I was going to say something similar. I'm 41, and when I was a child in the early 80s, work was simultaneously higher paying, a bit more intense than today's standards, but also had shorter hours and more leisure time. Where I live in Idaho, my family and friends were: a dentist (dad) dental office manager (mom), carpenter (godfather), minister, interior decorator, teacher, artist, mechanic, lots of military workers on the airbase by my hometown, etc. Maybe half or less of the mothers I knew worked outside the home. Fathers hunted in the fall to feed their families.
But our community was largely self-sufficient. We didn't have Walmart yet and its associated trade deficits which contributed to the national debt. I'll admit that we were dependent on the nearby military base, BUT that was during the Cold War. Had the base closed (as it probably should have after the Berlin Wall fell, say 1990), I think my home town would have survived on ranching, timber and mining (none of which I support by the way, as Idaho's environment is under constant attack).
Yes I see the contradictions in what I am saying. But I also believe that we could have had a more sustainable future had we faced facts and started the process of transitioning to a 21st century economy earlier. That might have even led to Gore being elected instead of Bush. So it's complicated, and not always easy to discern cause from effect. It's all been 20 years delayed, but there is work in green energy here today.
My feeling is that the American worker HAD MORE LEVERAGE then - in terms of being able to walk onto any construction job, or specialize in a 2 year education trade, or even get free college in many states. We still had unions. We didn't have the welfare cuts that happened under Clinton or the 100,000 factories shut down under GW Bush yet. Quality of life and the feeling of making one's own way was higher then.
If we want to fix our economy, we need to get organized and take a bigger piece of the pie for workers (perhaps we should call them makers or producers), rather than giving it to people who already have money. We can moan and complain about this simple fact from all political angles, but until we start electing people who understand how this works, our long slow decline will continue.
