Was It Really 50 Years Ago?

Here we are on the penultimate Friday of 2019.  Around this time of year, it becomes easier to slip into daydreams, thinking about the bygone.  It was with this in mind that Atlas started to consider how much change has happened in the last 50 years.  What we found was eye-opening.

It was December 1969, and the similarities are abundant. Then the Rolling Stones were hot on the music scene, just releasing Let It Bleed.  Boeing was in the news; only this time it was because the first 747 jumbo jet passenger flight took place.  Terrorism made headlines as well when a bombing in Milan, Italy killed 17 people and injured 88 others.  Frosty the Snow Man debuted on CBS that year, and the animated classic has played on the network every year since.

Inequality in America was abundant as well.  According to this article from Sciencenews.org, no progress has been made in the past half-century; in fact things have worsened.  In a December 1969 article, they wrote that the poorest 20 percent of the nation saw their portion of national income rise from 5.1 percent to just 5.4 percent from 1947 to 1967.  Additionally, a disproportionate number of people of color and those living in the South fell into the bottom-fifth of earners.  While not much headway was made in those two decades, at least it moved forward.

In the 50 years since the first report, the article says now that the bottom 20 percent of earners take in just three percent of the country’s income.  And like in 1969, the South and people of color are overrepresented in the bottom fifth of earners.  About ten percent of Asian, eight percent of whites, 18 percent of Hispanic, and 21 percent of black households fall below the poverty line, so basic needs are not being met.  Regionally, residents in the South earned $57,300 while the Northeast, West, and Midwest, earned $70,100, $69,500, and $64,100 respectively.

America has gone through tremendous change in the past 50 years, and we remain on top of the world as an economy.  Standards of living seem to have improved in that time as well.  However, we still seem to have too many saying Gimme Shelter who are told You Can’t Always Get What You Want.