"Everything was better in the past." is a sentiment heard in many contexts and in aviation as well.
Except for medical treatments, medicines, electronics such as computers and the internet and passive safety measures in automobiles, most things WERE better than it is today. That is why it is "a sentiment heard in many contexts".
The infrastructure in America was not crumbled like it is today. The wealth gap was not the worst gap of any industrialized modern nation between the rich and the rest of us like it is today. Dining out usually meant going to a family or small corporate chain where tasty food was actually cooked there on site by a real cook (who earned a living wage) and not pre-made, flash frozen at some distant industrial facility and then trucked in to be "prepared" by low wage, no benefit "food assemblers". And you wonder why all this corporate chain restaurant food tastes equally cr@ppy no matter what state or city you go to? Because it was cooked days or weeks before, then flash frozen, and trucked in. These corporations have tricked you paying high dollars for what is essentially a TV Dinner. They have been doing it now for so long many people think that bland, cr@ppy corporate chain food is the norm. But I remember when it wasn't so, and even going to coffee shops like we frequently did growing up, you got tasty, homestyle food, and the menus were far bigger and with more selections than they have today. And one person in the family could work and provide a middle class life for his family because we actually made things here, money was put back into the businesses and employees and not into offshore bank accounts for the top 1% so they could avoid paying taxes. Blue collar people had a better life because four times as many of them were in unions that ensured that they received a greater percentage of the company profits for the work they did rather than today where that same money is funneled to investors and upper management instead of to the workers who produce the goods in the first place. And don't give me this cr@p about how overpaid union workers made things too expensive by demanding that workers receive a livable wage so they were "forced" to move factories overseas. That's just right wing revisionist bunk. I didn't know one single person back then who could not afford a radio, TV, furniture, going out to eat, or a car, or what not because it was too expensive to buy due to "union wages" -- luxury items yes, but basic necessities of life that made up what is called the middle class, no. In fact working class people had more discretionary income and more things than they do today. You can thank Reagan for changing the tax laws that rewarded a company for shutting down a plant in the USA and moving it overseas by allowing tax credits for doing so.....keep a factory in the USA and you'll be taxed on it. Shut it down, move it to China and throw the American workers out of jobs, and you'll get a nice BIG tax break for doing so. You can write off the entire cost of closing the plant, moving it overseas, the cost of building a new plant in China, and then the cost of developing a distribution network to bring in the goods to the USA, that's all one BIG Reagan tax scheme. And he made sure that your import tariffs were so low that any company who desired to stay in the USA and operate would find themselves being undersold by cheap Chinese imported goods. So that company would either be forced to move overseas, or go out of business. And that my friends is how the dominoes began to fall. So patriotic of St. Ronnie, wasn't it? So, um, "American", so "USA number 1".
But back in the "Everything was better in the past" days, styling and marketing ruled the day. Anything, from a grocery store, to a coffee shop, car wash, automobile, bus, even paint schemes on aircraft was all done with styling and marketing in mind. Not so today. Attorneys and mostly accountants decide everything. Need a restaurant, store, or car wash today? Just throw up the cheapest ugliest box to build. Don't add a bit of styling, that might cost a penny! Need a car, just make everything look like a half melted jelly bean, the stampings for the body will be cheap to make, and you can pay less for less skilled designers to build such a thing. Need a paint scheme for your airplane... DON'T pay some sales and marketing team to design up a real smashing design and logo, just paint everything cheap azz white with minimum logos on it so people know what it actually is. Cheap, cheap, cheap ugly development, no architecture, no design, no beauty or styling,.....just throw up some development at the cheapest possible cost. Wouldn't want to spend a few "unnecessary" dollars on architecture would we, not when the money is better served by giving the CEO another 100, 200, or 500 million dollar Christmas bonus on top of the one he just got last year. Oh heaven's no, can't imagine spending a penny on styling, design, or even worse, on the workers who you expect to buy your products, can we now.
As far as people "being forced to socialize" that is also a load of horse cr@p. People then were friendlier and WANTED to socialize. You WANTED to know you neighbors back then. People did things together. There were block parties, and neighbors had open houses where other neighbors would come over to socialize. People WANTED to talk with other people on planes. Its not that they were bored and they had to, no, they WANTED to and it was considered normal behavior, unlike today. People don't trust other people around them today. I just read a story on that not even a week ago. Today when some stranger just comes up and starts talking to you, the most common reaction (among Americans) is 1: who is this person, and 2: what do they want (meaning that they must have some ulterior motive for even talking to you in the first place. The story went on to say that less than 10% of people interviewed thought that the person who started talking to them may have done so just because he/she was nice.
I don't blame younger people today for their complete lack of social skills. They were never taught any to begin with. For example, when I was younger, I use to frequently go to bars or discos with friends to relax, meet other people, drink and dance. Just your standard weekend night out for the younger set. Nothing special too much about that. When you saw somebody you wanted to meet, you went over, said hi, talked about this or that, kind of got to know the person. You sent out "vibes" to each other to see if you wanted to talk further, or just say thanks, see you, and go meet somebody else. You had to charm a person, you had to be affable and be able to engage in interesting conversation. You had to be entertaining. You had to have what is called "a personality". Its called "people skills".
Contrast that to today. I finally went out with a couple friends to a bar (I had not been to one in 10 years or so) and looked around to how things have changed. Sad, utterly sad. Plenty of people still going out, but except for a few tight circles of friends chatting, NOBODY was talking to anyone. NOBODY was even looking at anybody. There were in a world all their own. So what were they doing? Standing around or sitting and texting to friends, or playing some electronic game on an Smartphone, or using some app to find someone to date (WHILE they are AT a club which is where you go to meet people who you might date), or on a cell phone constantly. NOBODY was talking to anyone in there. NOBODY was trying to meet anybody who was in there. NOBODY was being social in the least bit. They were all addicted to some electronic device, sitting there, looking down, punching keys. So there they sat, faces down, looking into a small box, punching away on buttons. Completely and utterly sad. I've seen department store mannequins with more charm and personality that these people had.
I told a friend I was with "This is so sad. Look, they have no people skills. This generation is totally clueless how to charm and meet other people. Instead, they text one another and use some video app on a smartphone to order a date like somebody orders up a pizza" I felt like a space alien from another world. I remember a time when people actually went out to public places to meet other people, strike up conversations, and maybe wind up with a date. But after observing this younger generation, it feels like it was a time as far away from today as is Venus from the Earth.
Usually on a Saturday afternoon, I will take my Galaxie to a car show and cruise night. Like any car show, the area is divided up, motorcycles tend to go to their own area. The hot rod and custom people tend to congregate with themselves, the stock/restored car people tend to all hang out together, and the younger people with these little souped up Japanese cars with all the decals stuck on them (paste on performance) always, always, always hang out by themselves. Around 8 pm or so I usually leave. I've noticed this every single time now for the last 4 years. Older people, who drive the stock/restored cars, and even the hot rod/custom people will yield to you if they see you pulling out or making a turn to leave the parking lot where the show is held. They are almost always polite. NOT the younger people with these little Japanese cars. If they see you needing to turn, and they are in front of you just sitting there in their car, on the phone or texting, they will just sit and not move to let you by. They will always cut in front of you, or just stop in front so they can do whatever it is they want to do and will not move. If you just sit there idling eventually they will give you a dirty look, or say something rude, and MAYBE pull to the side to let you by. But polite and having social skills they obviously do not have. I never saw this rude anti-social behavior when I first started going to car shows in the early 1980s. It started around the late 1990s and has grown worse. It keeps getting worse and more "in your face".
So, the jist of this rant is -- YES, things were usually better in the past (like I said, the exceptions being electronics, medicine and auto safety).
But I don't blame younger people for their disdain of hearing "everything was better in the past", because they just don't know any better. How could they know any better or different, because they didn't exist at the time.
It is a different world today, an insular, self-absorbed, self-focused world where greed is good, politeness is not just rejected, but not even considered, and where everything in every aspect has to be "me, me, me, now, now, now".
I hate to say it, but compared to the past, younger people today are exactly just like the electronic devices they are addicted to -- bland, cookie-cutter copies of one another, devoid of charm, and with all the personality of an Ipod.
