[8456523]

>It was peak America mostly for straight, white, Protestant men.

>It was not peak America for gay people. Or for blacks. Or for women.

It makes me sad how often discussion of any particular social question on this site gets derailed into a discussion of identity politics.

In 1950, Americans owned 75% of all the cars in the world. Surely, black Americans owned cars at a lower rate than white Americans did, but they probably owned cars at a higher rate than whites in Sweden, France or the UK did. The point is that there are major influences on prosperity that cannot be reduced to the same old identity-politics tropes.

[eesmith]

So why is car-owning a relevant statistic for "peak American"? Why not, for example, miles of passenger-rail tracks?

Can that measure be extended to judge "peak Germany", when in the 1880s Germany had 75% or more of the world's production automobiles? No, clearly not.

All of this is a question of how you want to choose your numbers.

I'll point out that this isn't a "this site gets derailed into a discussion of identity politics" issue for two reasons:

1) The term "American" is identity politics. Benjamin Franklin is rightly called "the first American" because of his identity politics concerning colonial unity.

2) the opinion piece itself mentions "the pervasive racism and sexism", so further discussion of that topic is on track.

[rpiguy]

1920s were not peak America. Post WW2 left us as the only untouched industrial power and our share of global GDP was incredible.

The US was 90% white in 1950, if it was a good time for white people than it was a good time for the vast majority. Civil rights were moving the right direction, I’d rather be proud of the progress on Civil Rights at that time. I won’t judge the period for not having gay friendly policies. There were no gay friendly countries in the 1950s, lol.

[eesmith]

Then why weren't the 1990s peak America? Post Cold War left us the only remaining superpower, with military bases all over the world, and unparalleled economic influence over other countries. There was the relief that nuclear Armageddon was no more, the optimism that the internet boom would lead to social improvement, the prosperity of the stock market boom (remember 'Dow 36,000'?), the promise of VR and nanotech just around the corner, and much more.

That's the entire problem with this topic - it's easy to pick stats which let you conclude that the 1950s was "peak America". But at least as easy to pick other stats which conclude it wasn't.

Your definition of "peak" can only be applied to the most powerful countries. For example, when was peak Iceland or Finland? That suggests it's a pretty weak definition.

I can't help but think that your phrase "good time for white people" omits out the white women who had to deal with the widespread sexism and misogyny of the era. What fraction of those women had to deal with “the problem with no name”, as Friedan called it - "the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s" quoting Wikipedia?

Your phrase "a good time for the vast majority" doesn't ring true.

If 100% of the 10% black population, and 60% of the 45% white female population, and 4% of the 45% gay white male population faced discrimination, then that's 39% of the population.

That's a majority, yes, but not a vast majority. And that's just back-of-the-envelope numbers. What about a white men who wanted to marry a black woman but couldn't because of anti-miscegenation laws? A white man in a position like Loving, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia , was certainly not having a good time in the 1950s.

If 1% of the population is in abject slavery, in order to make the other 99% very happy, is that truly just? I would prefer to think I would be one of the ones who walks away from Le Guin's Omelas.

[rpiguy]

The 1990s were not like the 1950s. Most of the 1990s were a depressing grunge-fueled flannel fest. Manufacturing jobs really started to accelerate out of the country as we signed a multitude of free trade deals. Funny how most people only remember the last three years or so, when the economy recovered and the internet kicked-in. I call this the post-Spice Girls period.

Inso far as the 1950s you just don't understand what it was like for that generation who went from sharing two room shacks as children to 1500 square foot houses. Going from ice boxes to refrigerators, from routinely not having enough to eat to shopping at supermarkets. It was truly miraculous and that fueled national optimism, expansion of manufacturing, and wildly enthusiastic futurism.

The fact that there were anti-miscegenation laws in effect in the 1950s does not detract at all from this age of miracles. Yes certainly condemn the laws they were terrible, but those laws were struck down, progress was made. That is what matters.

>> If 1% of the population is in abject slavery, in order to make the other 99% very happy, is that truly just? I would prefer to think I would be one of the ones who walks away from Le Guin's Omelas.

I never said the 1950s were America's most just age that is a completely different discussion.

[eesmith]

My point again is that it's easy to cherry pick what you think is important. For every measure you come up with, to say that the 1950s is "peak America", I can come up with two that say it isn't.

I was an adult in the 1990s.

I definitely remember the late 1980s with the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Union. I remember the hopes of the so-called "Peace Dividend." I remember the excitement in the tech community of nanotech (eg, https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_84.html from 1990), and worked on VR projects in the mid-1990s (including in a lab with the sticker "My other computer is a holodeck").

So I have no idea what you mean by "depressing grunge-fueled flannel fest", nor why you imply my comment is only about the last few years of the decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom points out:

> The 1990s economic boom in the United States was an economic expansion that began after the end of the early 1990s recession in March 1991, and ended in March 2001 with the start of the early 2000s recession during the Dot-com bubble crash (2000–2002).

Or, across the Atlantic, since you mention Spice Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Britannia :

> Cool Britannia was a period of increased pride in the culture of the United Kingdom throughout most of the 1990s, inspired by 1960s pop culture. The success of Britpop and musical acts such as Spice Girls, Blur and Oasis led to a renewed feeling of optimism in the United Kingdom following the tumultuous years of the 1970s and 1980s.

These don't speak of a decade mostly full of depression.

You write "you just don't understand what it was like for that generation who went from sharing two room shacks as children to 1500 square foot houses".

What makes you so presumptive about what I know?

Very few people met your description. The average new 1950s home was about 1,000 sq feet. It wasn't until the mid-1960s that new homes averaged 1,500 sq. feet, much less most of the population.

Going the other way, most people in the 1920s did not live in two room shacks. The best numbers I found are in "120 Years of U.S. Residential Housing Stock and Floor Space" at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/#pone.0... in S6 File. Figure G is "Figure G. Floor space per capita, 1981-2010" (that's a typo: the data starts in 1881).

In the 1920s, the average floor space per person was 445 sq. feet. In the 1950s it was 525 sq. feet. Bigger, certainly, but not huge. For that matter, in 1895, it was 400 sq. ft.

What is the basis for your "two room shack" to "1500 square foot houses" transition?

I don't think you get how miraculous things were in the 1920s. Which is odd since I quoted Wikipedia's comment about it earlier.

Or how miraculous they were in the 1890s. People who grew up with horses as the fastest thing around could ride trains. There were telephones and phonographs, and electric lights. Newspapers were publishing telegraphed news from around the world within a day of it happening. Entire new industries were springing up, and with it new methods of organization. It was a time full of "national optimism, expansion of manufacturing, and wildly enthusiastic futurism."

Each of these could also be called "peak America."

You write "I never said the 1950s were America's most just age".

I never claimed you did.

What I claimed was that I don't accept "if it was a good time for white people than it was a good time for the vast majority" as being a morally valid justification, and I showed that "vast majority" is greatly overstating what I think are reasonable estimates of the actual numbers, and I conjectured it was likely because you overlooked the sexism faced by white women in that era.