General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Who is responsible for our messed up Country? Boomers or Millennials? [View all]Hekate
(90,681 posts)My parents started married life in a trailer park, where I was conceived, moved to a small unit at the end of a road by a turkey ranch, then were able to buy a new 2BR 1BA home of their own before my first sib was born. I think the interest rate on their mortgage was 4%. (The interest rate on my first house was a variable rate around 16%; my sis and her husband paid 18% on their first mortgage.)
We were a blue-collar white family, my dad worked for Lockheed Aircraft, was in a union, and wages were not terrific. However, as a child I was not aware of anyone who didn't think of themselves as somehow middle-class. It was a very broad category that included people like us who were what I now think of as aspirationally middle-class.
The average school really was good. Governments have to be willing to spend the money for that to happen, and taxpayers have to be willing to vote for the bonds, too. After WW II, and especially after the USSR launched Sputnik, they were willing.
The threat of nuclear annihilation was the background music of our lives from earliest childhood on.
You did a good recap. I agree that, economic class-wise, it really did start to go to shit with Saint Ronnie.