3263

I’m totally lost, what are we trying to prove with comparing the economy of the 1st Reagan administration to the current economy?

3264

Forget it Tortilla, it’s Qt3.

3265

That deep dish isn’t really pizza.

3266

I just can’t.

3267

As evidenced by this 1983 anthem of hope:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc

3268

Or this one.

3269

We owned a townhouse in 1980. In the fall of '80 we went looking for houses in our neighborhood. I don’t remember much about the houses, but I do remember that the mortgages they were offering were at 17% interest. Seventeen… percent… interest.

We did not buy!!

3270

Or this one.

https://youtu.be/lZD4ezDbbu4

3271

The main thing I remember about 1980, zeitgeist-wise, is wondering whether I’d die in a nuclear blast or whether it’d be the nuclear winter that’d get me.

3272

Let’s not forget this ray of sunshine from 1983, which I believe still holds the record for highest viewership of a made for TV movie.

3273

I remember that being on the cover of TV Guide and my parents informing me that I wouldn’t be watching it.

3274

Yeah. Had a long discussion with my folks about whether we’d watch it. We did, and man was it bleak.

3275

That sort of thing had nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with people being afraid of a president who was openly and deliberately abandoning detente in favor of confrontation.

3276

Sorry, just riffing on the people had hope in the 80s line.

3277

Gotta hand it to Gorbachev, as Russian leaders go he was the thing that made the world seem a bit less on the brink back in those days. I’m sure the more knowledgeable have dozens of examples why he was still a bastard, but he was a big step up from what a teenager could tell.

3278

Hmmm… Maybe? Different aspects, to be sure, but I wonder how cleanly separable they are. It’s a lot easier to fall into a dystopian funk about war or anything when the economy is shit and you don’t know if it’ll get better.

@Houngan, agreed on Gorbachev. He may still have been a devil (I assume so based on him rising in the Party, but don’t actually know details), but he make some really hard calls that gave the world a glimmer of hope.

3279

We had popcorn and viewing party. I had two roommate working for Lockheed Missile and Space. One’s job was working penetration aids for physics packages, the other was working Reagan Star wars defense and that’s all he could tell me. FYI, physics package is euphemism for nuclear warhead.
There was a lot of geeky informed discussion about how realistic the “Day After” was especially the radiation effects.

I had just bought the house with 13.75% mortgage and due to the recession Intel had cut pay by 10% and mandated 50 hour work week for exempt employee, so the economy wasn’t great either.

3280

I’m sure a decent chunk of it was the Boomers and the Russian equivalent coming to the realization that, “Fuck this, why don’t we all just concentrate on making money?”

3281

I lived through it. I was 20 in 1981.

3282

So there is one aspect to the perception @Alstein is referencing. A very real sense that the problems of the day were a shared problem back in the 80’s.

Today the Millenials and younger do not feel this is true. Even in good economic times the benefits of that are not being felt and shared by them. The hardships and problems of the economic, education, and labor issues of the day are disproportionately being felt by them/us. Such that when all the news about economic growth, stock markets, etc. comes in good, that is not felt at home. Things like housing ownership, lack of job stability and security, lack of benefits, massive financial debt from school present a very different economic reality for them, than what the news presents.

I think that’s where he is coming from. It feels different when everyone is in the same boat, and Millenials definitely feel like the older generations are furiously dumping buckets of water into our boat.