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Comment by shawn_w | Hacker News Reader

Back then a couple could buy a house and raise a few kids on the paycheck that factory job of the husband's earned. These days even someone with a 6 figure tech job has trouble with that goal, but I think a lot of people think they can go back to the good old days.

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Homer Simpson exemplifies this. Heres a guy that never went to college being the lead safety inspector for a nuclear power plant. He owns his home with three kids a stay at home wife and two cars and two pets(with the occasional elephant that comes and goes). A lot has changed since the writing of these characters and the world now.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2Ey0H7OUE

My go-to example is Al Bundy. He was a loser, but most zoomers can only dream of having a house, a few kids, a car project in the garage et cetera

That guy did retail shoe sales too. I’ve known some people to survive off those type of jobs, but they sure as hell weren’t living with a sitcom family in the burbs.

Yes absolutely! I was never too much into Married with Children as a kid hence I jumped straight to the simpsons but the idea of a shoe salesman having all of that today? Not possible.

you guys understand that was a fictional comedy show right? It had no resemblance to reality on purpose.

Sure, but the shows tried to relate somehow to the reality of the time they depicted. They could've also make the character have another profession but it would be much less credible.

What's missed in that nostalgia: the house was crap; the appliances, if any, were crap; the car(if you had one, and only one), was crap. On and on.

That crap house hasn't been updated and is worth 200x currently in California. Houses that sold for 10k in the mid 70s are selling for 2 million or more in 2025. Cars, appliances and everything else is just a rounding error by comparison.

That's a condemnation of zoning laws artificially restricting the market for housing, which ironically only came about after that period of relative abundance

"Things are not shitty because of X you mentioned but because Y, therefore things are not shitty"

Does not compile.

Holy shit you have eaten it all up even licked your fingers just wow.

They don't realize that making good money in a factory was due to a particular tech/economic environment and the US' position inside it.

People thinking they can go back to making good money in a widget factory is like thinking because you had an ascendant economy in 1836 exporting wood before global electrification, then that lucrative job is always waiting for you even in 2025.

Back then before manufacturing jobs were sent overseas

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