loosecannon
Senior Member
- May 7, 2007
- 4,888
- 269
- 48
Funny you should say this.
I just heard an economist who studied the buying patterns of the boomer generation in comparison to the WWII generation.
Know what she found?
That the boomer generation actually spent less money on decretionary items than their fathers.
SIGNFICANTLY less, actually.
Guess where they put their money?
Into shelter and paying off for things like health care, insurance and other things that are necessary.
Yeah, that's right...contrary to the myth that Americans have been foolishly spending their money on toys, the real fact is that as Americans purchasing power has declined, they've been spending their money mostly on ESSENTIALS, not on descretionary spending.
The myth that Americans are in trouble because of foolish spending is another of those BIG LIES brought to us by the apologists for the BIG MONEY that dominates our media, our government and our lives.
My generation was the best educated and the most hard working generation of the XXTH century.
And we started losing real purchasing power in about 1970 at just about the time most of us started our working careers, too.
We put our woman to work, we worked more hours, get better educations and went into DEBT just to keep going,
But even those financial strategies could not overcomethe decline in real purchasing power that has plagued the American working classes economy for the last 40 YEARS.
You kids simply have no idea how much easier it was to find a job that paid a living wage back in the 50s and 60s.
You truly have been fed a steady diet of nonsense about how every problem facing the American people is THEIR FAULT.
All this anecdoatal evidence that you've been exposed to is NOT supported by the real statistics about how people spend their dough.
People are spending their dough on "necessities" that weren't necessary in 1940. Like old age retirement, people just died, or healthcare, healthcare was cheap and people died anyway.
One thing is clear to me anyway is that the boomers had by far the most income and the most discretionary spending to show for their careers. Maybe not as a %, but as a total.
I knew a depression era dude who died wealthy (he owned an entire city block) a few years ago. But he didn't ever buy a new car until he was 82 yo.