]

14. I remember the America in which my father and uncles lived in terror of being lynched

and my cousin was shot in the head for trying to open a construction business in Virginia.

I distinctly remember one morning during family reunion week in rural Virginia when some white man came knocking on the door of my grandparents' farm house at the crack of dawn asking for food. My step grandfather ran him off with a shotgun. A few hours later, a car full of state troopers drove up as we were having breakfast, and the back seat was loaded with rifles and shot guns, and everyone went into a kind of catatonic shock.

Turned out, they were looking for the white man who was an escaped convict, and they were very polite and thankful for my step grandpa's information, but I'll never forget seeing my father and uncles, who all lived in the north and were visiting, but had been born in rural Virginia so scared. I'd never seen them look like that in the north.

The economics of the America you are describing was based in part on excluding vast numbers of people from those factory jobs through a reign of terror.

[mmonk]

15. I do too and that is not what I am talking about.

The economic principles described is not hitched to that.

[HamdenRice]

17. Were your father and uncles terrified of being lynched?

Is that what you are saying you remember?

Actually, the principles were closely related. I remember working as a consultant on some civil rights litigation in Connecticut in the 1980s. I had to read through various hearings from the 1960s about the construction trades, and how they were organized to keep out minorities. It was an iron clad system in which you had to go to certain vocational high schools to get into the union. Those high schools were stringently segregated, which meant there were no minorities in most trades and many factories.

My father was a city bureaucrat, but did construction work on the side, and he once told me that there was not one single Black union carpenter in all of New York City because of the system of arcane rules that helped them keep minorities out.

Not one. And this was the mid 1970s.

[mmonk]

28. No. However, tell me how the economics practiced were wrong

and how Reaganomics and Milton Friedman economics helped your family. Do you think Reaganomics and Milton Friedman economics are tied to the advancement of civil rights? Otherwise, what is your point on the treatise on America's racism in this thread?

[HamdenRice]

29. The lifestyle you were living was called "labor aristocracy"

The theory of labor aristocracy goes back to the late 1800s, early 1900s and the conflict between craft unions and industrial unions.

The 1950s and 1960s experience was really an updated version of the same conflict, but with industrial workers added to the labor aristocracy.

The basic idea is that if you can restrict the supply of a particular category of workers, the price (wage) for that worker will rise. So for decades, unions practiced methods of limiting the number of people eligible for certain jobs. I say this as a union supporter, but one who is realistic about their past behaviors.

The main way of limiting the supply of both craft and industrial workers in the south was segregation. In the north, it tended to be more subtle, but involved elaborate systems for preventing African Americans, Latinos and Asians from entering many jobs. In the early 1900s, craft unions tried to keep out industrial workers; after industrial workers were unionized the labor aristocracy was maintained by allowing both craft and industrial workers inside, but keeping workers of color outside.

To be fair, the Auto Workers were among the first big industrial unions to attempt to be relatively color blind.

The economic effect of the application of "labor aristocracy" methods is that while the wages of the people on the inside of the labor aristocracy go up, those excluded (Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans) go down. They are restricted to low paid menial jobs. The flip side of white worker affluence in the Happy Days era was poverty for workers of color -- as well as, in many places, an entire system of terrorism to keep the boundaries of the labor aristocracy in tact.

There's a reason that you rarely saw a black character hanging out with "The Fonz."

[mmonk]

31. I'm fully aware of the discrimination.

I remember seeing AA workers eating outside of car dealerships and garages to factories because of discrimination. I was not making the case those were the greatest of times for everyone. I do know, however, that concentrating on income equalization was a better approach economically than the current approach. I do not suggest we return to the societal model. I also know Roosevelt in what he hoped for, was a workplace without discrimination in his idea of economic democracy and a workplace where those that labored were rewarded properly for their labor to acquire economic security. My op was not a call to the "good 'ol days" but a return to those economic principles. We currently have hollowed out our factories and no longer have an adequate industrial base with wages that produce a competitive standard of living with industrial nations of the world. Per family incomes have dipped and is providing added stress on the family unit and the welfare of our people.

[leftstreet]

16. Today we're pretty much all excluded from those 'factory jobs' n/t

[laughingliberal]

19. I remember it, too

The tragedy of my life is this America of which you speak started dying around the time I reached adulthood and had to start making my way in the world. Even with a fairly good career with a decent wage I have spent the years struggling to keep up and, worked to exhaustion after years of increasing work loads, fell off the cliff a couple of years ago. I try not to live in 'what if' land but can not help thinking what life might have been like if I had been born 10 or 20 years earlier.

[jotsy]

26. As a member of the class of '79, I often thought then of what life would look like now.

Not much of what I envisioned has come to pass, and I'd have to concur with the notion that we are not where we ought to be on too many levels.

Our Education system, even then, at least in the greater Los Angeles area, left a lot to be desired. Yet it was far more involving and interesting than the hull that's at work across much of the nation today.

Jobs were available, homes, cars, supplies and services were collectively affordable. Looking for things to look up was in fact, strictly a matter of effort. Opportunity in and of itself was not carefully placed just out of reach and only after you put yourself on so many lines of credit that the chances of you wriggling free are considerably less than not.

I try to embrace the advances that have occurred, as well as my own moment in time. Critical and trying times they may be, but for me to engage in with an eye to shaping a more promising tomorrow so no generation has another time to want for.

As long as progress is defined as a climbing profit margin, our potential remains untapped, and our stifled spirits stay tethered to a system designed as model of contemporary slavery.

[MasonJar]

20. I do also. Michael Moore is a great American.

[Greyhound]

21. K&R. I see that your post has incited some of "the usual suspects".

Always anxious to divert the point and dissuade any discussion of how things were better before "I've got mine, fuck you" became their endorsed national motto.

Hey, anytime you can piss them off, you're doing good.

[HamdenRice]

23. Yeah, those nasty gays and coloreds pointing out that the 50s weren't paradise for everyone

"I wish they'd go back to their own part of the bus and their closets so we can get our "Happy Days" groove on!"

[leftstreet]

25. Gay people were impoverished in the 50s?

What?

[mmonk]

30. Your attack starts from a dishonest approach as to what my claims are about.

And as much you want to make it a thread about your family or racism in the time period, that is not the subject matter and I NOwhere make the statement or support the premise that the 50's, 60's, 70's, or any other time is or was ideal for people who have been discriminated against. You have hijacked my thread and disregarded it's message and/or intent, which is, that we should go back to a premise of economic democracy instead of corporatism.

[mmonk]

32. Sorry for my somewhat angry looking response.

I was not pining for the America's past, I was remembering a time where pensions were protected, workers weren't just seen as a cost on the balace sheet, and a time where workplace safety started to be a concern and acted on instead an intrusion of government on free enterprize. It was also a recognition that better wages and benefits not only helped production, but the ability to buy the products produced.

[BumRushDaShow]

34. I think part of the problem with your OP was this

I remember an America where everyone (emphasis mine) shared in its successes and led the world in different areas of production...

And unfortunately, "everyone" did NOT "share in its successes". In fact, far too many were excluded from such, not only by private industry and their unions (via a contorted version of a closed union shop), but even from government (state, local, federal). There was a time in the '50s when my mother, newly minted with a poli-sci/pre-law degree and secondary ed teaching certification (via exam) was forbidden from teaching in the secondary schools in the city of Philadelphia due to her race. Sec ed teachers naturally made more than primary. The result would have meant a loss of income. This was just before Brown V. Board. My father, having served in WW II, was forbidden from buying those "Only $100 down!" Levittown houses in the newly forming suburbs because of his race. So the trappings... the "rewards" of that era were kept from whole segments of this country's population by no fault of their own but their race. And in many cases, keeping these segments from enjoying the "fruits" was codified in the law.

In this country unfortunately, race, class, and economics are truly interlinked, both in a parasitic and sybiotic way. It cannot be separated. The "greatness" of this country came on the backs of many who were denied the "'sharing' of the success".

From the other perspective, Raygunomics took a single wage earner's salary and froze it so much that today it takes at least 4 wage earners to support the "middle class" lifestyle from almost 60 years ago. At one time, the median (male's) 1-year salary was about the same as the median new house price. Now similar "new" housing costs almost 5x the median wage.

I partly blame the proliferation of graduate-level business schools that have vomited out many many hundreds of thousands of brainwashed mini-corporatists who have helped to take every "non-business" sector of this society (including education, health, and even government) and apply a "business model" to it, to the detriment of the fabric of this country. Some interesting data from here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_300.asp indicates that in the mid-'50s, the number of Masters degrees awarded in business in a year was ~3300. By 2006, that number was ~150,000 for that year! Schools that used to be run by "Superintendents" are now run by "CEOs". Hospitals that were once private and non-profit are now bundled together into for-profit business conglomerates run by private equity firms. Federal, state, and local governments have been increasingly contracting out functions that were once always considered "inherently governmental"... but then thanks to this "business" lingo, government functions were considered passé and summarily ignored as these "contractors" could be hired and fired at will, and could be given few benefits in order to boost the profits of the contracting firm.

It will take time to overturn 30 years worth of destruction and the "business" mindset. The lingo must removed out of the discourse and put back into its true perspective for the good of this society.

[mmonk]

35. Your post is good and to the point, especially the application

of the business model on things unrelated. I don't know how we can combat the language and ideology that has becomed ingrained in Amerca these last decades. Yes, a bad usage of words I used in the sentence. Too bad it killed the message I was trying to deliver. My message wasn't meant to infer those subjected to the systemic discrimination in the system of that period was to be supported, ignored, or rewritten. I was pushing the Roosevelt premises that proved correct and seemed to help create a middle class.

[HamdenRice]

37. Thanks for sharing your insight and analysis

I think it is very difficult for people to think of racism beyond what the media has brainwashed the public into accepting as history -- sitting in the back of the bus and drinking from separate water fountains -- rather than economic privilege protected by law and lawless terrorism.

Because most people see historical racism as some sort of entrenched impoliteness, it's hard for them to see that the affluence of the 1950s white America was directly related to and dependent upon the poverty and discrimination faced by people of color.

Thanks!

[PVnRT]

33. Yes, the OP was completely racist

:eyes:

No one is claiming that it was a paradise, or to completely turn back the clock. Yes, it was bad for gays and blacks back then. Do you honestly think anyone in this thread is denying that?

[omega minimo]

27. Yup