About
America is haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past and doesn't know it. Our work paradigms, housing standards, food culture and all other aspects of American life are designed to serve a White post World War II nuclear family with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 kids.
This was never ALL American families. This was never even a majority of US households.
But the majority of able-bodied homebuyers and people pursuing Serious Careers (TM) were White male breadwinners with a wife, approximately 2 years worth of earned income in savings from a defacto DINK situation during a time of war rationing and Victory Gardens where it wasn't possible to spend it all. They had rural working class values and veteran's benefits that included homebuying assistance and college assistance.
This gave birth to the modern American suburb to help solve a global housing shortage rooted in a global Great Depression that World War II ended. Veterans with unprecedented savings in the bank who had been moving every 13 months to get one month's free rent or living in the basement and renting out the house they owned prior to the war suddenly had the means to buy their Dream Home (TM) after the war ended.
The average new home in this suburban paradise was 1200 square feet with two or three bedrooms and housed a family with 2.5 kids. Kids routinely shared a bedroom with one or more siblings.
You typically had a washing machine, often in a shed rather than the main house, and a clothing line instead of a dryer. You probably parked in the driveway and had no garage.
Even if you had an air conditioner, the house was designed with windows situated to provide a cross breeze and daylighting. You ran the AC only in the hottest weather and mostly turned on lights after dark.
In winter, the house was uncomfortably cold at night by modern standards and you kept warm with heavy blankets rather than running up the heating bill. During the day, you wore a sweater and did chores to keep warm.
The style of that era is called Mid Century Modern and it's NOTHING like the wrap around sofas and giant entertainment centers of today. It's small scale furniture still popular in Japan to this day because they are petite people with small homes compared to the US.
The nationwide will and cooperation that helped win World War II was turned towards solving the housing crisis after the war and it birthed a set of laws, policies and financial mechanisms that to this day make it nigh impossible to build or finance anything except a single family detached suburban house. Only we've completely forgotten how small those homes were and the fact that the suburbs were wonderful because there were no bombs dropping and almost everyone had a home.
The dream at that time was having a home at all and now dream home means some awful snout nosed suburban house on steroids where you enter and exit via the two-car garage, run the AC with the windows closed and barely know the neighbors. In 2000, the average new home was more than twice as large as in the 1950s, held one person less and the price had skyrocketed because amenities were now standard that weren't in the 1950s, like an electric dryer, dishwasher and microwave ovens. Microwaves didn't really exist as a commercially available product in the 1950s.
Average household size has shrunk while average home size has grown and appropriate housing for unmarried childless young adults has largely disappeare. And then we wonder why homelessness is on the rise and people are working two jobs while living in mommy's basement IF they are lucky enough to have a mommy's basement to live in.
And our country's current solution for however many decades has been:
Apparently because far too many people in positions of authority are either retards or sadists or BOTH. Henry Ford wanted his workers to make enough money to afford his product and our current leadership wants to turn Americans into turnips and whine and cry about being unable to get enough blood from them.
This was never ALL American families. This was never even a majority of US households.
But the majority of able-bodied homebuyers and people pursuing Serious Careers (TM) were White male breadwinners with a wife, approximately 2 years worth of earned income in savings from a defacto DINK situation during a time of war rationing and Victory Gardens where it wasn't possible to spend it all. They had rural working class values and veteran's benefits that included homebuying assistance and college assistance.
This gave birth to the modern American suburb to help solve a global housing shortage rooted in a global Great Depression that World War II ended. Veterans with unprecedented savings in the bank who had been moving every 13 months to get one month's free rent or living in the basement and renting out the house they owned prior to the war suddenly had the means to buy their Dream Home (TM) after the war ended.
The average new home in this suburban paradise was 1200 square feet with two or three bedrooms and housed a family with 2.5 kids. Kids routinely shared a bedroom with one or more siblings.
You typically had a washing machine, often in a shed rather than the main house, and a clothing line instead of a dryer. You probably parked in the driveway and had no garage.
Even if you had an air conditioner, the house was designed with windows situated to provide a cross breeze and daylighting. You ran the AC only in the hottest weather and mostly turned on lights after dark.
In winter, the house was uncomfortably cold at night by modern standards and you kept warm with heavy blankets rather than running up the heating bill. During the day, you wore a sweater and did chores to keep warm.
The style of that era is called Mid Century Modern and it's NOTHING like the wrap around sofas and giant entertainment centers of today. It's small scale furniture still popular in Japan to this day because they are petite people with small homes compared to the US.
The nationwide will and cooperation that helped win World War II was turned towards solving the housing crisis after the war and it birthed a set of laws, policies and financial mechanisms that to this day make it nigh impossible to build or finance anything except a single family detached suburban house. Only we've completely forgotten how small those homes were and the fact that the suburbs were wonderful because there were no bombs dropping and almost everyone had a home.
The dream at that time was having a home at all and now dream home means some awful snout nosed suburban house on steroids where you enter and exit via the two-car garage, run the AC with the windows closed and barely know the neighbors. In 2000, the average new home was more than twice as large as in the 1950s, held one person less and the price had skyrocketed because amenities were now standard that weren't in the 1950s, like an electric dryer, dishwasher and microwave ovens. Microwaves didn't really exist as a commercially available product in the 1950s.
Average household size has shrunk while average home size has grown and appropriate housing for unmarried childless young adults has largely disappeare. And then we wonder why homelessness is on the rise and people are working two jobs while living in mommy's basement IF they are lucky enough to have a mommy's basement to live in.
And our country's current solution for however many decades has been:
The beatings shall continue until morale improves.We're all dust in the wind, dancing on this Earth for a short while. I'm trying to write about something that might be less awful than THIS.
Apparently because far too many people in positions of authority are either retards or sadists or BOTH. Henry Ford wanted his workers to make enough money to afford his product and our current leadership wants to turn Americans into turnips and whine and cry about being unable to get enough blood from them.