who the fuck is dodging both korea and vietnam in an age of general conscription?
Be born in 1949
Fake and attracted to same gender.
There is no war in Vietnam
The 60s? Don’t have to fight in a war?
Are we just rewriting history to ignore Vietnam?
all these pussies breaking ankles and citing bone spurs know a real man shits his pants right in front of the officer
found Ted Nugent’s lemmy account
What % of the population actually fought in the war?
Page 45 of this PDF has a good chart. It shows that about 26.8 million men were draft eligible in that generation, and about 8.7 million enlisted, 2.2 million were drafted, and 16.0 million never served, including about 570,000 apparent draft dodgers.
About 2.1 million actually went to Vietnam, and about 1.55 million were in combat roles in Vietnam. 51,000 were killed.
So roughly:
- 41% of that generation of men were in the military
- 8% of that generation went to Vietnam
- 6% of that generation fought in Vietnam
- About 0.2% of that generation died in Vietnam
Not enough to win it
Don’t mind me, just thinking about how peaceful Americans were between 1949 and 1965
That generation got paid $45 an hour in today’s value.
Federal minimum wage in 1965 was $1.25/h, which is $12.69/h today. Looks like Alaska had the highest state minimum at $2.10, $21.32 today. Or were you taking more average rather than minimum wage?
They’re not talking about “wage”, they’re talking about “value”. I’m assuming “purchasing power”.
They never said anything about minimum wage.
In 2023 median hourly wage was $19.24/h, vs in 1979 it was $4.44/h or $19.56/h inflation adjusted. (This data doesn’t go back to 1965 unfortunately)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/185335/median-hourly-earnings-of-wage-and-salary-workers/
There is a reason median is used here… If you take into account the massive (and constantly growing) income gap, it’s obvious that things have gotten worse for the average American.
You’ve got it backwards, median takes into account income gap better. Mean would be much higher today because of the increasing income gap. That is why I used the median, so that interesting inequality would be less of a factor.
Idk who’s closer, guys. Where the sauce at :u
If you scale it to housing prices, it’s even more ridiculous.
Are you thinking of a particular source? I couldn’t find substantiation for $45/h.
I calculated this a few years ago, but It shouldnt’ve changed much. Take the year 1960 or whichever year that you can get all the following reliable information: Minimum wage, and median two bed house cost/sale price, for the specific area or state.
The minimum wage in my area in 1955 was equivalent to double what it is now, and with the housing market (and omitting tax because it’s too dynamic) minimum wage then was enough to earn a house’s value in four years. To earn the equivalent house’s value before tax in the next four years, in my area, minimum wage must more than treble to $45/h. (to get $360,000)
Graphing the min wage with house costs between 1955, 1985 and 2015 shows an exponentially increasing slope which, if no market crash happens, will continue. As it is, factoring the cost of living and taxes, it would take over 100 years to buy a house on $15/h.
My first house in 1999 was an older 4 bdrm on 14 acres of land for $50 grand. There were a lot of homes in the 30-40 grand range but lesser yards.
Now those same houses when they go up for sale are selling for 200-250k easily. (My place would be worth more than that… “hobby farms” like what I are selling for even 300-500k here now.)
For note: 50k from 1999 is worth 96k today
Also worth noting: in most areas, that price is exceptionally cheap for what he got, even for the time.
I wish I still had it, but a divorce about 15-20 yrs ago took care of that. I loved it, 1950’s bungalow style house, 2 car garage, small(30ft) barn and a bunch of sheds, nicely treed in.
looking through realtors right now, and spec wise the cheapest thing I can find around here similar to it is up for $389,000 but only has 10 acres.
Prices are/were cheap here because I’m like an hour and a half away from the city.
My 1980s era construction is valued at over 400k. Neighbors been selling recently for 450k-480k. It’s wild that they’ve doubled in cost since covid, after doubling in cost after the bank failures before them.
They left out ‘be white.’ It was a horrific time for anyone else.
I’m starting to think this “Anon” guy just makes shit up!
If OP was 20 in the Summer of '69 then he most certainly was eligible to fight in a war.
Wasn’t it like 8.25% of eligible men were drafted? Which doesn’t include college deferments, “bone spur” avoidance, etc?
More than 9 out of 10 people didn’t get drafted. It certainly sucked for those who did, but the majority didn’t have to worry about war.
I would not have wanted to take my chances of being one of the 1/12. They not have had to worry once it was all over, but while it was happening a lot of people were at risk of being sent to die in a foreign land.
Oh yeah I get what you’re saying, and I’d agree cause I’m sure I’d have been picked (Although I guess we could probably look at the records and see if we would have been drafted based on our birthdays). It still doesn’t change the fact the economy was way better for everyone though.
About 40% of that generation was in the military. 8% were drafted, but a lot of the 32% who voluntarily joined did so in order to exercise some control over where they ended up. Even those who didn’t serve, often had to deal with the overall risk hanging over their head, or were actively committing crimes to avoid the draft. The draft might have only directly affected 8%, but the threat of the draft, and people’s decisions around that issue, was a huge part of that generation’s lived experience.
This post describes an upper-middle class cishet white dude, and that’s it.
Maybe a modern upper-middle class cishet white dude.
The point is that, back then, anyone literally could afford a Plymouth Roadrunner after working a summer job for a month or two.
Yes, it was easier for just anyone to buy a car. Now do the rest of the stuff in that post. None of it was accessible to someone who wasn’t a upper-middle class cishet white dude in the late 60s.
Cars were somewhat cheaper back then, but they were also a lot shittier. Most odometers only had 5 digits because getting it to 100,000 miles was unusual.
Advances in body materials made it so that they no longer disintegrated into rust by the 1980’s, and advances in machine tolerances and factory procedures made it so that cars were routinely hitting 100,000 miles or more by the 1990’s.
A 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner MSRPed for $2,945, in an era when minimum wage was $1.60/hour. That’s 1840 hours worked at minimum wage (46 weeks of full time work), for a car that could probably drive about 100,000 miles, and required a lot more active maintenance.
Now that cars last longer, too, the used car market exists in a way that the 1960s didn’t have. That makes it possible to buy a used car more easily, and for the new cars being purchased to retain a bit more value when they’re sold a few years later.
And that’s to say nothing of fuel economy, where a Roadrunner was getting something like 11 miles per gallon, or safety, back when even medium speed crashes were deadly.
The basic effect, in the end, is that the typical household in 2025 is spending a lower percentage of their budget on transportation, compared to the typical household in 1970.
The golden age for being able to buy and use cheap cars was probably around 2015-2020, before the used car market went nuts.
Yup that was the life for both my brothers (born in 1945 and 1950, me in 57). They kicked it just in time that is for sure.
ITT: Walter Sobchak.
I think Anon is making shit up, willing to bet he wasn’t born in 1949…
