Mastodawn

We need to work towards an economy of thriving small businesses with jobs that make people happy. For those who think the term #MAGA has/had a positive connotation, they don't think about racism/sexism. It was the idealized 1950s vision, of busy small town and suburban main streets, with people smiling and saying hello while they worked. Things felt affordable. The future was bright. The billionaire and concern about the stock market didn't exist.

#CraftBeerCapitalism

https://prospect.org/api/content/dc2c3645-3bdb-5439-ad1c-8a257a46eb20/

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M. Grégoire Apr 11

@wjmaggos Paul Krugman wrote a column about how wonderful the society of the 1950s was. I think this is the one: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/krugman-the-twinkie-manifesto.html

Some things were better in the past, yes. Isn't it obvious that things don't monotonically improve?

Opinion | The Twinkie Manifesto

We can learn a lot from the 195os.

The New York Times

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william ⁂ maggos Apr 11

@mpjgregoire

I'll check it out but my play here is to recognize that the classical vision of what MAGA wants is what lefties want too, despite what the reality was. Truman show etc.

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M. Grégoire Apr 11

@wjmaggos Truman Show? Maybe you should consider the possibility that the 1950s genuinely were a better time for ordinary people — not for everyone, of course not. People had less money and fewer goods, but community was stronger then, and community is what brings joy in life.

Have you ever read *Bowling Alone*?

Update: Possibly I'm misunderstanding your last post.

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william ⁂ maggos Apr 12

@mpjgregoire

maybe BTTF is the better example. I think that straight male WASPs probably felt a beautiful sense of community in the 1950s and I agree that matters more than money and goods. it was ignorant but I think I get what people want it to feel like again. but this time, for everyone.

I've read at least part of Bowling Alone and think it inspired The Big Lebowski. obviously the theme but also it's full of different archetypes of mostly white male Americans trying to find happiness.

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M. Grégoire Apr 12

@wjmaggos I'd bet happiness has declined more for US women than for men. Here's a chart of decline, though it's based on the GSS survey which only started asking about happiness in 1972: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Happiness-by-Gender-over-Time-in-the-US-GSS_fig2_265230842

Black Americans seem to have become happier since 1972, according to Table 1 of this paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6260931/

It's good that some people are happier, though again it would be useful to go back further in time; society in the 1950s was quite different than in the 1970s or now.