this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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It was the norm for a brief period after World War 2, and only for the US, largely because it was the only country to get out of WWII without sustaining any real damage.
Pre-WWII was the great depression, where a large fraction of people without a high-school education were out of work. Life was miserable. People who were kids during the great depression and are in their 80s / 90s now might still stash food around the house because they're still afraid of going hungry. This eventually resulted in the New Deal which completely transformed the country.
Pre Great Depression, jobs were dangerous, housing was crowded, widows moved in with their adult children, old people moved back in with their families, people paid 1/3 of their salaries just for food (and the food sucked). Women might have only rarely worked outside the house, but the housework they did was extensive: no washing machines, no dishwashers, no refrigerator, no running water, many homes didn't even have a stove. Making or mending clothes was a near constant job. Clothing was also very expensive by modern standards, and was built for durability, not comfort. And that's for the lucky "white" people. Non-white people had it much worse.
A good life with only one breadwinner is not typical, and never has been. Maybe it should be, but don't think that the post-WWII US experience is typical.
If you go back far enough the primary occupations become gathering edible plants and killing animals. The US didn't get less productive per hour of labor between 1950 and 2024 the wealthy just started accruing a lot more of the benefits of our productivity.
This is the true answer none of these forum sliding wall of text class traitors will address.
The point is that post-WWII is not the "normal" state of things. It was largely the result of a war that devastated every other major economy in the world, reducing competition from other countries. That gave the US a huge advantage. In addition there were strong government reforms from the pre-war depression-era time and reforms from during the war that curbed the excesses of the ultra-rich. The depression-era policies and the war-time policies also had the government playing a much more active role in the economy. Finally, this happened in a period where the world was much less "globalized" and relied on exploiting developing countries to a much greater extent than today.
Unless there's another devastating war that destroys every other major economy in the world, the US is never going to get the post-WWII advantage back. That was a big part of the reason a guy with a high-school education could support a family of 5 immediately after WWII. (Also, that mostly was the case for white guys, because the US post-WWII was a very racist country where the things like the GI Bill, which allowed veterans to get very cheap houses, was unavailable to non-whites.
The post-war period was one when the United Fruit Company convinced US presidents to orchestrate a coup in Guatemala in 1954 to remove the democratically elected president and install one who was more friendly to US international businesses. This meant cheap bananas for the US, big profits to US companies, and political violence and instability for Guatemala. So, the high-school educated guy supporting a family of 5 on his own was partially made possible by the exploitation of other countries by US-based businesses. I don't think anybody on the left wants that era to come back again.
But, it's possible to get the government to play a more active role in the economy again. For instance, in 1946 the top tax bracket was effectively 91%. Today it's 37%. Then there's enforcing anti-competitive statutes, going after all the monopolies, duopolies and cartels currently squeezing every American resident. Ideally, there would also be reforms to copyright laws that removed power from the entertainment cartel and handed it back to artists, or shortened copyright terms handing the fruits of copyright to the people.
A (white) guy with a high school education supporting a family of 5 in reasonable comfort was a historical anomaly. It relied on some good things like the government acting in the interest of regular people, taxing the super rich, and regulating large businesses. It relied on some shitty things, like the government helping out US-based businesses by orchestrating coups in other countries and otherwise aiding in the exploitation of developing countries. And it relied on some historical quirks, like the US being the only major participant to escape from WWII unscathed.
Increasing productivity per labor hour invested is sufficient for everyone to have a 1950s life because we are in fact many times more productive per hour invested than 1950. This more than balances the unusual characteristics of the 50s
How are you measuring that?
Does this mean no Internet, no computers, no TV, or maybe a small black and white TV with only 3 channels, no washing machine, probably no refrigerator, one telephone for the entire family to share, etc.?
That was probably a good period, though it could sustain only a few % of the current world population. Now that we have billions (due to tech development, though mostly of tech you would call very-very low tech, like plow), only mass production is capable of supporting the population. And that means all kinds of things, including the extreme wealth concentration, which is only getting worse with further tech advances. Inequality is quite likely to become the real reason of the new world war that would trim population to more sustainable levels, and a new "golden age" of recovering. For these who survived. Fucking cycles...