They made a chart!
This was posted on Reddit on r/lostgeneration. It sure fits. During the "golden age" my parents were having kids, the first three anyway, 1957-1962. This would have been the time of living in nice houses, and the oldest of us even having a "governess" for a while.
In the "crisis" stage, it didn't seem that much worse if they even noticed, and had two more kids. We'd moved to Hawaii in 1968 into a large house in a rich neighborhood (Portlock Road) that was a fixer-upper but my dad was good at carpentry and fixed the place up. The years 1974 or so to 1980 saw us falling from middle-class to very poor. We'd sold the Portlock place in 1974, been rushed out of it because the house my father was having built on a lot in Pupukea was taking longer to finish than planned, then we moved into the Pupukea house and lived there a few years before being foreclosed out of there. By that time Dad was hardly in the picture and it was we kids and our mom, who figured out the ins and outs of getting food stamps and welfare and WIC and all that.
By 1980 I knew plenty of ragged-edge-of-survival tricks and we'd run off from Mom's to present ourselves on Dad's doorstep. He took us in but even that was bare survival (granted in a nicer place) as Dad's choice of computer programming as a way to make a living was just as stupid as that sounds. His back was bad too so maybe that kept him from apprenticing in the carpenter's union, I don't know. Jobs were very hard to get by 1980 and as the chart shows, "tech" did not really help the economy, which just pooped along pretty much level.
The smarter ones of us never set foot on a college campus and the smartest one found a rich guy few others could stand and married him. The 2nd smartest put in some time in the Navy and then, using that job and security clearance as leverage, got in with Grumman and stayed with them, I'm pretty sure, for the rest of his working life.
Arguably the 2nd smartest one though is the one who married a guy who became a police chief. Besides myself, the stupid one who went into tech, the only one left is the one who was in the Army and then went to work for a credit card company, berating people to pay up. The wealthy, the military, the attack dogs of the rich (police) and the loan sharks, those are the groups to ally yourself with.
Tech has followed the curve closely. 1996 was when most people got online; notice that nice downward slope showing how much "the miracle of the internet" has helped everyone. There was a brief respite for a few years in the early "oughts" and from '06 on it's been down, down, down.
Even when tech was doing well, warehouse workers who'd dropped out of high school made more. Even at places like Stanford University, people may use tech to get a job for the university, but then they change to something like food service because the pay and benefits are better.
Of course now we're into Great Depression II territory now which is why we're seeing fascist parties becoming popular again.
My back hurt a lot starting last night actually and continuing today. I took some aspirin and went to bed early (for me) and read more of "The Kindness Of Women" by J.G. Ballard, and other than keeping getting up to pee, slept until about 4.
Ahh, such is life, I thought, but then thought, I really want to get my "weekly Wal" done so off I went at about 5. I steamed on down to Walmart and filled out my list, then rode back up to Japantown and my beloved Nijiya where I got broccoli, some fresh ginger, and some cold grilled mackerel. I also doubled back and got a can of "Boss" black coffee and sat out front, just sipping it and savoring being out and not working, and people-watching.
I rode back here and by this time had the bike lights on because it was dark. Just the standard tootle on home, zombie-dodging as I had all through this trip. They're really getting thick out there.
I keep seeing tons of things about Hawaii being teeming with homeless but I bet it's not as bad as here. When I was out in flyover country, Arizona, there were more homeless than in California and they were more nasty/drugged-up/aggressive. Likewise, with the ever-present few exceptions, I'm willing to get Hawaii homeless are a bit easier to avoid.
In fact, when I'd headed out I'd taken the 6 boxes of tamarind pods, a bag of sesame seeds, and some other things with me and gone straight to to little free pantry in front of the Peace & Justice Center and loaded those things in, taking in exchange a green bell pepper. A group of bums were right on top of me in no time, and I got out of there quick.
Once I was back in I did the exercises I would have done when I got up but hadn't, and got all the things that had sold out of the warehouse area then packed a bunch of 'em. In fact I packed so many and I usually don't pack things on Sunday evening, that Ebay freaked out and I had to keep signing in, then do one of those things where I had to click on all the photos with a computer mouse in them, then it sent a secret code to Ken's number so I tried getting hold of Ken but no luck, but then it let me do stuff again so I packed a few more things and called it a night.
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