> how much of a given it was that they own a house on a single income. Homer has a stable job

It isn't - especially if you watch the original first season of the Simpsons [0] (Homer's Odyssey - the 3rd episode of the Simpsons written right as the 1990 recession was kicking off) as well as that Frank Grimes episode back in 1997 [1].

The older Simpsons episodes weren't that common on syndication from what I can remember growing up - at most you might see an episode from 1994 in the early 2000s, so I wouldn't be surprised if these episodes may have been forgotten.

Simpsons in it's original iteration during it's golden age (1989-1999) was essentially lampooning the 1960s American dream (which itself was legally unattainable for a large portion of Americans in the 1960s - there's a reason why we had a Civil Rights Movement as well as normalized anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Greek, anti-Spanish/Portuguese, and anti-Jewish sentiment until these communities assimilated into being "white" in the 1980s and even heritage Americans in vast swathes of America lacked indoor plumbing, medical care, education beyond the 5th grade, etc) being punctuated by the harsh realities of America at the time [4] (eg. $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling) from 1993).

What I've noticed from the comments on HN (as well as the viciousness of the community when I point this out) is most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing.

For example, from 1989 to 1994, household incomes in the US dropped at the same rate as they did during the Great Recession and the COVID Pandemic [2] and didn't recover until 1997, but because most HN users today weren't the head of a household during that period they view the 1990s as a golden age.

It's the same with 1980s nostalgia with everyone ignoring the 1980s recession which is lampooned in Mr Mom [3] - strip the 80s humor and it's basically a story about a single earner household where the primary breadwinner is made structurally unemployed right when the Rust Belt was starting to rust due to Japanese and German automotive exports becoming more competitive than American exports.

[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1W8O-CKNw

[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNj2nlFttCM&t=71s&pp=2AFHkAIB

[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

[3] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xth2v727PiQ

[4] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iTuHQxIC7rY

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taurath 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> most HNers grew up in middle and upper-middle class households in the 1980s-90s that in most cases weren't representative of the lives the median American would have lived then, and a lot of the rose tinted glasses appear to betray that upbringing

Guilty as charged! I also do think that there’s an additional sense within those communities of the “normalcy” of homeownership both within the spaces, and reflected back via mass culture. True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default.

Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd.

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alephnerd 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Even in the 50s, 60s, and 70s sitcoms and shows you rarely see people renting - homeownership rates are pretty steady around 62% back to the 60s. Among white Americans it’s like 75% or something. So I don’t think it’s entirely rose tinted glasses, even if there is a point to be made about the biases of the HN crowd

Sure, but you have to remember only 58% of Americans today are non-Hispanic White.

For the other 42% of us, we would have been legally segregted in much of America deep into the 1970s as it took the DoJ a lot of effort to litigate against explicit and implicit attempts to sidestep the civil rights act. For us, while there may be a kernel of truth in what you described, the reality is we would have been second class citizens if we were born then.

If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.

It's insensitive.

> True, nobody in New York has an apartment like they did on Friends, but the shows made to appeal to middle class America, even the ones like Married with Children still held “well there’s a house” even though the main character is a deadbeat - this isn’t played for laughs or out of irony, it’s just the default

Few shows represent the bottom 50% of society irrespective of race let alone back in the 1990s or even today. The only prime time shows I can think of that showed that bottom half of society as independent individuals was Shameless.

Even "The Jeffersons" back in the 70s was basically a standard upper middle class sitcom despite being revolutionary in showing African Americans on primetime.

Heck, the HDI of much of America in 1990 [0] is comparable to Russia, Serbia, and Belarus today [1].

And even Marc Andreessen would often recount growing up in the rural Midwest without indoor plumbing and having to take a s#it in the freezing cold. He was born in 1971.

[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/USA/?levels=1+4&ye...

[1] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

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troad 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>> If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then.

>> It's insensitive.

Stop problematising everything, complete with Twitter style mic drops. OP didn't say the 70s were heaven, they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach. This is a true point for people of all races, religions, sexual orientations, etc.

There's nothing constructive about trying to slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races. It's pointlessly divisive, and undercuts the sorely needed pro-housing coalition.

You're playing into what the elites want: an opposition that is fractious, navel-gazing, and delightfully (to the elites) impotent.

	▲	alephnerd 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> they're saying that home-ownership is slipping ever more out of reach The why don't you guys say that instead of reflexively fawning over a period that is objectively worse for us. > slyly imply white people are more problematic for wanting homes to live in than people of other races I never implied that, and that is why is said the following: "If you want to complain about rising housing prices, complain about that. But don't perpetuate the myth that the 1970s and earlier would have been heaven when a large portion of Americans today would have been segregated back then". To be brutally honest, whenever I and others point out that the historical nostalgia is not really positive for a large portions Americans, commenters like you reflexively try to shut us down. Why should we accommodate your pearl clutching?

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jdkee 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sanford & Son.

	▲	alephnerd 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fred Sanford owned a small business and lived in Los Angeles in an era when the majority of African Americans were working unskilled wage jobs [0] and overwhelmingly living in the South. He and Lamont were middle and upper-middle class by African American standards as was seen in the 1970 Negro (the then term for African Americans) Census by the the US Department of Commerce. And by overall American standards back then they would have probably been around the 50th to 60th percentile of households by income and would have been earning at least 60% than their racial peers in the South at the exact same time. If you go through US Census data from 1970 - almost a decade after the Civil Rights Act was passed - it is harrowing. Now imagine how much worse it was before that. [0] - https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1971/demographi...

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acomjean 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Frank Grimes is one of the best characters on TV. "I live in a single room above a bowling alley and bellow another bowling ally"..

Very few shows, show actually living situations (flight of the choncords is the only other I can think of).

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alephnerd 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Amen to that!

Sadly, a lot of that authenticity fell to the wayside when the original Simpsons writers left the show to work on "Futurama" and "The Critic" and Fox retooled the show for syndication.

I'm personally more of a KOTH fan - I found it to be a much more grounded example of middle class life in the late 1990s and early 2000s while also recognizing that the Hills had it good. I find a similar strain of authenticity in Bob's Burgers (unsurprising since much of the team worked on KOTH).

> Frank Grimes is one of the best characters on TV

I remember getting enraged as an elementary schooler watching that episode because his statement hit true, but we were also a family of 4 living in a 1 bedroom apartment at the time and newly immigrated, and even then I felt similar to Grimes when watching the Simpsons.

When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.

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iugtmkbdfil834 2 hours ago | parent [-]

<< When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.

Interesting. This is not how I interpreted it at all in my initial viewing ( or subsequent ones for that matter ). If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer. If it was a meta-commentary, it was certainly not drawing a distinction between reality of Grime's life and the imaginary one income head of the household doing surprisingly well given the circumstances. Grimes story was a story of a guy, who just had a bad luck.. over and over again, but even when the good luck did show, he failed the test and focused not on what he gained, but others have despite being, in his eyes, lesser than him.

That is the moral of the story. Don't be Grimes. He may wish he can be Homer Simpson, but he sure can't touch those high voltage signs.

	▲	alephnerd 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer That's what I meant, though it absolutely was a form of meta-commentary as well.
	▲	cindyllm 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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