America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report(derekthompson.org) |
America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report(derekthompson.org) |
a gross percent can't name the 3 branches or their Reps.
I doubt it. My dad lived through the Great Depression, and fought desperate battles in WW2 and Korea.
As a young man, he was a socialist. His experience in fighting for American freedoms changed all that. Before he passed, he told me he regretted leaving me in a country that was significantly less free than when he was young.
I don't believe you'll find many communists in the greatest generation, especially among the war veterans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/30/a-different-...
Traditionally, the left is associated with small “L” liberalism, and the right is associated with small “C” conservatism.
Generally speaking, it has been a historic debate between whether the “natural” way things are is good and prudent (e.g., monarchs, religion, castes, roles, and norms), or if the way things are should be challenged to try something that seems better (e.g., liberté, égalité, fraternité).
When one of these ideas is successfully, it is often adopted by the right, when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left. Whether or not socialism is part of the left depends on whether folks on the left think it’s an idea worth trying. In America, right now, the vast majority are still quite hesitant to include it in their platform.
I knew my great grandparents. Most were born in the last part of the 1800s and lived through the First World War as young adults. They always seemed significantly less scarred by the Great Depression than their children (the Greatest Generation). There was a communist undercurrent to the Greatest Generation but they didn't get it from their parents.
Greatest Generation: adults during WW2
Silent Generation: children during WW2
People born in the 20's would be split between Greatest & Silent.
That being said, this video from Three Arrows (aka Dan Arrows) “America coming Weimar moment” has interesting things to say on that specific comparison: https://youtu.be/CFDDf48nj9g
Pre-industrialization, civs tended to come and then go(dispersing with other groups), as power structures came and went.
Or keep pushing it to further and further extremes with each swing until it inevitably breaks under the strain. :(
It required me watching, experiencing how things I had considered settled and humanity was over them started to turn back: the rise of fascistic tendencies in different societies, anti-intellectualism, etc. things that as a teenager/young adult I never considered could become societal issues again.
"Life is much better in 2026. We live healthier, richer, and longer lives, with better medicine and more self-determination." - I can't speak for 1926, but compared to 1980s or 1960s, this is so patently not true. The US population is much sicker and more obese, as one example. People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs. And so on. I don't see a lot of happy faces on the streets of America.
As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
Things are getting spicy.
Wait, which one are you talking about?
Putin? Trump? Nethanyayu? Kim Jong-un?
How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man.
It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.
Humorous and informative writer. Not a historian. Thompson refers to him as a historian several times in the article.
Still, overall, I feel like drug policy now beats 100 years ago :)
or a President extracting billions from his own government for a plane, golf, inexplicable illegal destruction and renovations to national sites
the government was also not purposely imploding academia, science and medicine
there are also now over a THOUSAND billionaires "silo-ing" their wealth, barely paying any taxes and trying to eliminate the cost of employing anybody
we cannot recover this decade, maybe not even next century, and that assumes this horror show doesn't have a "part 2"
https://americanbusinesshistory.org/superwealth-a-historical...
except we have more homeless than ever so they don't even have that
with taxes slashed for billionaires and safety-nets for food and healthcare being destroyed, we are actually headed back to 1926 on purpose
In the spirit of all models are wroong but some models are useful and that generational politics is overly reductive (which it is), I still see the Millenials as the new Lost Generation. The original Lost Generation were born 1883 to 1900. They came of age in the devastation of WW1 and the Spanish flu. What happened after 2008 was that all the entry-level jobs disappeared. Millenials had taken and continued to take on massive student debt and otherwise "do the right thing" yet found there were limited opportunities at the end of that pipeline. Baby boomers still had a stranglehold on academic and they both refused to quit or die (something which is still true). This is where the trope of the college educated millenial barista came from.
Obama's presidency was a massive lost opportunity to correct some of this. It directly led to Trump being elected (over Hilary "more of the same" Clinton). Trump, for all his many, many faults, talked to the rising anger in young people at the lack of opportunity, the possibility that they'd never own a house or have a good-paying job or they'd have a family. The disillusionment and anger has only grown.
So, as a leftist, the irony is that I get shit on constantly for essentially trying to preserve the current system by those people who like the current system but are contributing towards us bouldering towards war and revolution. Because those are the ultimate form of wealth redistribution [1] and become increasingly inevitable as material conditions worsen.
Even more ironic, many of those same people fetishize the 1950s where the top marginal tax rate was 91%, the CEO-to-median-wage ratio was a fraction of what it is now and the corporate tax rate was 40-50%. But then came along the likes of McKinsey who justified greed witht he patina of executives being "underpaid" [2] and then the social destruction of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.
It took FDR in the 1930s to repair the damage of 1920s pro-business slavishness of Coolidge and Mellon. And let's not forget there was an attempted coup in 1933 [3]. But you see the same messages (as the author notes) in the 1920s of lower taxes, destroying unions and being pro-big business. Sound familiar?
[1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2017/01/stanford-historian...
[2]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...
If you're a woman, would you rather live in the 1960s or 2020s? If you were black or any other minority, in the 1960s or 2020s? If you're gay, would you rather live in the 1960/80s or in the 2020s?
Average US life expectancy was in about 70 in the 1960s, and mid-70s in the 1980s, and approaching 80 until COVID hit. Cancer survivorships has improved (not only because better screen and treatment, but also because of less cigarette smoking). The infant mortality rate now is a fifth of what it was in the 1960s.
Of course for all these numbers non-US developed countries are much better.
Generally, to say that life is better now is not to say it's perfect or to deny that improvements can still be made.
> People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs.
Groceries have gone from being 14% of household spending in the 1960s to being less 6% (takeout from 4% to 6%). In 1900 food was 40%:
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...
Being able to cook healthy meals for yourself has probably never been easier and less expensive than it is now.
I don't see how anything in the article would influence anyone to feel better about those things.
There’s no magical low effort way to avoid regression to the global mean, as the population more than doubles in size.
That takes serious, coordinated, and sustained work across decades to avoid.
Yes, there is still much work to be done to improve the United States, but I’d rather be poor in the United States today than wealthy in the United States 100 years ago. I suspect that most educated people would choose likewise.
This should be the absolutely only thing that Democrats talk about. Every single day, with a big graph and call in number, so people can call in to say if this was fixed for them or not. And if it's not fixed, they should outline steps on how it gets fixed that day. It's insane they aren't using this opportunity.
Democrats are half of the uniparty of capital interests. They only exist to prop up the illusion of a functioning democracy.
"Look guys, the election was so close! Democracy is still alive! We just need to vote harder [for the lesser of two evils] next time!"
Instead they're taking the opportunity to be insane. But the faithful are not allowed to admit that.
The millennials are the recipients of the great dumbing down. They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.
Maybe there’s a handful of ultra wealthy families tending the family wealth well but most of the middle class boomers don’t even have a concept of leaving something for future generations.
We have our own problems, namely that we were raised by boomers who went from Flower Power in the 1960s to voting for Reagan in the 1980s. We were the last free range generation but that wasn't freedom. It was neglect. Many of us also grew up with things like ADHD and Type 1 Autism long before anyone knew what those things were so that, too, was fun for us.
Baby boomers as a whole seem terrified of dying. So they don't retire but also they don't leave anything for their children. Tehy can't take it with them but by God they're going to spend it before they go. Or it'll just get eaten up on end-of-life care.
I can barely contain my rage at the baby boomer generation who took the fruits of prosperity from FDR in the post-war era and pissed it all away voting for Reagan while bringing people into the world then making sure to pass absolutely nothing onto them in a world they can scarcely afford.
Given all that I still say millenials got shafted way worse.
Tasty drinkable water from the tap in nearly the entire country. Being able to flush toilet paper. Free toilets almost everywhere.
Being a country for 250 years is also quite an achievement.
I’m European and have witnessed many wars on my continent in my lifetime. A childhood friend was shot down with a Russian surface to air missile.
The comment came about from the last charts show religion, patriotism, etc down while money rose. It clicked.
The money is largely a side effect of these two things.
Coastal California is probably one of the nicest places on earth but generally US is quite harsh.
The US's problems are entirely political. Geologically and climate wise it is a really great place. And it already has an educated populous and a significant amount of industrial hardware.
Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
Yeah, you can quote me all the caveats. They're there; I don't deny them. But: Freedom to say, freedom to do, and freedom to go. Those are really big deals.
Most European nations strongly protect free speech, allowing open public critique and satire of politicians, the wealthy, and the powerful.
> Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Several European countries actually lead global easy business rankings, some offering fully digital, single-day company registration, very little bureaucracy (not mine, sadly)
> Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
The schengen zone grants passport-free travel across 29 nations, spanning thousands of miles without a single border checkpoint.
The question is: is he enabling them, or are they enabling him? I suppose it could be working in both directions. That said: while the "elite" were problematic before his second rise to power, they were also more constrained.
I also have some question as to who the elite are? Certain individuals are more prominent these days, while others have faded in the background. While it may feel good to apply a singular label to the wealthy (or any other group we disagree with), they are not a single ideological entity. It's probably more beneficial to align ourselves with those who agree with us, rather than alienating them based upon a metric that is only tangentially related to their values.
I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans as a society are deeply, pathologically unwell and Trump is entirely their fault. I have no sympathy for any of them.
But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.
Due to the age of many places in Europe there is also still a lot of copper pipe used for tap water. Not deadly but also not very healthy. In Amsterdam over 20 percent of homes have copper pipes.
My great-grandmother was born in the late 1890s and lived until 99 years old. I knew her very well (she died when I was 17).
Her husband died in his sleep: they had a house built and it wasn't finished yet, but he was so excited he decided to sleep a first night in it, alone. Gas leak.
They had two daughters, 4 and 2 years old. My grandmother and my great-aunt, whom I both knew very well too.
I've got a letter signed by Eisenhower, before he was president, thanking my great-grandmother for her "galant service" during WWII: she was part of the resistance and hid, for months, a UK pilot that had been shot down by the nazis over Belgium. Before helping him regain the UK.
They were a though generation, really nothing like the little wussies [1] we see today and I mean it.
[1] the little snowflakes whose feelings shouldn't be hurt do comes to mind
Given that there was no antibiotics in 1926, no chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer, no public pensions (so good luck getting old), hardly any indoor plumbing (even by 1940 it was about half), I think life is much better now that one hundred years ago.
What were infant mortality rates in 1926? Maternal mortality? Average life span? How many years did people live after retirement?
Can you list the ways in which you think life was better in 1926?
And to say life is better now is not to say it's perfect or to deny that improvements can still be made.
The piece compares the USA and 100 years ago. He notices that we are still in a time of large social change, often in some of the same areas, while also noting that we are materially more comfortable.
I don't think "this some sort of a paid advertising piece, to make you feel better about inflation, lack of affordable medical care, lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs for recent graduates, etc...", I think it's just a historical retrospective.
Author is pointing out that material, we're more comfortable than 100 years ago, and it's true.
It was arguable also true in 1926 - I I'd rather have been 26 in 1926 than 26 in 1826 (especially if I were a woman or black), and I'd rather be 26 today than 1926.
Being educated enough to whine on the internet about how despite recently graduating from university, I've not found a job that pays me enough to buy a home in a super expensive metropolitan area, while not ideal, is still, in my opinion, than moving from the farm to go work in various factories and shops in the city.
Have you ever seen a graph of the stock market?
It doesn't always go up all the time, but in the long run, it generally goes up on average.
When I read articles, in addition to thinking "good information", I now always ask 3 more quesitons: (1) why was it written? (2) who benefits? (3) who paid for it (not necessarily with money)?
We are only arguing about that because you brought it up.
If the second half of that reader engagement doesn't pay off, the sentence reads as clunky or incorrect, likely a mistake from a second language speaker.
Natural languages are not code and words can't be swapped arbitrarily. Word choice and construction carries meaning in and of itself, totally divorced from the actual words used.
on edit: took out hows to avoid confusion.
Luckily, other humans can 'clear things up' :)
So yes, VERY high probability of service.
The relevant sections for these comments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Basically we've been in a "4th Turning" for about two decades, and the 4th turning typically ends in some sort of crisis (hence the name for it, "Crisis"): Great Depression/WWII in the previous one, the US Civil War before that, the "Age of Revolution" before that, etc.
The idea behind it is lessons learned last until the people who lived through the previous one die. So the 4 "turnings" repeat every 80-100 years, and some sort of major crisis is expected around now - hence talk of another Great Depression or WWIII.
I don't see what GP means by "hijacked", GGP is pretty much a direct reference to exactly what it talks about.
Aside, this meme is based on this theory: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men - "hard times" represents the 4th Turning, though it's oversimplified, which makes it not really a great match.
Many people find Europe to be gloomy -- too little sun and too much rain. The US is only "harsh" if that is your platonic ideal for weather. The Pacific Northwest is a sunnier version of this climate. Most of the US is well within the range people can naturally adapt to and be comfortable in. The US is also an incredibly sunny place by comparison, even the parts not known for heat. The US does have unusually extreme weather but those events don't define the day-to-day and the built environment is adapted to it.
There are only a few parts of the US with irredeemable weather in my opinion. The low deserts of the southwest (e.g. Mojave) are literally among the hottest places on Earth. The northern Plains reach Arctic temperatures during winter. This is why almost no one lives in these places. The South famously has tropical heat/humidity during the summer, which Americans complain about, but that is like tropics everywhere and is quite pleasant during the winter.
That said, the best weather in the US (and arguably the world) is widely considered to be in San Diego. Perfect sunny days at an almost ideal temperature with no humidity for virtually the entire year.
Also, the Democrat party has steadily moved leftwards over time.
I don't have statistics, but combat veterans voice very negative opinions on Jane Fonda and her support for N Vietnam.
the only way someone thinks this is if they have fox news blaring all day every day. the dems keep moving rightward step by step to appeal to "moderates" while the right wing keep moving the overton window even further right.
What an absurd statement. During the Great Depression FDR was considering a worker's bill of rights that would guarantee employment. In the '60s LBJ used the specter of a dead president to push through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (which have been considerably undone). In the '90s, Clinton undid the what remained of the Federal welfare state in this country. In the '10s, Obama was barely able to pass legislation that forced people to buy health insurance. In the '20s, Biden's major achievements were largely spending related. So in what universe has the party steadily moved leftward?
Have you not noticed the recent elections of Democrat Socialists, and the Democrat leaders are endorsing them? This was unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are not socialism. I am not sure the VRA has been undone - didn't Los Angeles just enact a law to allow non-citizens to vote?
To a certain degree. In the US you can drive to another state thousands of kilometers away and decide to just live there for the rest of your life.
That is not needed when you switch states in the US. You just need to update your address and tax records. You do not needed to show financial means and you do not need private healthcare.
The only thing that hasn't really happened is a full economic mobilization. And Russia... may be close to that.
Yes, the reality of politics is that they are highly multipolar. The political compass is useful, but maintaining only two axes is wildly simplistic.
Moral Foundations Theory suggests there are five axes for political views. I think this theory is one of the best for explanatory power, but is still limited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
Suffices to say, if we look at politics through a two party, first past the post framework, I still think small letter conservatism vs liberalism is the best frame, simply because it is vague enough to be used generally.
In American english it does.
> when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left
Rent control has never worked out (it results in a housing shortage), but proposals for more rent control constantly flow from the left.
Associating a political coalition with their most extreme or noisy members is counterproductive. When looking for what a coalition stands for, it's better to look at the coalition member who are most productive with legislation in places they have control.
Statewide rent control was recently enacted by Oregon and Washington. It's also statewide in California. Not coincidentally, all three have Democrats completely controlling the governorship and legislature.
Here's the DNC official platform:
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2024-Democr...
I'd appreciate it if you found any free market proposals in it (I didn't read the whole thing).
I did notice the advocacy of rent control: "the Administration has eased rising rents by capping rent hikes in 2 million federally-funded apartments."
and
"It offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break."
and
"the Administration is going after unfair rental “junk fees,” like fees people are charged just to pay rent online or to receive sorted mail. And, we will crack down on corporate landlords who are gouging tenants, for example by capping the amount they can raise the rent each year"
Different, not stricter perse. In the EU it is allowed to sell food with non-edible parts inside or cheese with maggots.
EU is a good place to be but some people have this overly optimistic view of the place.
Not anymore. I got stopped between The Netherlands and Germany, between France and Spain, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has border checkpoints with most of its bordering countries.
That is unheard of in the USA. You can travel thousands of kilometers without getting stopped by authorities for checking your passport or identity card.
Free speech is also on the outs since we’re having people getting jailed for not carrying the flame appropriately with regards to the late Mr Kirk.
Oh, and people getting prosecuted for 8647 as the powers at be decided to interpret that as a death threat instead of call to impeach.
Not comparing that to ICE as deportations in the EU are typically peaceful.
Louis L'Amour writes on this a bit in his wonderful book:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/828165.Education_of_a...
Keep in mind that "more homeless than ever" (and I would prefer "more people experiencing homelessness than ever") may be technically true, but per capita we've seen a post-covid bump that's likely already back to 2007 levels. Without understanding the trends I wouldn't predict what happens next.
I've done some research to try to help you understand more - can I ask you to think about your frame and beliefs and consider changing them?