This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
I mean, this is how far our standard of living has fallen in the US.
Like, back in the 80's and 90's it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of. It was so normal that even a brainless loser like Homer could do it.
Also because back then, kinda fat = automatic loser
Frank Grimes pointed out the insanity/luck of his living situation and your last part is true today “bumbling oaf” is still an archetype
Ah, good ol' Grimey (as he liked to be called).
To be fair a nuclear operator can typically afford to support a family of 5 even today.
This. The show routinely makes fun of the fact that Homer is completely unqualified for his job and seems to keep it because he amuses Burns. They had a whole episode recently about how Homer got a new job over a nuclear engineering PhD because he Cyrano'd the interview via Fink. Meaning his job title likely commands well over $200k, though it is implied that Burns pays him somewhat less than that.
The show quit caring about money because it's not interesting. The early seasons have money as a constant issue. It's just not that interesting to she them constantly needing money, so they just stopped.
That said, suburbia was built on borrowed money from the future , and the reason why most cities are broke.
It has nothing to do with suburbia.
It has everything to do with the politics of Thatcher and Reagan. Their policies of annihilating unions, human rights and creating tax cuts for the rich by passing on the taxes to the working and the poor created this dystopian reality we now have.
If we cut out the rich and restore what we used to have for rights and protections, we can try to save ourselves from extinction.
The two are related. Oil money supports both the suburban Ponzi scheme and also Reaganite deregulation.
My point is, for a city, every square foot of street has an operational cost, and on top of that infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every x years (I think around 20 ~ 25).
While the upfront cost of said infrastructure tends to come from subventions when building a new development, the city needs to cover the costs for both operations and rebuilding once it's needed.
Why does this matter? Well, detached single-family houses provide lower revenue per square foot of street than middle housing or mid-rises, eventually creating a hole in the city's pockets.
I'm not explaining it very well, but I'll suggest taking a look at this:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/6/21/whats-the-sweet-spot-for-building-housing-inexpensively
Climate Town - The suburbs are bleeding America Dry
If cities had money, they could build public housing or promote affordable options.
Like, back in the 80’s and 90’s it was pretty normal for a family to subsist on a single income, in a reasonably nice house, with all of their necessities taken care of.
I wonder what "pretty normal" is, according to actual numbers
I remember growing up in the 90's, my classmates and I all thought that one of the other kids was a liar because he said he didn't have a yard (he lived in an apartment). It didn't make sense - everyone else in the class of 30+ kids lived in a house with a yard, so he must just be making stuff up. Obviously that's anecdotal evidence, but still. It was weird for a kid not to live in a single-family home back then.
You'd have to look at the size of the middle class back then, as that's what the "American Dream" scenario is based on there, but as a kid born in 1990, I can say that when my dad was looking for apartments when he was around college age in the 60s, the rule was not to rent an apartment that cost more than 25% of your salary. By the time I was around that same age in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it was 50% of your salary. Now, it's closer to 120% of your salary for those same apartments.
He's not? There's literally an episode about how Homer is so lucky in life that he drives a man insane.
And the man's estranged bastard son!
He happened to like hookers.
In fairness, that entire episode was lampshade hanging
What is lampshade hanging?
Lampshade Hanging (or, more informally, "Lampshading") is the writers' trick of dealing with any element of the story that seems too dubious to take at face value, whether a very implausible plot development or a particularly blatant use of a trope, by calling attention to it and simply moving on.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging
Calling themselves out on how ridiculous the situation is, basically.
Uhhhh... Homer has three kids, surely?
Why can't I have no kids and three money??
According to the available tax information he has nine kids, one of which is a Vietnam veteran.
C'mon, Marge, the dog doesn't count as a kid.
Wait, 2 kids? Which one died?
Three! We have THREE kids Homer.
Three noisy kids. Fish heads, fish heads.
Marge had a seventh trimester abortion this season.
To be fair, Maggie has been a baby for years. There was probably something wrong
My dudes.... He has three kids.
Poor sod wishes he had three moneys instead
Because he's a little overweight, and in 1989, that was reason enough to laugh at someone.
Plus, all of those were commonplace thirty years ago.
I see your Homer Simpson and raise you Al Bundy, who works at a shoe store and raised a family of 4 on that salary
I live in a single room above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley
Isn't Homer meant to be an illustration of privilege? Like, he's pretty useless, but still gets essentially everything he wants.
Nah, it's supposed to be funny and relatable. Times changed, not the cartoon.
If he wasn't, he is now. They made a musical episode about it called "Goodbye Middle Class" where they illustrate this with him.
You missed how he is dumb as fuck and how all he have is by luck . As another person commented there is an episode in which a real hard working man gets mad how homer has everything even tho he does'nt deserve it and i agree he almost causes nuclear melt down atleast twice a day, abuses his son, ignores his daughter etc.etc.
Frank Grimes: If you lived in any other country in the world, you'd have starved to death long ago.
Bart: He's got you there, Dad.
Grimes: You're a fraud, a total fraud. (To Marge and the kids) Was nice meeting you.
He is not, see the Frank Grimes episode
I'm fifty one years old and just kinda wanna break down what I've seen in my life:
My grandparents generation: Was able to buy housing, get healthcare, receive retirement. Note: They lived through the great depression, and categorically never spent any money that wasn't necessary, even when they had several boatloads of it.
My parents generation: Housing was achievable but not given (I remember a whole lot of single wides, apartments, and duplexes among the adults of my childhood). Healthcare was affordable. Retirement was promised but not delivered.
My generation: Housing was achievable if you moved to the sticks and loved you some Jesus at the local Baptist Church, but not in the cities. We got a taste of healthcare twenty five years ago, but then yeah no. Retirement? Hahahahaha! We got 401(k)s forced in us, and they never materialized into dick. Many flatout vaporized when our marriages fizzled out.
My kid's generation. Seriously, just die in the street. You'll get absolute fuck all nothing, and you'll like it as the older generations blame you for our fuckups.
My great contribution is that I'll be able to leave my house free and clear of mortgage to my spawn when I check out. She can live in it, sell it, rent it, burn it to the ground. Whatever she wants, but damnit, I'm giving her the opportunity to do it, which most of her peers will never have.
Hedonism and Wealth should not be your metric for evaluating people, anon.
Homer sleeps at his job, is a habitual drinker, and is willfully ignorant.
