A Distorted Vision of the 1950s is Used to Manipulate You

In this episode, the hosts discuss the contrasting realities and myths surrounding the 1950s, focusing on various social, economic, and cultural factors. They debunk romanticized views of this era by highlighting the real struggles, from economic disparities to social issues, that were prevalent. The episode features detailed comparisons of living standards, employment, mental health, and black Americans' experiences then and now. They also explore how modern advancements and opportunities can recreate the desired aspects of the 1950s while avoiding its pitfalls. Dive into an eye-opening analysis of why life today, despite its challenges, might actually be better than the nostalgically viewed 1950s.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] But yeah, it was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really dunk on is the experience of black Americans in the 1950s, and I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women. Or married, roughly comparable to white women.

Malcolm Collins: And and their kids born out of wedlock were fi were were half the white rate today,

At only 5% were at the white percent. Born out of wedlock was 10%.

Malcolm Collins: it's like or so. Yeah. .

Simone Collins: But black infants soared to born out of wedlock, soared to 77.3%,

like, I mean it's obviously there were horrible things about, about.

Like pre-Civil rights but okay, so like fertility is worse out of, out of wedlock births are worse. Mental health is worse, even. Wealth too. , in, in wow, black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged since 1953.

Malcolm Collins: , I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true, right? Like, this doesn't sound true to me. So I decided to start Googling it and oh [00:01:00] my god, it's so much worse than I thought. , If you look at, , this graph by the Washington Post, , which is looking at medium household wealth adjusted for inflation since the 1950s, white wealth has.

, Gone up about three x black wealth. Is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s.

Simone Collins: So also, like I was looking at that, I was like, oh my God, I've just, I've been lied to about the fifties. Like, whoa, so much more expensive.

Except, well, we spent like 15% of our income on clothes. So I

Malcolm Collins: don't know. No,

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: . Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about the 1950s, and obviously we enjoyed tossing rotten vegetables at the 1950s. We point out how trad wives are both unsustainable and a progressive conspiracy. We point out how sexually debauched they were in the 19, oh, hold on, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: We gotta, we, I gotta make a few notes on these things where people haven't seen these episodes, specifically what we mean. Is that the trad wife phenomenon as it is practiced today is more of [00:02:00] a cargo cult than representative of how people actually lived in the 1950s. Yeah. And, and well, and before

Simone Collins: the, the, the real family format that has existed for thousands of years is what's called the corporate family, which is more an extended family group of both right people and unrelated colleagues.

Malcolm Collins: And the modern trad wife is more downstream of BDSM culture.

Simone Collins: And you don't even know Malcolm, but this is trending now online because there are these trad wives who are now. I don't remember what they call them, but there's this one, there's one woman who, who calls it the princess treatment. And then, or experience or something like that.

And then there's this other one who literally wears A-B-D-S-M collar, but calls it like. A a, like, she, she thinks that it's a, a conservative Christian thing, but she had literally bought this color that a day, a day color, I think she calls it a day color to signal her subservience to her husband, not realizing that literally she purchased this caller from A-B-D-S-M site and it's.

So amazing. And the Internet's laughing like crazy. But anyway, yeah, it's such a thing and it's, it's showing up again because it's a [00:03:00] thing.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, it's, it, well, it's so funny because a lot of these people were so hidden from that that they don't realize that it's like, no, these words you're using. Did not come from the 1950s.

They literally came from BDSM culture. Like this is not the things that you're buying these styles that you're adopting. Yeah. Not to

Simone Collins: kink shame or anything, it's just, it's not like the traditional Correct way to do family.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I, I think that that's always funny to get into, but continue.

Simone Collins: Right.

So as much as we like to dunk on the 1950s, there were absolutely major elements of it that rocked, including affordability, employment, quality of life, social stability. There were even some commonly high highlighted shortcomings of the 1950s that are. May, maybe not as short as I thought they were previously.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Oh, and hold on. I should also note for people who haven't seen our episode on the 1950s being debauched mm-hmm. It also was way in, in many ways way more sexually debauched than modern times. Yeah, yeah. Where we point out the prevalence within literature of the period and was in studies run during the period of, [00:04:00] young male mutual masturbation and the prevalence of nudity like, like group showers and stuff like that, that people don't do anymore, and the prevalence of, oh, but it was like,

Simone Collins: it was no homo group showers, you know, it was like they, they people were based enough to not insinuate too much or read too much into it?

Well, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: no, they didn't see it as gay to like. Jack off your friend in the 1950s, they were like, yeah, you're just helping out a friend. Come on. And I love people were like, oh, that was like the, those studies were, were debunked. And I was like, bro, if you have actually read a lot of literature from people who grew up in the 1950s that describe like underground culture, what it was really like you will very frequently.

Fine stories of mutual masturbation among males. I have not read a single like non-gay story where that happens in modern times. I don't have a single friend who has admitted to me, oh yeah, I did this, this thing that, that just, yeah, I think even

Simone Collins: are totally straight. Doesn't get go that far. Yeah.

So

Malcolm Collins: continue.

Simone Collins: Anyway, I wanna make the argument basically that, okay, yes. A lot of things about the fifties [00:05:00] either totally misunderstood or actually sucked, but there are a lot of things that were great, but I have zero respect. For anyone who pines after the fifties, and I will explain why, but basically mid wis crave the 1950s.

And it's because you believe it's all recreated live the 1950s.

Malcolm Collins: So the reason she doesn't care is, is she thinks that you can remake everything that was good in the 1950s was in the modern day.

Simone Collins: Exactly. That's my point.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll push back. So, so make your argument.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, so let's go over what's good.

About the 1950s, right? So, housing and basic goods, the cost of living was dramatically lower, and so that is a clear winner. Housing was affordable with the average hum costing around $15,000 compared to over $200,000 today, plus gasoline, food and cars were also cheaper relative to income, making it easy for a single income to support a family and afford a home car.

I

Malcolm Collins: thought, I thought food was dramatically more expensive. I'll walk

Simone Collins: you through this, I'll walk you through it. Okay? But actually, you know, we recently did a video on AI and social class, and in that video they show. The we show this 1957 video on social class in America that shows the [00:06:00] lives of a lower class American, a middle class Amer American, and then an an upper class American.

And there's this one scene where they show the, the, the rundown lower class house.

Correnet film: David's father is Michael Ben, an unskilled factory worker. Who has a meager education?

Mr. Benton rents the upper floor of a two family house in a rundown section of town.

Simone Collins: Yeah, in the video it's like, it looks so nice. Oh yeah. If it was in

Malcolm Collins: LA it looked like the houses would cost a few million in la I

Simone Collins: know it looked like a $2 million Bay Area house. So yeah, that, like, only the wealthiest could possibly live in these days.

So I, I get, you know, that. Yeah, that has gotten, we have problems there. We have problems with housing. Plus the median American family had 30% more purchasing power at the end of the decade than at the beginning. And the dollars buying power was much greater. So college [00:07:00] tuition was low enough that student debt was.

Basically not a, it wasn't a thing. So as much as even like the GI Bill may have helped a lot of guys, and this, this was something that enabled people who fought in World War II to basically go to college for free. For those who aren't familiar with it, it almost wasn't necessary because school was just affordable.

Another element was that employment was, it was cush. Like there was this really short-lived period where it just like getting a job seemed incredibly easy. And. It, it was at the time unemployment was super low, about 4.5%. And, and low in a way that was like legitimately low. 'cause I think now people are juicing the numbers in all sorts of ways, pretending that people who are one, not counting unemployed, people who've given up and all these other factors.

So, yeah, actually low unemployment. And there were tons of jobs in manufacturing and industry. You didn't need a high school diploma to have a job. The GI bill that I mentioned earlier, helped millions of veterans access higher education and then buy homes. So there was both, both [00:08:00] economic growth and social mobility and incomes went up.

Average family incomes rose from 3,300 and 1950s. To 5,400 by the end of that decade. So 1950 to 1959, it went up from 3,300 to 5,400. Keep in mind that, you know, wages have been stagnant. And then of course, you know, housing and education, childcare, a whole bunch of other things these days have risen more than income.

So it's, it's pretty bad. And then there was also union powers. So labor unions I think were a little more common than you didn't have. You know, Amazon constantly fighting Simone.

Malcolm Collins: The economic argument for the 1950s I've always found to be uniquely stupid. Yeah. So because I

Simone Collins: mean, boomers did absolutely get, and like the greatest generation

Malcolm Collins: got a boost from this.

The only reason why the 1950s appeared so wealthy in the United States is because. The other world center of economic production mm had been completely devastated by a world war. And that [00:09:00] basically meant like, okay, imagine, well, Europe's ramping up for World War iii. Maybe there's Hope Milk. Yeah.

Imagine if the US went around and destroyed. Every factory in China and every factory in Europe. And then they came back and over the next 10 years was like, isn't it great how much money you can earn at an American factory job? And it's like, well, no, you know, that's not exactly a replicable scenario was in the modern day, and that wasn't caused by the culture of the 1950s.

Yeah. That was caused by, and this is why I think it was just chance, it was happenstance. Calling out trad wise as a cargo cult phenomenon is such an apt comparison. Mm. 'cause what created the economic benefits that made the, if you're not familiar with the cargo cults, these were Aboriginal people in islands who during the war.

Had troops stationed in the area that would give them food. And so they had so much w wealth from their perspective, like food and, and, and material supplies and technology. During that period, they tried to bring it back by reenacting scenes that they [00:10:00] remember from that time period. So they'll build like planes out of like sticks and runways, and then do all the things like their religious ceremonies of, of the, the signs that they would make to call down the planes.

Mm-hmm. It was the very same war that led to the,

Speaker: the cargo cult has its temples almost everywhere nearby. This is one, its altar is standing 9,000 feet above sea level. The dummy plane is at the edge of the landing strip at the other end, the control tower.

The natives of the Rosa and Maccha tribes are waiting for some plane to land on their strip attracted by the bamboo model. They believe that planes come from paradise, their ancestors sent them,

Malcolm Collins: you know, we laugh at these aboriginals doing this, and then we, we see, you know, conservative influencers doing the exact same thing. You know, it to recreate this, the economic situations created by that exact same war that were, that [00:11:00] had nothing to do with, the you know, I don't think, well, maybe

Simone Collins: this is why many of them are also so pro-Russia. They're like, come on guys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, go,

Simone Collins: go do it.

Malcolm Collins: Go create that. And so you could say well. If unions were stronger, you know, we'd have all this No unions worked in the 1950s because we didn't have any competition.

Yeah, there was no

Simone Collins: outsourcing, like Yeah, people didn't have the option to just turn to something else because the union was formed.

Malcolm Collins: True. If unions get stronger in the United States, we simply get out competed by countries with less union regulation. Exactly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which, well, which is exactly what happened.

I mean, I think that's why a lot of companies were like, okay, screw you, I'm gonna do my manufacturing

Malcolm Collins: us in, in a big part. And, and they don't realize. Who killed you? I love it when people are like, oh, well we had such good jobs because of the unions. And I'm like, yeah, but you don't have those jobs anymore.

So why do you think that happened? This is really happening in Hollywood right now where the union, the film act, the, the [00:12:00] writer's union or something decided to make some big stupid push. And well, basically

Simone Collins: everything. In Hollywood is unionized. There, there's, there it is. It is riddled with unions and that has ossified and made, made the industry so financially unviable and, and bogged down that it's.

They're just completely being trounced now. No, they're pretty much over

Malcolm Collins: people. And you, you can read lots of stories about this. The companies are just leaving Hollywood and they're not doing business in Hollywood anymore. Yeah. Even the creative types, because they're just like, we can't deal with this anymore.

Yeah. And so, so I don't think that, no, you can't bring back the economic prosperity. Unions worked in Hollywood when Hollywood had a natural monopoly. IE it wasn't easy to produce films in a disparate region of locations. Yeah. Now it is. Mobility changes

Simone Collins: things for sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so unions only work when you have a captive market.

When you don't have a captive market. Unions have the opposite effect.

Simone Collins: None of this changes the fact that for the people at the time, it felt pretty freaking good. It felt pretty, but [00:13:00] we can't recreate that. And I'm with you on that. But, but

Malcolm Collins: I'm not actually point out, I mean, I go into the actual economics of the food because my understanding is that if you actually look at cost of living of today versus the 1950s, it was, it was actually lower today than in the 1950s for your average person.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I will get into that. I'll get into that. Go. But I'm not, it's, no, it's, it's later. This is my episode. It's later. Okay. Go. We get to do it my way because this isn't, get outta my office. You let me cook. Okay. But so another element of this that was. I mean, it, it was obviously tied to economic growth and whatnot, but quality of life and social stability were both better.

And this is one of those things where I think it should start to become apparent that you can totally recreate this on a family or personal culture level. But there was a perception of positive change, which we should totally have now. Material comforts were improving. The 1950 saw widespread adoption of new technologies, televisions, cars, home appliances, and these rapidly improved daily life.

Like, my grandmother was a French war bride. She grew up. In [00:14:00] France doing laundry with like washboards, you know? And then she just was so freaking amazed when she got a washing machine. She just thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world. It blew her mind. And I don't think people realized just, you know, how amazing that was for people, but also like how low tech their lives were.

Even in the fifties when, I don't know when a washing machine is the thing that is the highlight of your year. Do you really crave to go back to that period? But there was more, more community, relatively speaking in social cohesion. There was a strong emphasis, emphasis on social and, and community life.

And this was the era of setting your kids out to play all afternoon until it was dinnertime or the sunset, and then expecting 'em to come home and everything would be okay. And then of course there was that economic optimism, but also mental health and wellbeing were just. Better. It was normal to start a successful middle class life out of high school, whereas now we infantalize people like crazy.

But yeah, I, I mean in that social class video that I just referenced earlier, the, the middle class character in the video just gets a white collar job straight out of high [00:15:00] school. I mean, can you imagine that happening commonly now? I mean, it's gonna come back to that soon, which is great. And, and cultural and mental health was better.

Emotions were seen as harmful. And, and I can, I can give you,

Malcolm Collins: realizing that it's a better way to deal with mental health.

Simone Collins: I can give you a a, a video clip of there's, there's literally one of those, another one of those 1950s instructional videos where an instructor is connecting emotions to fire.

Just is perfect. Like yes.

Speaker 2: Before men learned how to control fire and put it to work, it was man's greatest enemy. In much the same way, your emotions can be your own greatest enemy or under control, your emotions can make you healthier and happier and improve the lives of people around you. I think of fire in connection with emotions because when you become stirred up, when your emotions control your actions.

It affects not only yourself, but the people around you.

Simone Collins: And it did feel a lot more stable and predictable for people. And [00:16:00] there were stronger community support networks, also clothing. They had mad men. We literally have Idiocracy

Malcolm Collins: like, right, but here's the thing, 1950s, what it had in closing. Yeah. Which by the way, you can still wear if you want.

It lacked in food. If you have ever seen pictures of food from the 1950s, oh yes. Let me

Simone Collins: send you some, let me send you some. Okay. First I'm gonna send you just pictures. Pictures of clothing, just so, because I think you may, we, it's been a while since we've watched Idiocracy. But like when you look at clothing from Idiocracy, it, it might as well just be clothing from today.

Like, we were walking at Walmart this morning. Oh, literally is just, isn't this literally just what you saw this morning at Walmart?

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Right? Oh my God. We actually dressed are not you and me, but everyone else. And we want, we like, why don't you dress like everyone else? Walmart. Doesn't this look

Simone Collins: like the clothing that was on the rocks?

Malcolm Collins: Actually, oh, in the 1950s. So sharp.

Simone Collins: I know. It's so sharp. But yeah. Let me, okay. I'm gonna send you pictures of 1950s food, because people

Malcolm Collins: [00:17:00] may not know this, but I used to always wear a suit and tie. Yeah, you look

Simone Collins: great.

Malcolm Collins: And people could say, why did you stop always wearing a suit and tie? And it's because it made me look younger like too young.

Like I look. Like a kid when I wear a suit and tie. And so I you know, as, as it's funny, many of our, our, our viewers you know, they, they take us out to be, and this is the first time in my life where I've really been surprised by this. Yeah. I think like older, relative to them than we are.

I think many of them perceive themselves as younger than they actually are. I remember one of them was like on our, when our, our episode on four chan, they were like, oh, this is such like a boomer's take on four chan. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on here. Like my generation was the generation that was using four chan as it was becoming culturally relevant and a thing.

You have only lived in the, in the territory. We built like four chan isn't some modern, edgy thing. Four chan is my generation, my college, my high school. Like what are you talking about, man? Anyway.

Simone Collins: [00:18:00] Now you're sounding like a boomer. Okay, boomer. But like I just sent you a picture of 1950s party food. Okay.

And what we're looking at is a spread of like sliced, sliced bread. Some, some like meat patties. God, that looks disgusting. There are two cheese sandwiches. And then there's a, a weird vat of. Red stuff and, and some cheese. Then I sent a picture of a, a very basic modern charcuterie board, which includes dragon fruit, sliced pear, pomegranate fig jam with toasted pita bread slices.

A a container of mixed. Nuts and dried berries. Grapes skewered like, it, it, oh, and star fruit, of course. So there's all these exotic fruits that have been imported from all around the world.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I, I, I mean, a lot of them are things that you might be surprised, used to be rarer, like pineapples or bananas.

Or yeah, like those things, you didn't get them, you, you don't get the ability to transport things that you do get like apples. You wouldn't get those all year round in the [00:19:00] 1950s. Oh,

Simone Collins: but, but here, let me show you a great example of apples in 1950s cuisine. Check out this beautiful. I, I don't know if it's dessert or if it's a savory dish.

Check it out. It's, it's looking at some with

Malcolm Collins: shrimp inside.

Simone Collins: Yes, there's green jello with shrimp inside. There's maybe cottage cheese in the center of the bunt shaped jello thing, and then some apple tastefully arranged around the side. Doesn't that look yummy, Malcolm? Oh my God. That's, but if you haven't, if your appetite isn't completely surging, now let me show you this amazing 1950s casserole highlighting the.

The beauty of the hot dog. What we're basically

Malcolm Collins: looking

Simone Collins: at is some kind of, that is

Malcolm Collins: horrifying.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. It looks kind of like an ode to brutalist architecture with coleslaw on top.

Malcolm Collins: You can't see because they're watching this on audio. They cut hot dogs. Half and then put them on like the outside of a cake of some sort with

Simone Collins: coleslaw on top.

Yeah. So it's like, I, I think it's a casserole, but it's like a a, a [00:20:00] tall casserole with coleslaw on top and

Malcolm Collins: just me is even the simplest of dishes. They seem to have been unable to cook. No, no, no. This was, this was a fancy dish. No, this was you showing off Malcolm. You know what I mean? Is like, you're like, well, certainly at least they can make good steak or a good burger, and it's like, no.

Apparently somehow they couldn't. Because I've seen pictures of burgers and steaks from the 1950s and they look terrible. They look like a school cafeteria. Food. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and, and people are like, why was food so bad in the 1950s? Few core reasons. They had only just figured out refrigeration.

Mm-hmm. So they were using, overusing it in areas they probably shouldn't have been. Well,

Simone Collins: and, and yeah, also it was, it was really, they didn't have, cold chain, like supply chains where you have refrigerated trucks and then refrigerated warehouses. And so it was really hard to have things like. Frozen meat or other things, or fruits or flowers from far away fish being taken over.

So when you had vegetables, it was quite often canned vegetables or canned meat. The canning was way more common for like the [00:21:00] major source of the food you were eating. Yeah. And then of course there was less globalization, so you weren't getting these foreign things imported from far away. I mean, you had apples because they were domestically produced.

Malcolm Collins: You often couldn't get, you know, you would, you, I, I mean, I, even my dad, you know, grew up after the 1950s you know, many stories about him first encountering things like sushi or curry or

Simone Collins: Yeah.

In media, you'll often see jokes about how bad white people food is. And I think within modern times we can look at this and say, oh, what a silly little racist joke. But in actuality, when you go to these historic examples and you look at these pictures, you're like, oh wow. Before we started adopting ingredients in cooking techniques.

from other cultures, this food does actually look pretty awful

Uncle Roger: Next ingredient. I have this in my home all the time now. Chili Jam. It's what I tell you, it's not Asian ingredient. What he doing with Chili Jam? Let's see. Brilliant for cooking. It's got heat, but it's also got the [00:22:00] sweetness and it's gonna kind of glaze. Oh, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 5: no, no, no, no, no. Putting gem in rice.

This is disgusting. Who put gem? First of all, what is chili Jam? Uncle Roger know fresh chili, chili oil. Chili flake. Never heard of chili Jam. Is this how you treat white people to eating chili? You give them fresh chili, they go, no, no, no. I don't actually like chili. Give them chili jam, and they go, oh.

Malcolm Collins: other things that we might consider a normal part of daily life.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, that these were very foreign, exciting things.

Also, our aesthetic standards, and this is something that, that some viewers of this podcast have, have brought up to me multiple times. Just like the, the aesthetic standards we hold to our interior decoration and to our food are just so insanely high now. So I'm gonna send you two pictures of just one is a sort of a standard 1950s birthday party.

The kids are wearing like, clearly homemade paper hats, looks like from like a newspaper or [00:23:00] something. There, there's like a, a plastic tablecloth and, and paper cups and a chip bowl or whatever. And like someone's grandmother's in a corner smiling look, you know, looking like she's just the best host ever.

Like clearly this is, this is an impressive party for a middle class family. And then I'm also sending a picture of Shirley Temple's birthday party. She's cutting a much larger cake, but I'm gonna be honest with you, it looks. Kinda like a botched homemade cake with it looks

Malcolm Collins: like I what the standard of what I would get from my local grocery store.

Simone Collins: Well, no, no, no, no. Let me actually show you the standards of our local area. So I'm just gonna show you a picture of the cake counter from Wegmans, which is a local. Okay, a local grocery store here. These, now we're looking at perfectly executed fruit tarts cakes you know, elaborately made cakes to look like.

Cups of hot chocolate. This is the future. And then let me show you just a picture. I just chose a random local bakery in Collegeville in this case. It, it's from the, the. Collegeville Cakery. [00:24:00] I think this is just a, just one of their class. And I took this from Google Reviews too, and you can see it in someone's house, like there's like sheets in the background.

Okay. This is not a, a, a commercial photo.

Malcolm Collins: Wow, that's an impressive

Simone Collins: cake. Yeah, this cake ain't got nothing on Shirley Temple's cake. We're now looking at a lopsided recreation of the, of the sleeping beauty cake from the Disney movie that has like all these crazy stacked layers held up by a broom.

Our standards today for food are incredibly high and incredibly luxurious. And

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, I'd even say in women, I think many people who haven't watched 1950s movies. Forget that. Women of the 1950s are just not very attractive. I don't know what, well, movie

Simone Collins: stars look great, but also they're highly airbrushed.

People weren't, people weren't nearly as overweight and obese, so I would actually argue that like women were more attractive because they were not as unhealthy.

Malcolm Collins: Many people would call 1950s movie stars pretty mid by modern standards.

Simone Collins: Yes, but the average person, like when I look at [00:25:00] vintage colorized footage of the 1950s.

Yeah. And I mean, what we have now is a bunch of twos and threes compared to that moving around on the streets and what was strolling on the streets in the fifties and sixties, which a bunch of fives and sixes. So I'm gonna push back on that. And a lot of that was the clothing. But also I need to point out that in the 1950s, people spent nine to 14% of their annual income.

Just to buy fewer than 25 garments per year. But these were investment pieces. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. Not sorry. Go over that, that, that statistic again. That's pretty crazy.

Simone Collins: Nine to 14% of annual income to get how many garments? To get? Fewer than 25 garments per year.

Malcolm Collins: Wow.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And more, most clothing was made in the US It was good looking clothing.

You didn't have a lot of it, but yeah, people look good because they spent a lot. And I think this is one of those things where people are like, oh man, like the 1950 was, was so affordable. You wanna guess how, what percentage of annual income we spend on our clothing now Malcolm for? For approximately 70 garments a year, seven zero.

Malcolm Collins: What do you think? Okay. I, I'm [00:26:00] gonna guess like 1%, 2%, 3%,

Simone Collins: around 3%. Come on. But for 70 garments though, so,

Malcolm Collins: but I mean, I, well, and this is, this is for everyone. If you look at families who are being intentional about it mm-hmm. I'd be almost certain our family spends less than 0.5%. Oh for

Simone Collins: sure. Because we're really careful.

We have our kid uniforms. I just bought probably all of our kids clothing for the next. Foreseeable future because on Prime Day, a bunch of Amazon basics and kids sizes came out in like our family uniform. So like the black, everything,

Malcolm Collins: everything I wear is Amazon Basics. Amazon basics. My jeans are Amazon Basics.

My, my wife and no sponsorship. Come on Amazon. Yeah, I wanted Amazon basic Spartan insert ship. I'm, I know, yeah.

Simone Collins: That if, if we could just get that in Coors Light, it would be perfect. It'd be so natural. But yeah. One of the arguments that I do want to make here is that as much as people butt hurt about the fifties being affordable.

We actually spent a lot more in the fifties on certain things, and we spend a lot less now. But here's the [00:27:00] thing that got me when I was doing research for this episode. This is, well, no, I also

Malcolm Collins: point out that travel was basically impossible in the 1950s for you. People spent you know, even, even was it being more expensive in the 1950s, they spent a smaller percent of their budget on it, simply because it was inaccessible for most people.

Yeah, so travel

Simone Collins: wasn't unusual in the 1950s. In general, it was, it was typically domestic. It was car based and it was not luxurious airfare. If you did do it was 6% of annual income. Now, airfare is less than 1% today. In recent surveys indicate that the average American family spends about 10% of their annual income on travel with some families spending up to 15%, whereas a typical two week family vacation by car in the 1950s would cost around 300 to $400, and that was.

Like only seven to 10% of annual income for a middle class family taking a single significant trip a year, a two week trip though and families who traveled less or took shorter trips would only spend two to 5%. So yeah, we definitely spend less on,

Malcolm Collins: I've heard stories about them from my dad. They would get in a car and they'd drive for like [00:28:00] 14 hours to like at some ocean house, and they'd, yeah.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Your family used to drive from Texas to the Jersey shore every summer. Right. And just kind of camp out. Yeah. I think it's like a

Malcolm Collins: multi-day drive. Yeah. I I I can imagine miserable when you don't, keep in mind they didn't have phones to read in the car. Exactly. They didn't have Exactly. You couldn't read a book 'cause you get car sick.

You know, you, you would,

Simone Collins: as they call it these days, raw doggett.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Raw dogged it for multiple day journeys.

Simone Collins: That's, that's, yeah. Without, this was before air conditioning. This was when you had to roll down your windows with a crank. I mean, I

Malcolm Collins: remember how much it transformed travel to have screens in front of you.

Oh my God. To be able to the

Simone Collins: luxury. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, throughout my entire childhood there were no, there were no screens. But so yeah, I mean, so if we wanna talk about. Affordability. It is true for too, like to the point of of housing that housing costs were more, and we can't fix that 'cause in, okay.

In the 1950s, American families spent, we'll say 17 to 22% of their annual income on housing. [00:29:00] And now the percentage of income spent on housing is risen to 25 to 30% for most American households. But given that nine to 14% of income was spent on clothing in the fifties. Whereas 3% is spent today, that alone in savings costs the cover, sorry, covers the cost of, of increased housing.

Like the, it's, it's super unfair that people are like, oh, it was too expensive because now we're spending so much less on other things and people are like,

Malcolm Collins: well, why do clothes cost so much less today? It's in part because we did do the outsourcing thing. Exactly. Yeah. We need benefit. The same reason why we don't have unions.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I want a, a, a, a starving child in China making my shirts. Not some starving child in America.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, America has better, you know, support services for the starving children. There's Snap and EBT and like all, all the, those, you know, in free healthcare in most states for, for children at low incomes.

Whereas in China, you know, they, they need the income. Okay, let 'em, let 'em have it. And also like there, there's a [00:30:00] lot of other sort of misleading things. I feel like I'm being gaslit about the fifties, like technically gasoline and cars were, were less expensive in the fifties, but it's not the full picture because overall transportation.

Transportation today doesn't meaningfully cost more. In the fifties, American families spent around 15% of their household than income on transportation, which included cars and public transport. But in recent years, families spend 15 to 18%, so only as much as 2% want more of their household than income on transportation.

Plus, you don't need any more. To drive to rent a movie or get daily groceries or talk with your friends, because now you have, we have bigger refrigeration units. We, we have deep freezers if we want them that are more widely available. You can get bulk food delivery. You'd like, it used to be that, to do anything, to see a friend, to talk to a friend, you had to drive somewhere, especially if you're in like if you weren't in a city.

So, yeah, I just don't think things are being. Adequately presented. And also to your point about food, if you still prepare it yourself, especially in 1950s [00:31:00] style, like if you're eating canned vegetables and hot dog

Malcolm Collins: towers, I'd also point out that people romanticize the gender relationship in the 1950s.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They're like, oh, as a man, you know, it was so great. You know, when women. Okay, so first of all, in the 1950s women spanking their, their wives was pretty normalized. Can you imagine having to spank your wife, like, outside of a sexual context they, it, it seems like such an effort. Like you, you have what you, you treat your wife like an additional child.

How does that make your life easier or better? Like, do you actually want Yeah, it's hard for me

Simone Collins: to imagine that it actually happened that much. I feel like it had. Into the media is like a cute thing. It happened

Malcolm Collins: in movies. So clearly, yeah, it happened, it was happening in people's house. It was not treated as like a, oh my God, I can't believe he did that.

It was like, that's a normal part of being married. So, you know, clearly it was happening.

Simone Collins: I guess maybe, I don't know. I just don't think most men went. And then

Malcolm Collins: women, you know, you had this big problem in the 1950 of all these housewives being on all these drugs. Enzos Yes, yes. Enzos to get through today.

So [00:32:00] what I, I've got this drugged up childlike wife. Do I need to spank? You need to spank. No deal. To keep in line. Yeah. I prefer that my wife just does this stuff herself and I think that people also as men. Over romanticize the concept of the wife just staying at home and doing all the, the childcare.

I really prefer sharing childcare duties with my wife because I really like being around my kids.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. You'd be missing out if you were being a, a tread wife, dad. And most of the families we know who are really, you know, ISTs, the, the men of the houses love the love spending time with their kids, but.

Yeah. I mean, like we, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No more time with the kids for you. You just I, I can't even imagine, like, I love, think about the world that we're entering today where you have more work from home, you have more gig work, you have more, even if you're, you're earning less and your earnings are not as stable.

Consider what your life would be like if you went every day to work at a factory all day [00:33:00] long. Yeah. And then you came home. And you had a wife and, and some kids and that was your interaction with them. And then on weekends you'd go to, I don't know, barbecues or something. I, which I wouldn't like doing anyway.

I'd have to like talk to people. It's so funny. Parties, like children's parties today because I go to them and other people in the comments at least tell me if this is your experience. None of the parents talk. All the parents just stand around looking awkwardly at their phones or something. And I remember when I was a kid and you had the children play stuff, the the, the parents would do it.

So the parents could interact.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We have video footage of it. Like we have proof the parents are hanging out and talking. Yeah, today

Malcolm Collins: it's, and I want Simone to go with me to one if Simone never goes to any of this stuff, 'cause that's my responsibility. But I want her to go just for anthropological reasons, to just be like, take a separate car.

Just be there for 30 minutes so you can see what it's like, because it's weird.

Simone Collins: I do kind of, I I, I should witness this because I find it hard to believe and people'll

Malcolm Collins: be like, oh, that's horrible. You know, the reality is, is I don't wanna talk to [00:34:00] these people. I don't, I, I've got friends online who I'm better matched for, and I've got my wife at home and my kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but still my point remains that you can, if you want to recreate this life like education, sure. It's, it's, it's unsustainable, expensive now, but it also can be circumvented with ai. And we talked about this at, at length in the AI and social class episode that we released. And same with employment.

A AI is gonna wipe again away the, the need for university degrees. So we're getting back to that fifties. You can start right out of high school or even before scenario. And we're, we're about to hit an age of major wealth opportunity for those who are willing to work for it, which is exactly how it was in the fifties.

You still had to work for it to have upward social mobility. So don't think that people weren't working their butts off to get anywhere in the fifties because they absolutely were. They worked really hard. Then this quality of life thing, this, this, this, oh, well the fifties were this time of optimism and there was all this techno optimism and everything.[00:35:00]

We, you can absolutely unplug from negative media channels and you'll see things are actually getting better and they're way better than they were in the fifties. Just look at those food pictures. And with, with mental health too, you can opt into better mental health stability. Predictably. If you thoughtfully own your objective function, like you know what your values and your life plan are, and you live within your means, you can have a stable and predictable life.

It's all these people who are trying to opt into a, a clearly unsustainable culture that they don't even own, like they haven't thoughtfully chosen it for themselves who are living precariously.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I point out a few things here. Yeah. If you're like, I want cheaper. Rent. Right? Like that's what the 1950s had that I want.

Well, you actually have options for that today. You can totally can go to a rural area and get a house. I mean, that's what we did. We, we got our house in our house. If it was in the Bay Area, my God, what would it cost you, do you think? 13, $10 million? At least 13. And I would, I would guess

Simone Collins: maybe. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But out here it's, it, it was less than half a million when we got it.

[00:36:00] Um mm-hmm. You know, so like. Great house and everything like that. You, you, I mean, and now you might have to go further rural than we went. Or you go to a, a, a developing country, which you couldn't easily do or live in, in the 1950s and you can today.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That is 100% an option. So yeah, I mean, you can live the 1950s fantasy.

You just have to be intentional about it and be willing to break with mainstream norms, which shouldn't be hard given how toxic they are. But I mean, even better than that. You can literally live the techno optimist 1950s feature so you can live the fantasy that people had in the 1950s. Like you can have more sustainable marriages in which most like both partners contribute professionally, and even the kids, you can have greater social mobility.

Because if, well at least if you ride the AI wave properly and, and you can have way more luxury given modern tech. Plus, we need to really be grateful for all the medical advancements that were not available. In the 1950s, like keep in mind the first kidney transplant was in the fifties. That was [00:37:00] experimental and they were not like organ transplants in general.

Were not, were not widespread. We didn't have ozempic, we didn't have advanced antibiotics, we didn't have modern chemotherapy or targeted therapies. No gene therapy. No, IVF. So you know, we would be. Childless and miserable. No statins, no cardiovascular medications that are anywhere close to what we have now.

No modern imaging, so no, no PET scans. No CCE CT scans. No MRIs. There was no endoscopy. So like, you couldn't have a really simple surgery where they just kind of went in with a tiny precision cut. They just, they just had to slice you all the way open. And, and I just. I can't emphasize enough, like also like just advanced antibiotics, you know, you only had some really simple stuff, so I, I just, it's, it's so bizarre to me that people crave this.

When you can have it, you can have the fantasy they wanted. I. And yet you're here, you are b******g about it. No, don't give me that. Like live

Malcolm Collins: it. What gets me is, I think it's the culture of the 1950s [00:38:00] that people want that, that even that, even the thing that people think was really working uhhuh wasn't.

They think, oh, well we had economic stability, which we only had 'cause the rest of the world was destroyed at that time. Yeah. Which changed our economy.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and so, so you can't really pine for it for those reasons. That's pining for something that you cannot recreate. Yeah. Or they pine for it for, oh, well, you know, women back then, you know, really knew their place in a relationship and I'm like, or.

You can find a woman who was in a modern context, who is willing to build the type of relationship that you want to build, right? Like, and, and, and those women are out there. They're Abso. Simone wasn't like when I found because there were a, a number of women I considered marrying before Simone. And not one of them, did I have the issue of them being like progressive brain minded or like, and they were all like progressive to some extent, right?

Like, because back then I was a progressive, right? And

Simone Collins: also most highly educated women are progressive and you pretty much exclusively, like, none of them

Malcolm Collins: were like, oh, I'm against, you know, [00:39:00] women having a different role than men. Or I would expect X or Y Like I, I think what people don't. What often men don't think about is many of the ways in which relationship norms have become more flexible.

Benefit both parties. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Not just women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, imagine if we were super rigid about it, you would have to do our taxes and finances.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: you don't wanna do that. You don't wanna do that. You wouldn't, and you would've had to muck out the sink this morning. Oh my God. Malcolm, like I'm used to mucking out drains.

But the smell of this one, I like almost vomited. It was, I don't know what was going on with it, but it was not good. Hey, at least the drain cleaner worked. I know that thing. Like clean it out like a ramrod. 'cause it basically was family motto.

Malcolm Collins: It was a on a thing my family used to run called Crazy Water crystals on the radio station.

They'd say they'll clean you out like a ramrod.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:40:00] Because what was it called? Healing Springs,

Malcolm Collins: Texas. Crazy water. Crazy water mineral Wells, Texas

Simone Collins: Mineral Wells, Texas. Yeah. They had some kind of like retreat thing and, and product out of mineral. I love that.

Malcolm Collins: My family actually, that'd be a fun thing to bring back Crazy water.

I think that, that, that would do well with modern branding.

Simone Collins: There's literally, like we bought for your brother for his birthday. You can literally find on eBay crazy water crystals, memorabilia, memorabilia, like little pamphlets about it. You can buy. Model train

Malcolm Collins: pieces? Well, because they owned almost the entire town.

So they, they created basically a resort town, like an Aspen before an Aspen. And they, because you could commute to it from Dallas, this was before planes. And they owned almost everything in the town is my understanding. And so it was like, imagine. Imagine of a Malcolm world, like a Hershey Park or something like that.

Come and enjoy yourself at the wonderful crazy town for crazy people.

I was looking up pictures of the town, if you're watching this on audio. And, , the banner over the main street when you enter town says, welcome to the [00:41:00] home of crazy with crazy and giant, wacky yellow font. , And the big company looming in the background that the family owned was crazy. Well, water company.

Um, and so I think, you know, I, I've mentioned before like that the backwards culture or tradition that my family comes from really didn't like attempting to look. Um. You know, pretentious or overly high status or overly like normalized and vulgarity was seen as authenticating, like showing that you don't think that you're better than people, and this is very much the 1950s way of doing that, or the 1950s way of being Malcolm.

Simone Collins: Like the mineral water there just gave you massive diarrhea. It was secure. That's where cleans you out like a ramrod came from. Like you just, I don't know. You took it and it was like a major, it just everything came out. But sometimes you need that

Malcolm Collins: clean yell, like a ri.

That's the way you communicate with Texas audience. We're all Texas audience. [00:42:00] That's great. That's perfect. Clean yell like a ri rod.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, yeah. The, the, the thing is too, I love retro futurism. And, and the funny thing is, is we have that, I mean, I was just talking with you yesterday about how I loved the fact that.

I heard our kids griping downstairs after bedtime, and I was just too exhausted from cleaning up after dinner and everything and making dinner to go down and figure it out, what was going on. But I, I could drop in, I could just like get on my phone and drop in on the Alexa device. It was in their room playing them.

Like sleep noises and just be like, okay guys, what's up? And then, you know, so we, we negotiated what they wanted. Hugs. I was like, well how about I sing you a song and then what song? And I'm just like, this is the future We live in the retro future environment. There, there's all these videos you can watch about the retro, futuristic house the House of the Future.

There were so many of those videos in the 1950s, you know, advertising various things and the power of plastics. And while there's not an exact translation. And Elon Musk loves to quote his son [00:43:00] Saxon who, who once said, why does the future not look like the future? Or why does today not look like the future?

But it does like it, it's not an exact, we don't have flying cars, but that's 'cause who wants to get a pilot license to get a car, you know, like that you don't understand the air traffic control problems you would have with that, that it is just not a practical solution. And, and so yeah, I just, it really, it, it bothers me.

But I'm also, so I'm, I'm bothered by the fact that people aren't just. Living the type of 1950s they want. And this is also a really common complaint that we have about culture in general. Like people get really mad about, oh, like there's this culture and I don't like that they're winning or whatever.

But they don't just, the point about culture is if you see something you like, don't complain about it. Take the parts you like it, incorporate it into your culture, and live it and thrive.

Malcolm Collins: This is, this is I think, a problem with you know, the people who fantasize about the 1950s again, they're like, well, you know, dating would've been easier for me in the 1950s, or, or, or something like that.

You know, they'll say and I'm like, it [00:44:00] reminds me of the communists who are like, I want communism. And I'm like, you understand that? If this was a communist system, you would be the underclass. Like you wouldn't be in the ruling regime. Yeah. You're the same people in the ruling regime. They just have more power.

It'd be Trump as head of the communist, you know, dictatorship. Yeah. You know, the, this, this doesn't put you in a better position vis-a-vis where you are now. You just imagine yourself as somebody who was a position of power within this new ecosystem. Yeah. And I think when people reflect back on the 1950s, they don't realize.

If you're watching this show, you probably would've been one of the nerds playing like Dungeon and Dragons. I don't, I don't think that existed yet, but you know what I mean? Something like that, right? Yeah. You, you wouldn't have been you know, captain of the football team, okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The girls wouldn't have noticed you you wouldn't have had an easier time, you know, they were playing with their own difficulties within that time period as we have within ours.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Although, I mean, again, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of bad stuff that I [00:45:00] thought was really, really, I mean, and it was like, for example, this is gonna, it's just, you might wanna cut this out. But yeah, it was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really dunk on is the experience of black Americans in the 1950s, and I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like, oh, okay.

Well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women. Or married, roughly comparable to white women. Marriage rates were higher before the 1960s was 61% of, of black adults married in 1960.

Malcolm Collins: And and their kids born out of wedlock were fi were were half the white rate today, it's like 86% or so. Yeah. By 2008,

Simone Collins: only 32% of black adults were married.

A 44% decline from 1960. And there was a much smaller drop among white adults. They just went from 74 to 56. And also fertility and out of wedlock births. Way worse after the 1950s and the 1950s, only 4% of US births overall were out of wedlock. And for black infants, the rate was approximately 70 to 25% in the early 17 to 25% in the early 1960s.

Note she misspoke [00:46:00] here. I went back and double checked, , the amount of black births in the Americas in the 1950s where they were born out of wedlock was less than 5%. I.

By 20 23, 20 4% of all US births were out of wedlock. But black infants soared to born out of wedlock, soared to 77.3%, up from 25% in 1965. So, I mean, and also like in, in, in the 1950s, mental health stigma was severe. But also like people didn't, they didn't make it a thing. And there's this, there's just

Malcolm Collins: some like, which is actually mentally healthier than making it a thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I mean, I think some of that still kind of lingers in, in black culture today. Like, I actually think black culture today is more resilient to the mental health toxicity that we see, especially among white. Women, white, urbanized female. Yeah. Gyno culture today. And there's, there's this YouTube shorts channel called Subway Takes where this guy talks about like, white [00:47:00] people need to stop, like.

Calling people autistic and just like, sort of medicalizing everything. And he, he describes like an autistic, like if, if there were like a black dude at like a black or a black household with someone who's autistic, they'd just be like, I don't know, that's Clark. Like, whatever. Like, that's just him. Like what?

Like he's, he's, he's doing him, you know, like he's just, they just leave it alone. They don't make it a thing. And when I, when I think about all the autism, autism interventions we've, we've had for our kids so far. I mean, I kind of feel like just helping them deal with life in a, in a more normal way is, is just as effective as like the really expensive therapies we've tried.

Well, I

Malcolm Collins: mean, it makes an interesting point, which is the integration. Of and, and sort of destruction of black culture in the United States since the 1950s. So it can be completely subsumed by the urban monoculture.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's really broken the idea of a unique Black American identity. Oh my

Simone Collins: god. Yeah. No.

Speaking of Subway takes, I'll share this with you. There's another one where [00:48:00] the, this, this woman is, and it's a black woman and she's like, no, bring back segregation. Like, I'm serious. Like one I wanna know if I'm not welcome. And two, also like. White food sucks. Like bring, bring the spice, bring the flavor.

Subway takes: So what's your take? Bring back segregation. A hundred percent disagree. Dead at, bring it back. I wanna know where. I'm not welcome. Okay. Put them signs back up. Colored only, whites only. Let's do it. All right. Rip the bandaid off. Especially for a restaurant. Are you kidding me? Whites only? What do I wanna do in there?

Speaker 4: Okay. You were saying that the black excellence Absolutely. The segregation is to get the, the

Subway takes: colored excellence. Okay. Okay. What's the playlist in the whites only spot? They playing Carry Underwood and Kid Rock.

We playing Babyface and Diggable Planet. Ain't no overhead lighting. . Black people spend over a trillion dollars a year. I would love for the government to force us to spend it on our old people.

You know, this is, this is very good. Yes. I like this a lot.

Simone Collins: Like it's sort of this, this, this desire to bring back black exceptionalism as well. And yeah, you're right. This like forced integration that [00:49:00] and therefore cultural erasure, homogenization. Yeah. Like, okay. So now like, is is, is black culture better off now? Like, I mean it's obviously there were horrible things about, about.

Like pre-Civil rights United States and post civil rights. I mean, systemic racism is real well, et cetera. You know, I, I acknowledge all of that, but okay, so like fertility is worse out of, out of wedlock births are worse. And, you know, having two parents really does make a difference in kids' outcomes.

So like, this is kind of a big deal. Mental health is worse, even. It's not as bad as, as white mental health even today. Wealth too. The, the, the black in the 1950s, the black white wealth gap narrowed after World War ii. So, it, it, it actually improved a lot in the fifties, but how, how

Malcolm Collins: is it compared to It hasn't

Simone Collins: improved really.

It remains entrenched. And in, in wow, black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged since 1953. So despite all the improvements, like black families

Malcolm Collins: are more wealthy Oh yeah. The, the, the black people have [00:50:00] it so much better than in 1950. That is wild to hear that They actually, the, the wealth gap has not improved since 1953.

It actually, I like, I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true, right? Like, this doesn't sound true to me. So I decided to start Googling it and oh my god, it's so much worse than I thought. , If you look at, , this graph by the Washington Post, , which is looking at medium household wealth adjusted for inflation since the 1950s, white wealth has.

, Gone up about three x black wealth. Median adjusted household for household is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s. Then look at this graph, which is median net worth. Adjusted by household. Again, you see the same thing, , and this time it more than triples for white wealth. And black wealth again, goes up by significantly less.

, Maybe one 10th.

I then thought to myself, well, okay. Maybe when in relation to whites, [00:51:00] blacks were better off than they are today, , and in relation to their relationships or probability of being born out of wedlock. But certainly that's offset by the risk of racial violence. , And so then I decided to go back and say, okay, so what was the actual rates of racial violence in the 1950s and throughout the 1950s, there were six people, , killed by lynchings.

, That's. A lot less than I thought. , And so then I was like, okay, well what if we then move that to all forms of racial violence against black communities over the course of the entire 1950s? You then get 24 victims, , which while a tragedy is significantly less than I had been led to believe by popular media.

The same AI that gave me that 25 number for the 1950s when I asked it how many blacks had been killed in the past 10 years, , due to racial violence, it gave me a number of 50 to a hundred anti-black hate crime homicides over the last decade. Which, okay, it may be that it [00:52:00] is more sensitive. What counts as an anti-black, , murder today than back then? I will give it that, but I think it at least challenges this preconception we have that, . Hate crime has gone significantly down, , or racial inequality has gone significantly down over the last 50 years.

And what I'll find funny that I'm sure some people will take this to be a racist point for us to be saying actually racism hasn't gone down as much a