Which era was worse?

[5 Grand]

1. I can remember when President Reagan got shot when I was in 2nd grade.

2. I can remember hearing Rappers Delight when it first came out. Also The Message, Planet Rock, etc. I saw Beat Street and Wildstyle in the movie Theater.

3. I remember Thriller and Purple Rain. I remember the Motown 25 special where MJ did the moonwalk.

4. When I was younger there weren't many movies or TV shows with African American casts. Also, they were usually directed by Whites or Jews. By the late 80s The Cosby Show was the number one show and they weren't poor and stereotypical. Also Spike Lee started dropping good movies. He was the beginning of a movement of movies directed by Black directors.


My point is; I'm 48 and my generation grew up after the civil Rights movement (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X) just as Hip Hop was becoming a thing.

When I look to my parents generation I think Civil Rights Movement and Motown, when I think of the current generation I think of smartphones, streaming and social media. My generation is somewhere in between.

 

[The Lonious Monk]

Black people were more unified and family oriented in the 60s and 70s

neighborhoods were safer in a way outside of racists

It’s not far fetched to say they would rather live then than

Yeah, but at any given time mobs of white people could roll into your town and lynch someone or bomb a church or school, and there wasn't much that could be done about it. And if you ever traveled you'd basically always be running a risk with your life.

 

[deadeye]

Black people were more unified and family oriented in the 60s and 70s

neighborhoods were safer in a way outside of racists

It’s not far fetched to say they would rather live then than

I've heard a lot of elders say this over the years.


Mainly because our communities were more self-sufficient back then.


The old-timers would always mention how so many black businesses got lost due to integration.


Since they lived in that time........and can compare it to this time.........I'm going to take their word for it because I can understand where they're coming from.

 

[deadeye]

80’s and before

Easily........and it's not even close.

 

[BlackAx410]

Y’all are dismissing the inflation we’re dealing with and record breaking homelessness tho

 

[konceptjones]

Y’all are dismissing the inflation we’re dealing with and record breaking homelessness tho

We had inflation back then too: It was called "The Great Inflation", record setting inflation for the era.

Homelessness was a serious problem in the 80's as well, exacerbated by the government run mental institutions closing and basically dropping everyone on the streets AND the housing crash in the mid-late 80's where folks with high ass interest rates (14%-17% was common back then!) ended up under water and out of homes thanks to policies Reagan pushed to try to get inflation under control.

 

[BlackAx410]

This notion that we have easy fixes with this is bullshit 80’s inflation doesn’t compare to today man lol

 

[konceptjones]

This notion that we have easy fixes with this is bullshit 80’s inflation doesn’t compare to today man lol

Fam, we had double-digit inflation back then. The shit we got going on right now simply doesn't compare.



This is the relevant section in this interview:

HORSLEY: Kelsey, what you have to keep in mind is that in 1982, inflation was actually coming down. It had been much higher, almost twice as high in 1980, when annual inflation peaked at 14.6%...

SNELL: Oh, wow.

HORSLEY: ...Almost twice as high as it is right now. And back then, inflation had been high for the better part of a decade. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter had all been dogged by high inflation. And by the time Reagan came into office, Americans had kind of gotten numb to prices that just kept going up and up.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RONALD REAGAN: Now, we've just had two years of back-to-back double-digit inflation - 13.3% in 1979, 12.4% last year. The last time this happened was in World War I.

HORSLEY: So by the standards of the '70s and early '80s, today's inflation rate actually doesn't look that bad.

We've had worse, and my generation grew up in it.

Mortgage interest rates went as high as 18% because the Fed was trying to get inflation under control. Folks are crying right now over 5.xx% for a 30 year fixed, can you imagine what it would be like if them shits was 18%???

Nah, this era ain't even close to being as bad.

 

[5 Grand]

Fam, we had double-digit inflation back then. The shit we got going on right now simply doesn't compare.



This is the relevant section in this interview:

HORSLEY: Kelsey, what you have to keep in mind is that in 1982, inflation was actually coming down. It had been much higher, almost twice as high in 1980, when annual inflation peaked at 14.6%...

SNELL: Oh, wow.

HORSLEY: ...Almost twice as high as it is right now. And back then, inflation had been high for the better part of a decade. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter had all been dogged by high inflation. And by the time Reagan came into office, Americans had kind of gotten numb to prices that just kept going up and up.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RONALD REAGAN: Now, we've just had two years of back-to-back double-digit inflation - 13.3% in 1979, 12.4% last year. The last time this happened was in World War I.

HORSLEY: So by the standards of the '70s and early '80s, today's inflation rate actually doesn't look that bad.

We've had worse, and my generation grew up in it.

Mortgage interest rates went as high as 18% because the Fed was trying to get inflation under control. Folks are crying right now over 5.xx% for a 30 year fixed, can you imagine what it would be like if them shits was 18%???

Nah, this era ain't even close to being as bad.

Yeah but if you're paying 18% mortgage, but inflation is the same, then your job is going to give you a raise every year to compensate for the increase in cost of living.

It seems like inflation was high, but that's nothing a yearly raise can't fix.

 

[mike030270]

I think about this often. I’m in my 30s now and over my lifetime I’ve seen so much wild shit:

Mass shootings
9/11
War on Terrorism
A Recession
Record inflation
Pandemic
Sky high & Record breaking costs in Housing
The policing of WORDS

I know shit was rough before the 90s but got damn I never thought I’d see half of the shit I lived through

DC Sniper for those in the DMV