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1985 vs 2015

Was America better off in 1985, or are we better off today in 2015?

  • 1985 was better overall

    Votes: 25 50.0%

  • 2015 is better overall

    Votes: 25 50.0%
  • Total voters
    50
americanwoman said:
Can you believe they still tour?

Events : New Kids On The Block
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Yes. A lot of old bands do. My city has an open amphitheater-ish venue that various old bands perform at every year. I think Budweiser or someone like that sponsors the series of like 6 concerts every year. They are all country/southern rock/beach music acts so I never go, but they usually sell out unless the weather is crap.
 
tres borrachos said:
Yeah, Cassidy played with Parker Stevenson in The Hardy Boys. That was I think before his Da Doo Run Run days.:lol:

Leif Garrett was first in a dopey show called "Three For The Road". He was cute as hell in that. Then he got famous, sang some REALLY ****ty songs, and started doing drugs.
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If I was best known for this mess I'd have done a lot of drugs too -

 
America was better off in 1985 .. because it wasn't as over-populated, there were millions less illegal aliens stealing American citizen's jobs, so many tens of millions of Americans weren't unemployed as they fallen-off-the-grid are today, especially Americans in their 50s and 60s, off-shoring and in-sourcing wage-slave labor wasn't all the rage it is now, the middle-class living-wage earners was a larger segment of the population ...

We're simply going the wrong way population management-wise .. and until we reverse that direction for quite a long time, our major foundational needs problems will only get worse as time passes.
 
Gathomas88 said:
It's kind of a mixed bag, IMO.

The technology of 2015 is nice. I'll give it that much. Our future is rather uncertain, however, and popular culture is a lot worse. Opportunities for growth and advancement (both personal and societal) also seem to be a lot more limited in comparison to what they once were.

The America of 1985 was on it's up to a "Golden Age." The America of 2015 is on its way down from that high, and its not entirely clear how far we'll slip before things rebound again.
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In reality, America's "Golden Age" spanned from the late 1940s to the late 1960s.

The coming down was gradual at first, which is why most Americans hadn't noticed it was happening by 1985. And, of course, a handful of self-serving politicos were doing a lot to cover it up (by nearly bankrupting the US Treasury).
 
Peter Grimm said:
It's interesting because in 1985, the Soviet Union was still around, but in only 5 years it was going to collapse. I wonder if people had a sense of that, if the writing was on the wall, so to speak, or if nobody really expected it was going to happen.

Certainly, there must have been a sense that communism was in decline.
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I can tell you in 1985 I never once thought about the Soviet Union, not once.
 
Mason66 said:
I can tell you in 1985 I never once thought about the Soviet Union, not once.
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Living in the midwest, school tornado drills are par for course but in the 80's we also had nuclear warning drills at school in case of a USSR attack. While I never felt threatened and enjoyed the disruption to class it did show that some people were concerned at the possibility of a nuclear attack.
 
I voted 1985 because I was only a little over 20 years old at the time. So, even if the country had been going to hell in a hand basket, I was only 20-something. I'd trade 20-something for 50-something any day of the week.
 
molten_dragon said:
I would say 2015 is considerably better for me, if for no other reason than I don't crap my pants several times a week now.
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But there was freedom in that.
 
I'm not American so I've no real stake here or party political axe to grind. However I wonder if you guys have ever seen whats called the misery index. Its the economic graph of unemployment added to inflation rates so the higher the peak the more grim was the economic outlook for Americans. Obviously when trying to objectively assess what really were the 'good ole days' economic factors will have a considerable bearing. Here is a graph of this index since 1948 and as you can clearly see. Life during the Carter administration wasn't the greatest. I hope you find this interesting

US_Misery_Index_Dec_2014.jpg
 
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tres borrachos said:
You're right. I'm the only person in the world who has run across kids who can't spell because they rely on computers, and I'm most definitely the only person in the world who thinks kids spend too much time playing video games, unlike the kids of decades ago who used to play outdoors. Maybe someday the rest of the world will see these things too. And someone might actually say it.
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:lol:

You change the qualifications... that's cute. You said kids in a general way and I countered in a general way. You are now saying, "running across kids" as in that there are exceptions. :lol:

Of course some kids play too much on X-Box. Some kids text too much. Some kids don't play outside. Thing is... that is how it ALWAYS has been. In 85 some kids played too much Atari. Some sat inside and didn't play outside. Some kids talked on the phone too much. So what?

You are wrong about Atari.
You are wrong about kids not reading anymore.
You are wrong about kids not playing outside.

Kids do all these things as I pointed out. I have, mostly girls, who sit and read ALL DAY LONG at school. If I didn't make the stop reading they wouldn't do any school work. Out of 150 or so students that I have there are about 10 who text too much, if that. Before school, during break, during lunch and after school there are kids running on the fields participating in chase games, soccer, handball, etc. EVERY DAY. Sports teams are flourishing. When I go home there are kids biking around, building tree houses, playing at the beach in the water or building dams, etc.

I get essays that do not look like, "b4 he ran 2 the stor he fel aslepe" and where they write coherently...

Apparently you live in a place where kids are fat and lazy... where dullard children wallow about speaking gibberish while mis-spelling everything.

Originally Posted by tres borrachos
Kids knew how to spell because we didn't have spell check. We all read. We knew how to actually talk because we didn't text all day long. We played outdoors instead of sitting on Xbox.
We didn't have smart phones and Xbox in 1985. We didn't have spell check either. I had to type my senior college honors thesis on an IBM Selectric 2 typewriter. It wasn't checking my words usage or my spelling.

Originally Posted by Bodhisattva
I was in high school in '85. My point was that kids spell just fine... they read books A LOT... they don't waste their days texting... we played video games then just as they do now... the same few that were "losers" or those who couldn't spell back them would be the same percentage now.

Originally Posted by tres borrachos
That's good. You must be around perfect kids.
You must have lived in an interesting place in 1985 considering most houses didn't have home consoles then, and Atari and Sega weren't available in North America until after 1986.

Originally Posted by Bodhisattva
Nope. Normal high school kids of all ranges... and nope, I lived in
The Atari 2600 came out in 1977: Atari 2600 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And Intellivsion came out in 1979: Intellivision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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I feel sorry for you in all honesty... :lol:
 
flogger said:
I'm not American so I've no real stake here or party political axe to grind. However I wonder if you guys have ever seen whats called the misery index. Its the economic graph of unemployment added to inflation rates so the higher the peak the more grim was the economic outlook for Americans. Obviously when trying to objectively assess what really were the 'good ole days' economic factors will have a considerable bearing. Here is a graph of this index since 1948 and as you can clearly see. Life during the Carter administration wasn't the greatest. I hope you find this interesting

View attachment 67180604
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The 1970s were an economic 'perfect storm.' Artificially high energy prices feeding inflation, right alongside more automation in manufacturing AND more globalization as Europe and Asia rebuilt their factories after WWII.
 
Those of us that were coming into our own in the mid '80s were optimistic about the future. I know at a few points I had 3 jobs and loved it.

I don't think the youth of today can say they are optimistic about their future.

I think that is the big difference between then and now.
 
I'm looking at these poll results and all I can think is "You friggin punk kids!! Get the hell off my grass!!"
 
Lutherf said:
Really?

I was active duty at that point and thought about them quite a bit!
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Hmmm

Name someone from that time that didn't?

To say now that all was well is bull****. Anyone who attended Expo 86 and the side show between the USSR and the US, would know just how tense it was. "peace" was no a concept any of us lived with and when Reagan [I say deliberately] said "we will bomb them at noon" in a level check for radio, the world tensed and kind of stopped for a half day. Being in a room with both was like being an onlooker to a a car crash in the making

Anyone who saw the Berlin Wall crumble a few years later, many of us cried, would say the USSR was not a threat to the North American way of life.
 
Fearandloathing said:
Hmmm

Name someone from that time that didn't?

To say now that all was well is bull****. Anyone who attended Expo 86 and the side show between the USSR and the US, would know just how tense it was. "peace" was no a concept any of us lived with and when Reagan [I say deliberately] said "we will bomb them at noon" in a level check for radio, the world tensed and kind of stopped for a half day. Being in a room with both was like being an onlooker to a a car crash in the making

Anyone who saw the Berlin Wall crumble a few years later, many of us cried, would say the USSR was not a threat to the North American way of life.
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I certainly agree about how "peaceful" things were but I think it was better than it is now.

In 1985 you had Iraq and Iran doing their thing and a bunch of stuff going on in Central America but the Soviet Union was in decline and that was a mighty big deal. We weren't sure how the whole thing would come out in the wash but we'd seen significant changed in Poland and were pretty optimistic that a similar reconciliation would happen with the USSR. For me it is really the optimism that is the key difference. In the mid 80's we were on a huge upswing politically and economically.
 
DifferentDrummr said:
The 1970s were an economic 'perfect storm.' Artificially high energy prices feeding inflation, right alongside more automation in manufacturing AND more globalization as Europe and Asia rebuilt their factories after WWII.
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I've certainly seen some grim documentaries about New York going bankrupt at that time. Its hard to imagine that things like Studio 54 emerging there given the economic gloom that beset Americas biggest city back then. When they made the movie Taxi Driver there in the winter of 75/76 and The Warriors in 79 it really looked like a nightmare place to live
 
Lutherf said:
I certainly agree about how "peaceful" things were but I think it was better than it is now.

In 1985 you had Iraq and Iran doing their thing and a bunch of stuff going on in Central America but the Soviet Union was in decline and that was a mighty big deal. We weren't sure how the whole thing would come out in the wash but we'd seen significant changed in Poland and were pretty optimistic that a similar reconciliation would happen with the USSR. For me it is really the optimism that is the key difference. In the mid 80's we were on a huge upswing politically and economically.
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I agree, better than now. I disagree we knew in 85 that the USSR was in decline, I recall they were allegedly wining the arms race, the space race and so forth. Expo 86 was a Commie show on how great they were....

And I totally agree about the renewed confidence. The late 70's were the saddest times I had ever seen, a nation near defeated with citizens being tortured, and powerless to do anything about it.

From 1980 on...the US grew and became what she had always been. And as much as I hated his policies at the time, today I eat crow gladly in saying Ronald Reagan is the greatest president of the century.
 
Lutherf said:
I'm looking at these poll results and all I can think is "You friggin punk kids!! Get the hell off my grass!!"
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Same here... the older we get the more most people can't deal with the change.
 
flogger said:
I'm not American so I've no real stake here or party political axe to grind. However I wonder if you guys have ever seen whats called the misery index. Its the economic graph of unemployment added to inflation rates so the higher the peak the more grim was the economic outlook for Americans. Obviously when trying to objectively assess what really were the 'good ole days' economic factors will have a considerable bearing. Here is a graph of this index since 1948 and as you can clearly see. Life during the Carter administration wasn't the greatest. I hope you find this interesting

View attachment 67180604
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That is interesting. And no, life during the Carter administration was anything but great, which is why he lost in 1980 so badly. It wasn't even just limited to a lousy economy, it was a general feeling, or mood. Not good at all. That also explains the extremely deep dive that misery index takes when Carter leaves and Reagan comes in.

Clinton and Bush 43 also saw some pretty dramatic dips in the index as well in their terms. The Eisenhower spike in 1958 surprises me.
 
Fearandloathing said:
I agree, better than now. I disagree we knew in 85 that the USSR was in decline, I recall they were allegedly wining the arms race, the space race and so forth. Expo 86 was a Commie show on how great they were....
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They were behind in the space race once the first Apollo mission went... and in 85 the USSR was not in decline noticeably but that was the beginning. Afghanistan and Gorbechev starting reforms in 85 lead to the downfall of the USSR.
 
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