Look At All Those New Cars!

Look At All Those New Cars!
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com




The Christmas rituals are over; we’ve eaten the pumpkin pie and listened to Aunt Martha’s annual stories of her health problems, all in the face of incompetent and unfeeling physicians. While I was with my wife’s relatives they pulled out their home movies and we watched as the family jumped from holiday to holiday in three-minute, Super 8 vignettes.

As we watched and they commented on relatives lost long ago, I would periodically ask my father-in-law, “How did you ever get by without foreign cars?” Here was a looking glass into middle-class splendor. “That was my '53 Chevy, and that’s my brother Michael’s '52 Pontiac,” he’d say. Then, as it jumped to the next decade, “That’s my '63 Super Sport. I can’t believe I let the kids ride their bikes so close to it.”

No Toyotas, no Hondas, no Kia or Subaru, and yet somehow these people seemed happy. They had a nice home, a nice car, a good Christmas for the kids, and all on a middle-class income.

A day later I had my son over who, as an adult, hadn’t seen our home movies, and he made the same comment, “Look at all the new cars!” Joking, I answered, “Yeah, they just didn’t know any better, all those American-made cars.” We watched the movies and I realized that it wasn’t just the cars. The cars were just the most visible manifestation of prosperity; it was the gifts, as well. The toys, the clothes, the lights, the wrapping paper, even the candles and the nativity sets were all made in America.

The money stayed home and circulated through the economy and brought a prosperity envied and unequaled anywhere in the world. My mother’s friend, Jean Spidel, was in one of the movies. Her husband was a milkman; he always drove a Mercury. Our long-time friends Helen and Bob Anderson were in there, too. Bob was a Ford man and he played Santa for the whole street when I was a child.

Don’t try and tell any of us kids on Elder Road that there was no Santa Claus because we had all seen him, the same guy, every year. Santa had a good red suit, not the crappy bootlets but real leather boots, and a wide leather belt. The street had all pitched in on the suit and the toys were left in the trunks of all those new American cars. Santa would pass out the toys and take one drink and move on to the next house.

Each house celebrating the birth of Christ, but also celebrating a middle class prosperity unknown a generation before. A street full of young, American families, looking forward to tomorrow with bright eyes and hopeful ambitions. With enough disposable income to pitch in on a Santa suit after buying Christmas toys and paying for a new car and a home and doing it on one paycheck, to boot. My Uncle Tom was in some of the movies, too, in his brick house with a new Buick or Oldsmobile in the garage. Tom bought a new car every two years even though he drove them very little; it was a status symbol for him, a display of his prosperity for all to see.

His wife was a homemaker who had never learned to drive and most of the time when Tom traded cars they had less than twenty thousand miles on the odometer. What did he do to earn such a level of prosperity? He was a foreman for International Harvester. My cousin Danny was a Chicago school teacher; he was the first person I ever knew that drove a sports car, a bad-ass GTO. Ray was a used car salesman at the car lot his father owned so he drove lots of cars but bought his wife a new Impala.

Many of these people thought in old ways; they thought in terms of their country's well-being. The older men were veterans and I’d heard more than one say, “Buy Japanese? I already got this from Japan!” whereupon they would open their shirt or pull up a pant leg to show a war wound. Harry Truman was offered a new Toyota when he left office and he answered by saying, “It would be inappropriate for me to accept such a gift, but if I were to accept a car it would have to be an American car.”

Today such talk is looked upon as archaic. Bob Dole accepted a condo from Archer Daniels Midland; the Reagans had a mansion built for them by grateful well wishers, and George Bush the elder was given an undisclosed gift by the Emir of Kuwait. The Clinton foundation accepts millions from foreign countries and the message seems to be that this is all right, they are our friends, and we live in a global economy now so don’t worry about it.

But I do worry about it; even in a global economy there are winners and losers. Isuzu of Japan recently announced that they had canceled the planned layoffs of 550 workers. They said that they were doing this for the good of their national economy. Toyota has announced layoffs for the first time ever in America but will keep workers employed in Japan. The construction of the Prius plant in Mississippi has been canceled, the contractors told to pick up their tools and go home because it seems that the Japanese do what is best for Japan. I don’t fault them for this; I praise them for it. Their government and business community have not forgotten that they are all Japanese first.

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree dropping ten days from the calendar; his power was immense yet still today not all follow his decree. Globalism is sold to us the same way, that it is inescapable, unavoidable and to believe otherwise is to believe in a flat Earth. Ross Perot was laughed off the national stage when he declared, “If they pass NAFTA you’re going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs leaving this country.” They compared him to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which contributed to the Great Depression. The plan was to make Perot look like a nut with a funny, obscure name like Smoot-Hawley, and maybe he was a nut but even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

Perot’s giant sucking sound has turned into a cold wind that is blowing through the ruins of our cities. America is in recession a year before the experts will admit to it as millions lose their homes and the government piles up massive budget deficits that dwarf any ever run in the long ago days of American prosperity. Those debts then were owed to American banks that bought American Treasury notes. Today we must sell them to our “friends,” the Japanese and the Chinese, who buy our raw materials which they turn into manufactured goods and the bulk of the profits stays in their home countries.

So large has this list of multifarious tyrannies escalated that Southern senators are now working at the behest of foreign governments to keep American automobile companies from receiving a bailout. Is it so hard to imagine who will benefit from the demise of the American automobile manufacturers? If you speak against globalism like I do, you will soon hear the charge; “Do you want to start a trade war?” We are already in a trade war and we are losing it, and we are already in a class war and are losing that as well. We are being beaten so badly that we have little left to fight back with but our bodies.

We have been sold a bill of goods by those in the employ of foreign corporations, Quislings who answer to the call of those who pay them while they wear their cheap, foreign-made flag pins on their lapels. Growth in America is negative and wages are flat for all but those same folks who insist that globalism is good for us. The Chinese will buy our Buicks and Chevys, and do. Products that are manufactured in China by Chinese workers in factories owned jointly by the People’s Red Army and General Motors. Whose American executives then come to Washington to beg money of Congress and plan new factories in China while gearing up their plants in Mexico.

Globalism is a sham, the proverbial wooden nickel. It benefits the very few and injures the many on both sides of the bargain. China is fast becoming an industrial wasteland and America an enfeebled, toothless tiger. America’s poor and hungry are growing at an enormous rate while assistance is reminiscent of the nineteenth century “Jungle” industrialism. While the federal government must look everywhere for new buyers of Treasury notes as they pass the money out to the banks for free and then must pay interest to borrow it back.

How far we’ve come from those once-prosperous, halcyon days when the middle class drove new cars. Where they saved for their children’s futures, back when companies were hiring instead of shutting down. When Pittsburgh was known for steel and Muncie for transmissions, Detroit made automobiles and America made computers and satellites and put men on the moon and dared to dream that anything was possible, while today millions of Americans wonder if they will lose their home this month or next.

An incredible price to pay for cheap junk from Wal-Mart.

Bob Anderson, as Santa, reached the Westenburg's house at the end of Elder Road and the Westenburg children always insisted that their house was Santa’s last stop because on Christmas morning when they awoke they found Santa Claus asleep on their couch.

more than on rec,I would. Thank you for saying this so eloquently.

:kick:

..sold like fish.. buy the pound.. to the highest bidder from scumbag corporate lobbyists and politicians like Sen Bob Corker (R Tenn) and Blow Me Blowgoyavich.

out the American people to the likes of scumbag corporate lobbyists. :P

Don't want a small error marring an otherwise good essay.

It's Smoot-Hawley

Thought I knew the difference. Heard of both acts, thought Smoot Hartley was the culprit --

Thanks for the update.

I thought I heard him call it Smoot-Holly with a Tennessee drawl

It was not helpful.

with parts and labor accounting for a minuscule part of the cost of production. So all that extra profit just gets funneled upward.

I have no problem, in theory, with a global economy, but *my* global economy would mandate that pay and workplace rules would be the same in any countries that wanted to participate.

And don't forget - we're part of that upward funneling. Every crappy product we buy from Walmart's or Kmart's, or Target's, or whoever's sweatshop connections, ultimately result in us benefiting personally - not abstractly - from the misery of others. But it is all too easy to blind ourselves to the terrible truths about what misery the current global economy has produced...even as we proudly and loudly proclaim ourselves to be a "Christian" nation; though if this were actually true, such rules as you speak of would part of the warp and weft of our culture.

Bring this up the page ladder!!

i really like this piece. i like the sense of place you create -- and the sense of loss.

We were the only industrialized country that didn't have its manufacturing infrastructure bombed to rubble. Consequently we rebuilt German and Japanese steel mills and other industrial necessities. It took Europe and Japan about thirty years to get back to speed and eventually surpass our manufacturing capabilities. Then we started tearing down our smoke stacks and became a service/information based economy. The good paying jobs and single bread winner family disappeared with the smoke stacks.
The only thing that can save us is developing alternative energy that won't be terror targets or fouling the environment. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. And after the past eight years smoke and mirrors must be replaced with tangible work that benefit those in the middle.
We don't know what shenanigans the Bush cartel has in store for the next three weeks, but given their record we all have to be watching our backs.

that we built them state-of-the-art factories with new technology, while Americans used the same factories and technology they were using before the war. Or so says Buckminster Fuller in his book "Critical Path". So, in our effort to rebuild those nations who sought to destroy us we sowed some of the seeds of our own industrial demise.

Of course, we let the WTO and NAFTA political/corporate types sow the other seeds.

Good work, friend! :applause:

We dont make stuff anymore. How can you be a great nation if you make NOTHING.

we feed the grandkids with was MY dish when I was a baby 57 years ago. It, and the matching spoon and silver engraved cup, were all made in the USA. I also have known for a long time that we cannot continue the way we have been. At the very least, we have to start ramping up small manufacturing here before the generation that knows how this works is dead.

We cannot continue the way we have been.
Most everything we used when we were small, is not made in America today...clothes, shoes, towels, sheets, dishes, tools, toys, etc.
Manufacturing of these items has to return to this country, or we will not survive. People who are laid off, and getting laid off soon, will need thse jobs to support their families.

If I were a terrorist

K&R

Haven't seen them in years, but what I remember is mom coming home from the hospital with each new baby (there were 8 of us), in a new car! American!

And movies of each Christmas with American toys and games, American clothes, and wrapping paper everywhere all over the house. LOL

Great memories, thanks!

Tumultuous times are a-coming
:(

...that business of "I got THIS from Japan!" And there's that touch of "Yankee dog! Here's some of that scrap metal you sold us, round eyes!"

There's no denying that this kind of protectionism and the control of free trade is necessary for America to survive. But there's no denying there's a touch of chauvinism and racial contempt as well.

any where that you look to find it. I mentioned it only because it was part of the times. Many of the adults were veterans of WW2 and though the war was over and they had moved on they still preferred American products.

It was more a feeling of nationalism than racism. My father's best friend in his squadron was shot down and killed by the Germans. My uncle spent four years in the mud of the South Pacific. He suffered from night terrors and malaria for the rest of his life. He held no animosity toward the Japanese but you could hardly expect him to want to get into a Toyota every morning and go to work.

Maybe it's not understandable unless you were there, I have a relative who served two combat tours in Vietnam and the sound of helicopters makes him break out into a cold sweat. Racism or trauma?

Normally, competition means better products. If your competitor makes a better car, for instance, it should spur your car company to equal or exceed what the competitor makes.

One of the problems with the auto industry is that they weren't spurred to improve. The Japanese cars should have forced GM and Chrysler to make better cars. Instead, they did co-productions with the Japanese. (I owned a Chevy Nova that was actually a Toyota underneath. My friends called it a "Toy-o-let.") And they bought whole lines of cars from foreign manufacturers and re-branded them, instead of trying to equal or exceed the results in their own factories.

Now I'm afraid we're going to see protectionism - a form of racism - used to shut out those cars. If you can't buy Toyotas, and are forced to buy GM cars, GM won't have an impetus to improve. They will have a captive market. Basically, we'll be told we have to buy crap because it's American crap.

on the subject would be a good start. That is, if you really care about getting the facts and not something you heard on tv.

Those of us who actually remember this and lived it are getting older now. At some point, we'll all be gone, and nobody will exist who actually experienced this life.

The best immediate hope I see for fighting this decline is passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Passing the Act will strengthen unions and give non-unionized employees a chance to belong to one. It's the start of reversing the downward spiral we've been on all these many years.

Our new Congress may start dragging their feet on this after the Obama inauguration. It's up to us to hold those feet to the fire.

but it deserves it.

I wonder whenever I want to say that we need to concentrate on helping ourselves first, ppl here scream 'nationalisim' and get very upset.

One must first love one's self, and behave that way, before one can love, help or even understand others.

made out of long lasting, non-toxic REAL WOOD!!!

k&r :kick:

:kick:

i'll be sending the link to this to my email list...should be read by everyone, regardless of political bent...

those who say there is some touch of racism or jingoism do not view the playing field as uneven...why is it OK for countries to not only support, but SUBSIDIZE their major industries, not to mention their labor conditions/situations, and THOSE nations aren't viewed as having ethnic/nationalistic priorities that are not 'good for the globe'...

the ONE THING the u.s.a has been, since late 19th century, is the world's largest, strongest consumer...only in the last 40 years have we diminished our position as the largest producer...

we do not have to make war against any other countries to maintain our existence, but we cannot participate in the 'global economy' when the rules our elected officials design and chose to play by are designed primarily to benefit foreign economies...all in the guise of 'free trade' and 'burgeoning world markets'...

it is not racist or jingoistic to want to maintain the fabric of our society, especially when that fabric has been shredded not be a level playing field of competition, but by the machinations of those who are only concerned with making the most PROFIT regardless of the effect...

i do not believe that when the u.s.a becomes more and more 'broke' the slack will actually be picked up by the 'world-wide markets'...all this has happened too fast (40 years is not much time to replace a middle class as large as america's)...maybe in 20 years or so the chinese will have a strong and secure middle class to support the homeland manufacturing, maybe the indians, too...but that isn't the situation, yet...

and having america become less and less of a producer will equal america becoming less and less of a consumer...whose economic plan has that providing a positive outcome for any nation?

k & r

I`ll send this wonderful piece to my kids who have heard me talking about this for at least a couple of decades.

Wal-Mart -

I just went to my little hometown downtown area yesterday and the places I used to visit as a child are all gone. The 5 & Dimes are gone, the corner pharmacy, the downtown grocery where the butcher knew you by name, the ice cream and candy stores, all gone. Now there is Wal-Mart. Oh aren't we lucky!

My 1st car - wish I had it back - what a ride!

as on that one: no seat belts, no air bags, etc.

The have also fought tooth and nail against raising fuel economy standards. During the oil embargo they were building things that got lousy gas mileage while Toyotas and VWs got 30 MPG, maybe more.

They are still fighting raising those standards and still building giant piece of shit SUVs. No thank. They build nothing I want to drive. An Dodges in particular are real pieces of crap, especially the trucks, which I am most familiar with. Constantly breaking down in major ways but also in more annoying, smaller ways.

and there was a new Chevy in our driveway every two years. Plus a pickup truck and my dad's fishing boat.

I earn over 10 times what my dad did and I have a 1991 Subaru station wagon, bought used in '93, and a 1999 Saturn in my driveway. I have only my downstairs furnace running this winter. Turned off the upstairs heat last year when my gas bill was over $500 a month. Will probably end my life sleeping under piles of blankets with no heat in my bathroom.

The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we'll move."—Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008

"Let's make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times in our economy."—Washington, D.C., June 2, 2008

"And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place."—visiting the Silverado Cable Co., Mesa, Ariz., May 27, 2008

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

"The decisions we make in Washington have a direct impact on the people in our country, obviously."—New Albany, Ind., Nov. 13, 2007

"You know, a trucker, if he's interested in moving through Northwest Arkansas in expedition fashion, will pay a little extra money to be able to do so."—explaining how toll roads can generate funds for highway maintenance while helping motorists move quickly, Rogers, Ark., Oct., 15, 2007

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device, I decide, you know, I say, 'This is what we're going to do.' "— Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007

"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket—in this case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it—they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented additional opportunities for people to work."—Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007

"If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about."—discussing the sorts of jobs many illegal immigrant workers perform, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

"And everybody wants to be loved—not everybody, but—you run for office, I guess you do. You never heard anybody say, 'I want to be despised, I'm running for office.' "—Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

or at least in my part of the world. Every white family, even those of modest means, had a "colored woman" in the house, if not full-time then certainly two days a week. And gasoline was always less than 25 cents a gallon.

We could only sustain this middle-class dream for so long. Without cheap energy and slave labor, there cannot be a large consumer culture - and pushing it around the world, as we've done in the past 40 years, has just delayed the inevitable.

Ten of thousands of African Americans fled the South to escape from Jim Crow.
With the thousands of industrial jobs available in Chicago and Detroit came the birth of the African American middle class. Motown and Stax records never would have stood a chance if it hadn't been for a broad spectrum of prosperity.

Was the South segregated? Yes, was /is the South still backwards? Yes in many ways it still is.

But I remember what James Brown once said about civil rights and black empowerment. " I might have civil rights but that doesn't mean you'll respect me but if I have money in my pocket you'll respect me whether I have civil rights or not."

Today millions of people of all colors have no money in their pockets.

We never had any servants at my house except for my sisters and myself.

do some homework on tariffs and taxes and you will find the real reason behind the demise of america. Thom Hartmanns books would be a good start.

My family was pretty comfortable financially. My Grandfather pulled himself up by the bootstraps, out of a poor, alcohol cursed family, to a prosperous mail order cheap wallpaper company , & local paint & wallpaper store. ( I have peeled back at least 4 layers of our wallpaper in my modest farmhouse in Maine.) He married a woman with a pedigree, not money, daughter of a High school principal, school teacher herself, claiming, DAR heritage from those who built this country.But from generation to generation, they made money & lost money, it was for supporting the Arts & Hunaities, not to hoard & accumulate! My Grandparents had a "powder room" off the kitchen, at the top of the basement stairs, at a time when many were still using outhouses as their primary plumbing resource. But it had plain white walls, a bare bulb with a string for on & off, a wood toilet seat, NOT fancy! ( Later in the 70's when I was working in the home decor field, I marveled at the swank, overdone powder rooms I encountered, that even had patterned toilet paper to match everything else. My parents, 2nd generation wealth, were socialites! My Father railroaded into graduating U of P Wharton School, by a Father who had not gone to college, my Mother a beautiful dimpled blonde, who grew up in a poor family,
and had to go to nursing school rather than study art as she would have liked. They were sort of approaching F Scott & Zelda, ( not as extreme)
Had he not graduated college during the Depression, my Father would have become the first of the 4 tenors! ( Paul Potts, winner of the British Idol show, comes as close to the sound of my Father as any tenor I've heard!) But he was co-erced into the Family Business, being the only one with the fancy MBA! ( he was NOT a good business man!) They were Democratic in their thinking, forward looking, ( Aquarian Age before most) but
to a certain extent, living a fantasy. I became the Artist, my younger Brother the Drama Major.and the middle Brother, struck out on his own path into science & just retired from a college professorship! He's comfortable, we're broke!
Yes, we had a black Nannie for every new baby. My Nellie, saved our lives when I was about 5, coming home from the store, to the shore rental where my Mother & her friends had put the children down for naps, dozed off themselves unaware that one of the children had turned the knob on the gas stove!!! I STILL REMEMBER BEING CARRIED OUT TO THE BACK PORCH AND LAID DOWN WITH A SICK FEELING AND A SWEETISH SMELL IN THE AIR.
Several years later, my Brother had a medical emergency and I was taken to stay at the cabin where Nellie lived with her hard working husband, big boys who were high school football heros, and Ronnie,.....a little younger than I. It was a one room plan with wide plank floors, an oil stove for heat AND cooking, with several bedrooms off the main room; plumbing? I don't remember? I sat there,age 7 or so, ............and had the sudden realization, that when the white ladies said behind raised hands that "THEY" had a distinctive odor, the less gentile said "stink". it was because "They " lived with oil cook stoves and worked with brillo, to clean others houses, that is the source of the odor! Clean honest labor!
WHen my Baby Brother was born, I was 12, Mom was entering into her "Valley Of the Dolls" phase, and Nellie's cousin Stella came to live with us for a year or so! We had a little row boat and went out on the city park lake where she taught me to catch sunfish clean them, and make Bisquick bisquits with cheese, and then we would wake the family for breakfast! She also told me stories about the little really rich girl she had also cared for, who came to my public school in a chauffered car. ( American made) while I rode the school bus! BUT, she attended PUBLIC SCHOOL!
If it had not been for these two women, teaching me common sense, pragmatism, clarity, I'm not sure who I'd be today! They were NOT slaves, they were paid well and treated with dignity and respect.
And at this point in my life, I have cleaned MY share of other people's toilets.......house cleaning fills in with free lance art work rather neatly!
Thank God, we are inaugurating our first black president in 20 days! I am passing on my learned wisdom to a black woman 20 years my Jr who had s lost both her parents. For a while we had a cleaning service together. Primadonna,CLeaning Service..."we clean your home with the same dedication that we put into our Artistic Disciplines."
I know families ( white) here in Maine who live the same lifestyle as Nellie's family did 55 years ago!
Point is, the class warfare has been artificially generated in recent years against the turning tide of bigotry and racism. Yes I had black cleaning women when my children were small, THE AMERICAN ECONOMY made that possible! My husband was AN ARTIST, not a rich man! My daughter has a British Nanny, whose American husband was laid off and she had to go back to work. SHe is a household executive, who remembers what I lke to eat and makes sure it is stocked before I come to visit! If I could afford a cleaning woman weekly or twice monthly now, ( I wish) she would most likely be Mexican!
WHen the housesives stopped ahving the twice weekly cleaning woman and went out to work............. I lost the bulk of my clients! No point in painting a mural in your home when you are at the office being a CEO! It's cyclical, and WE the PEOPLE are pushing it to a better place!
Happy New Year!

This piece summmons up that whole era very effectively and atmospherically. I was saddened the other day to find myself shocked when I read the cleaning instructions tag on an item and discovered it was actually MADE IN THE U.S.A.! Most of the time it seems like 99.9% of everything is no longer made here. I make infinitely more money than my school-teacher father ever did in the 1950s and 1960s (and there were not 2 incomes in my childhood home) but somehow we managed to have a very decent, middle-class life. We had an American-made car (non-luxury, lower end but it got you where you needed to go); I had new clothes and shoes at the start of every school year; we somehow managed to go on modest family vacations; and if the wolf was ever truly at the door I, as a child, was unaware of it. Today when you see 2-income families struggling desperately to keep their homes, keep their jobs, get out of debt, and simply put food on the table it throws into high relief how far we have fallen.

SEND THIS TO OBAMA

I grew up in the 70's and as far as I can tell, it was the end of the middle class. Since 1980, and reaganomics, things have gone steadily downhill. My dad worked for the phone co for 35 years, my mom only worked part time after we were older because she wanted some "play money". He built our family home in 1968, and bought 40 acres in 1977 in the wine country, invested with a friend in a rental property in the 80's ...he managed to build quite a family trust so that we would not be at a place of need as adults, and so he would be able to care for himself in his old age...

I don't know how bad the last few months have hit their investments. I know they have sold some of the properties, and capital gains killed them, I know they are baffled at how their children have to struggle to make ends meet

and all of us wonder - how will it end? will America come back to itself and begin producing goods again, or will we be "bought" by China and be part of that republic before we know what hit us? (my kids watch a show on Nickelodeon that teaches them chinese, that is fuckin scary! "learn how to speak to your new masters!")

PS - on another note: I remember my first car was a mustang, my dad drove a 1958 chevy to work every day and we had a huge chevy station wagon as our family car... good times

I have made exactly (nearly!) the same observations over the years as you did, and sought an explanation. Several things have danced around in my head...

1) Most things were MUCH more expensive. Glance at old Sears catalogues for proof. An iron might be the same absolute price or slightly more in 1960 than it is now - and that is in 1960 dollars! Same for larger items like washers. Surprisingly, cars are an exception. In inflation-adjusted dollars, they are roughly the same as they were years ago.

2) CEOs and other execs were paid a LOT less.

3) The average American had less stuff than now. You would have the aforementioned iron, washer, refrigerator, TV, .... and not much else in the appliance category. You would have a car. Kids would have some toys. You did NOT witness the SEA of self-store pigeon-hole warehouses that now cover America.

Put these together with a few other factoids and I think you will have the full explanation of the observations from the OP. For a full synthesis I think we would need to enlist a Nobel-prize winning economist whose last name started with "K" :-))

An iron might be the same price now as in 1960, ( yea, I've noticed that too.) But your ELECTRIC BILL was less than 1/2, same with the phone bill, insurances, RENT MORTGAGE WAY HIGH!
ELECTRONICS! A Brownie box camera was about 1/20th of the cost of a digital camera, radio, yes, TV yes, not so much, computer, blackberry, DSL,
ipod, PAY TO WATCH TV, cable, satellite, ! It used to be FREE! THAT"S WHERE OUR MONEY IS GOING! AND WHO makes this stuff????????
Not Americans..........
I noticed yesterday, an ad for a Kodack printer, that uses permanent ink at far less cost, they say $110. savings a year on printer ink.
I though Kodack was on the verge of going out of business, with the popularity of digital cameras and reduced film, developing services...............
THIS is revolutionary, like the early Ford concept. " a ford in every driveway that average people can afford"
As far as I can see they are based in Rochester NY, and I couldn't find whether, they have factories off shore............
I have a MAC G-3 that worked just fine for my Graphic Design jobs...............BIL GATES forced me to upgrade to stay connected with Internet Explorer 6! Then I up graded AGAIN, to have DSL It's an enormous strain on a SS budget! Just to stay connected! Which with the price of gas as it has been, is a critical necessity to do sales!
THe difference between that 1960's iron and one today for the same price, is the 60's one may still be working,( providing your cat didn't jump on the ironing board and make it fall to the floor too many times) the new one is going to have to be replaced in a year or two! SO is everything else in your household! This is a real hardship for seniors on a fixed income! Now the rest of the middle class is joining us!
Back in 1956, my German penpal's Father came to visit us in America. I had spent a lovely summer with them the summer before.
He had a a forest,a sawmill, furniture factory, and another factory to make stuff from the scraps. He was here to study "planned deterioration, to increase the sales of his furniture! I think it is really hard for the Germans to make something rickety!
( I drive a 25 year old VW diesel Rabbit, great car!) Time for Detroit to visit Meulenburg! ( VW plant!)

I still have a functioning iron I received as a wedding gift in 1968. I also have at least 3 newer models that stopped working within a few years of purchase. American made items lasted many times over the cheap 'disposable' stuff we shell out for today. I have a 30 year old Curtis Mathes console TV hooked to cable in my living room. I have several sets of Springmaid sheets that are now into their 5th. decade of use, surviving hundreds of trips through the washer and dryer. My first Frigidaire washer bought in 1969 still works.
Nothing sold today lasts. Computers, color TVs, furnaces, hot water tanks, small appliances, power tools and even telephones all go belly up within 3 to 15 years.

It's a society wide problem. The average citizen ends up considering price first. The savings into buying more crap they didn't need. That advertising is such a prolific "industry" is indicative of how screwed up the modern brand of capitalism is.
American society killed itself.

with zero tariff and made buy labor earning $5.00 per day less room and board make our goods non competitive.

I don't think tariff's are a real solution. Governments should ban imports unless a living wage is supplied to workers, but that won't happen unless the citizenry demands it, and they won't as long as they are able to buy cheap crap. Tariffs just puts money in the governments pocket instead of workers.

When I graduated from high school in 1967, jobs were easy to come by if you didn't plan to attend college. I worked on road construction, drove a forklift for the railroad and finally settled at Boeing. I made more than enough to live independently. I owned my own car and had my own place with money to spare. Then I got drafted.

When I came home things had changed. Jobs were harder to find. I don't know what triggered all this, but I do know that things have gotten progressively worse ever since.

Grew up in the midwest with similar memories and felt a twinge of nostalgia in reading this.

We watched home movies of my MIL's family. The holidays with everyone dressed to the nines, smoking, drinking and dancing in the living room. Everyone looked so happy. Then cut over to Dad's new car. Then the older brother's first car. The vacations! They went on lots of vacations. Miami, Bahamas -- both places looked like the wilderness- unrecognizable now. They went to Niagara Falls and many other outings. Birthday parties-- and all the food they made--dance recitals, proms, christenings/communions, fourth of July picnics, films showed the new tv, Mom's fur coat, Dad's new golf clubs and him swinging for the camera, the kids doing the latest dance, teaching the rest of the family. This is in Yonkers, the city of Leisurely Living. Has anyone seen Yonkers lately?

Families lived closer to each other too.

My MIL's father was a plumber. His wife got a job when the kids got older part time at a department store (which has long since closed)-- for extra money to shop with and for the discount but mostly because she liked talking to people, she liked to be in the thick of things.

The talk of MIL's uncles, one who had been in POW camp--her father had been enlisted as well but never talked about it. She gave dh his medals after her father died. Not one person in that family would purchase Japanese made goods, after all, that's who killed Uncle Louie.

I had better explain that I'm a Canadian a bit past middle age, and even while I admired the US for its solid economic ethic, I winced (and continue to wince) at the Canadian willingness to sell such a bountiful country so cheap, to look no further than creating a bigger and better company town, with bigger and better company stores. What a total waste! I saw how as Canadians were taught how cool it was to cross the border to shop, Americans were taught to shop at home and to buy American, and it was a contradiction because the teachers were the same people. In fact, noticing this contradiction was my first political awakening - but f&*k, try discussing it with anybody. A lost cause.

I don't know how it happened that the US lost its way, lost its edge. But it has. I do know that in every case, US, Canada, whatever country, we're dealing with a gestalt "economic ethic" and not just something that can be corrected by individuals badgering other individuals with arguments about how "we have to change our ways". It's plain fact: if, as a Canadian, I spend all my savings in the US on US goods, then the money I spend goes direct into the US economy where it goes around and around, being spent over and over by Americans - whereas what I bring home might be a nice product, but is finished as an economic thing, and will quickly vanish.

It's so simple, isn't it?

I'm going to forward this to so many people...

a GW Bush or even a Ronnie Reagen in the White House back then, there would have been a civil war. We didn't have a "lifestyles of the rich and famous lovefest" back then. People remembered the depression and the new deal. People had too much critical thinking skills to buy "globalism", "compassionate conservatism", and "trickle down" garbage. Even though we were terribly backwards on social issues, we still had the depression smarts on economic issues. We knew that the people were what built the economy not fat rich boys in the country club.