The message here speaks volumes to me -

[e-RICHIE]

.
.
A pal linked me. I've never heard of Joey B. but his message is important (to me) and I'd like to share it with the world.

[endo shi]

Not sure what I think of this. It borders dangerously on blaming homeless people for their lack of decorum or something and romanticizing the Mad Men era. Yeah people wore suits on planes but they also smoked on them. Meanwhile the guy talking is wearing a Beavis and Butthead t-shirt and coach's jacket.

And I'd rather drive a not cool Prius than any unreliable "stylish" deathbox from the 60's.

[e-RICHIE]

Not sure what I think of this. It borders dangerously on blaming homeless people for their lack of decorum or something and romanticizing the Mad Men era. Yeah people wore suits on planes but they also smoked on them. Meanwhile the guy talking is wearing a Beavis and Butthead t-shirt and coach's jacket.

And I'd rather drive a not cool Prius than any unreliable "stylish" deathbox from the 60's.

I didn’t pick up on any blaming the homeless for their plight.
I do think the man was expressing a need/desire for humanity to pay more attention.
These are my thoughts.
I don’t need to be right.

[bigbill]

As a society, we can look back and see when people wanted finely crafted items surrounding them, but then the world shrank, and it was more than just their immediate surroundings. We always cared about the experience, but when offered a broader opportunity, we shifted more toward the experience and away from the object. Then the objects got cheap and disposable.

Unfortunately, we've dumbed it down to popular culture with the advent of social media. Before I retired several months ago, I was shocked by what people wore to job interviews. I didn't expect formal wear, but maybe start with clean clothes? How about long pants, just for that day? I was taught to dress one step above what I'd be expected to wear on the job. If the job was business casual, then interview in a suit. Somehow we've lost that.

[e-RICHIE]

As a society, we can look back and see when people wanted finely crafted items surrounding them, but then the world shrank, and it was more than just their immediate surroundings. We always cared about the experience, but when offered a broader opportunity, we shifted more toward the experience and away from the object. Then the objects got cheap and disposable.

Unfortunately, we've dumbed it down to popular culture with the advent of social media. Before I retired several months ago, I was shocked by what people wore to job interviews. I didn't expect formal wear, but maybe start with clean clothes? How about long pants, just for that day? I was taught to dress one step above what I'd be expected to wear on the job. If the job was business casual, then interview in a suit. Somehow we've lost that.

We've also gained a lot.
We've certainly lost a lot too, paying attention to details among them.
And I'm not focusing on consumer goods with my observation.
I wasn't even a teenager when much of what's depicted in his examples were present day.
But the focus on them resonates.

[echappist]

Not sure what I think of this. It borders dangerously on blaming homeless people for their lack of decorum or something and romanticizing the Mad Men era. Yeah people wore suits on planes but they also smoked on them. Meanwhile the guy talking is wearing a Beavis and Butthead t-shirt and coach's jacket.

And I'd rather drive a not cool Prius than any unreliable "stylish" deathbox from the 60's.

Ironic, isn't it, that the guy preaching in the video couldn't even be bothered to sit up straight and instead just slumps into the sofa.

And I'm speaking as someone who dresses up when going to the museum, etc.

The other part about things being (uniformly) well-made back then also couldn't be further from the truth. More of a desultory rant.

[vertical_doug]

It's like the member berries in South Park, it is a highly edited history with all the unpleasantness edited out.

1. There's one black man in the 'vintage' films, and he is the porter on the train making the bunk bed.

2. The nice cars driving on the parkway. It is that way because Robert Moses designed the Parkways with bridges too low to allow buses to drive on the road. He didn't want inner city taking the bus out to the suburbs.

3. We get the people in Sunday Dress at the park, but let's visit a Lower East side Tenement and see what life was life for 'us' with pushcarts.


People are people. We were nasty then, we are nasty now.

[e-RICHIE]

People are people. We were nasty then, we are nasty now.

Indeed.

[steve garro]

I think this cat needs to go through Dorothea Lange's portfolio.

- Garro.

[Clyde]

Yeah I liked it. And the world ended thanks to Jerry Springer making bad behavior acceptable and monetizing it. So back when, down on their luck folks would try hard to make a nickel here or there and not wear welfare/food stamps/section 8 housing on their sleeves and brag about it. That's what 15 yrs in the ER did to me. "I get a check every month". Yeah, what's your disability???? " I just tell them I hear voices". First thing we need to do in this country is clean up the welfare roll. And put those people to work paying taxes. So, essentially, if you have a job and pay taxes I might like you. Otherwise, well... *that does not apply to honestly disabled people or retirees* And yes, in a downtown ER most people are on medicaid/medicare from 18 to ??? And they walk in, plop down, pull out their cell phone and ear buds, and waste away to social media. ^It's a great life^

[j44ke]

I'm remembering from the discussion surrounding the extension of Medicare by states that it is actually one of the most successful programs the government runs. It has measurable quality of life improvements in the long run and actually improves employability for individuals. I could be misremembering - and I am not doubting Tim's experiences either - but largely the program is a success. However, one of the problems is enforcement of guidelines and eligibilities, but that's true in many social programs because of the divided nature of funding within the government. So programs will get funded in a bipartisan manner because both parties recognize the benefits, but one party or the other will balk at fulling funding the manpower for regulation and enforcement because funding bureaucracy runs counter to the appetites of their constituents.

But point taken - individual experience has been universalized by the internet through social media to our collective peril. I was certain that the internet would mean the return of the labor movement, but it just does not unify in the same numbers actual hand-in-hand shoulder-to-shoulder movements do. Instead, you can be one of maybe 2 or 3 people that feels like President Biden is a martian, and within a short amount of time, social media can connect you with that same 2 or 3 people in every fricking dog-eared dusty town across the entire planet. And suddenly there are millions of people who think President Biden is a martian. And millions of people can't be wrong, right?

Gaming the system stinks no matter whether it is someone ripping off medicare in an inner city ER or a NYC businessman making his fortune on credit-based wealth over-estimations and writing off business disasters on his taxes for most of his life. But those people are the byproduct, not of the program, but of the politics of this nation that has accepted the argument that things were better then and are worse now and will only get worse in the future, unless we cut spending, cut welfare, cut education, cut everything except corporate profit and shareholder returns on investment.

The people least willing to adjust to the true cost of living in this world are the wealthy and super wealthy. That's why earnings stagnation has been the status quo for most people since the 1980's. You think gorgeous just happens?

[bcm119]

He's right that things used to have more character. Function has eclipsed form in today's business model. He doesn't mention, though, that a lot of things didn't work very well back then, and maybe that was because too much time was spent on form and not enough on function. Still, I can agree on the nostalgia for a time when style and character were valued.

As for dressing nice, he is projecting when he claims people dressed well because they took pride in themselves. It's just as possible that, given how uncomfortable that garb was, people adorned themselves with it simply out of fear of not fitting in. In the 50s, who had the balls to dress differently from the norm? Well, hardly anyone, and then the hippies did, and got skewered by mainstream society.

[Bob Ross]

I was taught to dress one step above what I'd be expected to wear on the job. If the job was business casual, then interview in a suit.

The last time (as well as every time) I went on a job interview, I wore a suit. As I was leaving that interview the owner of the company says "That's a really nice suit. I'll never see it again."

...which was his way of telling me I got the job. :)

[bigbill]

The last time (as well as every time) I went on a job interview, I wore a suit. As I was leaving that interview the owner of the company says "That's a really nice suit. I'll never see it again."

...which was his way of telling me I got the job. :)

I have one suit. Job interviews, funerals, etc. It's ten years old now, but charcoal gray never goes out of style.

[Ras72]

I struggle with the concept of then vs now. Believing it has everything to do with perspective and temperature of the water our little frog balls have been roasting in.

Cars from the 60’s sucked. At the time, they were complicated POSs. Step away 50 years and they’re simple POSs. Only fun to drive becuase that daily driver ‘Honda Accord’ is just so damn good. Sure metal was lower gauge but the fit and finish was shit. And the gauge of the metal doesn’t make the entire package. But nostalgia is very forgiving.

I do believe people of the 40s, 50s took more pride in appearances. They seemed to celebrate the idea of going to the market or catching a train ride. These events were luxurious. But I don’t feel these perceived appearances actually make a better person.

Bottom line, the further we step away of a time period the more romanticized it becomes. The times of struggle will always be remembered as the good ‘old days, because the present time is just too real and that water is too damn hot.

[bigbill]

I struggle with the concept of then vs now. Believing it has everything to do with perspective and temperature of the water our little frog balls have been roasting in.

Cars from the 60’s sucked. At the time, they were complicated POSs. Step away 50 years and they’re simple POSs. Only fun to drive becuase that daily driver ‘Honda Accord’ is just so damn good. Sure metal was lower gauge but the fit and finish was shit. And the gauge of the metal doesn’t make the entire package. But nostalgia is very forgiving.

I do believe people of the 40s, 50s took more pride in appearances. They seemed to celebrate the idea of going to the market or catching a train ride. These events were luxurious. But I don’t feel these perceived appearances actually make a better person.

Bottom line, the further we step away of a time period the more romanticized it becomes. The times of struggle will always be remembered as the good ‘old days, because the present time is just too real and that water is too damn hot.

I've had a 1967 Mustang since 1983. I bought it from the original owner the week I graduated high school. It sounds cool, a 289 V8 with dual exhaust. I didn't take it everywhere with me in my 27 years in the Navy, it spent time in storage. I bought a 1985 Honda Accord LX and it was a better car. Every vehicle since has been more reliable, had better features, didn't rattle, the locks didn't freeze, had actual lumbar support, and started every day with very few exceptions. It's fast, but the fastest vehicle I've owned was a 2018 Ford Expedition with the 3.5L EcoBoost. I tried once to sell the Mustang but the guy showed up with half the asking price in cash. I just shut the garage door.

[TonyP]

The Good Old Days are good because they're gone.

[Ras72]

I've had a 1967 Mustang since 1983. I bought it from the original owner the week I graduated high school. It sounds cool, a 289 V8 with dual exhaust. I didn't take it everywhere with me in my 27 years in the Navy, it spent time in storage. I bought a 1985 Honda Accord LX and it was a better car. Every vehicle since has been more reliable, had better features, didn't rattle, the locks didn't freeze, had actual lumbar support, and started every day with very few exceptions. It's fast, but the fastest vehicle I've owned was a 2018 Ford Expedition with the 3.5L EcoBoost. I tried once to sell the Mustang but the guy showed up with half the asking price in cash. I just shut the garage door.

I was speaking from experience.
My first car was my high school senior year project - ‘66 Mustang convertible. Signal Flare Red. Finished it and sold it to buy my first house. Now drive a 2019 Honda Accord and it’s from a different galaxy. Light years better. But would be fun to own another vintage auto. Because that was the good ol’ days.

[j44ke]

When we lived in Prague, we attended an arts collaboration event taking place at an old mine in Kladno. Dul Mayrau, if you want to look it up. I wasn't involved in making work, just there as an observer so I wandered around the surface buildings, looking at all the industrial ornamentation. The winding towers were driven by large engines, originally driven (trying to remember) by maybe coal fired boilers but converted to fuel oil later. One was originally exhibited as a ship engine at a Paris Expo but was bought by the mine, disassembled and transported back to the (then) Czech lands of Austria-Hungary, where it was reassembled and put into use at the mine, not too far from where it was made originally.

The ornamentation was spectacular. Little oil cups all the way up to the massive roads and wheels. Why? These were the rocket engines, the space age, of that epoch when men and animals were being replaced by machines. The things these engines could too! It must have been mind-boggling the amount of power produced. So they had to look like the cutting edge of technology they were - they had to look beautiful. But also they had to look skillful. Casting and forging of the parts that went into these engines was still relatively young as a science. Catastrophic failures were possible - wheels cracked, pistons broke, and cables hauling men and materials plummeted to the bottoms of mines. So the engines became "samplers" that demonstrated visually the facility of the fabricators and the power of the machine.Someone charged with the responsibilities of buying a new engine for a ship or a winding towner might not be able to conceptualize the numbers on a blueprint but they could recognize beauty. And they could sell that beauty to investors who were going to review the engine from the perspective of future returns - if they can make an oil cup out of steel and have it look like something from a perfumery in Paris, then imagine what they can do with a massive winding wheel. Marketing, in other words.

[e-RICHIE]

I've read many of the comments, appreciate them, and am coming back to this.

I don't know the messenger, or why he was dressed like he was and even I wondered about the setting he couched himself in. Would an Edward R. Murrow or Alistair Cooke looking cat have been a better choice for the delivery?

Anyway.

Yeah. The message glosses over the fact that, just like present day, there are also negatives and downsides to the talking points in the YouTube. I didn't see it as Joey B's job, especially in his podcast, to give us a history of the world until now.

There are many images in the five or so minutes that convince me that, on balance, there was more grace and good manners then there are now. Was it the times? Social pressure? Other things? I don't know.

In another place and time I might have been miffed that so many folks watch the link and have opposing points of view. Are we even watching the same feed? We all have a different lens - that's all I can come up with.

There's an element of Midnight In Paris in the YouTube. I loved that film too. And just like everything else, no matter how far back you look, it was never perfect.