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

00:00:00.000 But yeah, I was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really dunk on is the experience

00:00:05.080 of black Americans in the 1950s.

00:00:07.400 And I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like,

00:00:10.700 oh, okay, well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women were married, roughly comparable to

00:00:16.980 white women. 1.00

00:00:17.660 Kids born out of wedlock were half the white rate today.

00:00:21.460 At only 5%.

00:00:22.820 The white percent born out of wedlock was 10%. 0.82

00:00:25.860 Yeah, but black infants born out of wedlock soared to 77.3%.

00:00:32.580 Like, I mean, obviously there were horrible things about like pre-civil rights.

00:00:38.300 But okay, so like fertility is worse, out of wedlock births are worse, mental health is

00:00:43.960 worse, even if wealth too.

00:00:45.600 And black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged since 1953.

00:00:52.360 I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true, right?

00:00:55.480 Like this doesn't sound true to me.

00:00:57.100 So I decided to start Googling it and oh my God, it's so much worse than I thought.

00:01:02.720 If you look at this graph by the Washington Post, which is looking at medium household

00:01:07.720 wealth adjusted for inflation, since the 1950s, white wealth has gone up about 3x.

00:01:15.320 Black wealth is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s. 0.91

00:01:20.700 So also like I was looking at that, I was like, oh my God, I've just, I've been lied to

00:01:23.520 about the 50s, I was like, oh, so much more expensive, except well, we spent like 15%

00:01:27.380 of our income on clothes.

00:01:29.140 So I don't know.

00:01:30.280 Would you like to know more?

00:01:31.800 Hello, Malcolm.

00:01:32.780 I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because we are going to be talking about the

00:01:37.960 1950s.

00:01:39.060 And obviously we enjoyed tossing rotten vegetables of the 1950s.

00:01:43.120 We point out how trad wives are both unsustainable and a progressive conspiracy. 1.00

00:01:47.600 We point out how sexually debauched they were in the 1950s.

00:01:50.740 Hold on, hold on.

00:01:51.380 We got to, we got to make a few notes on these things for people who haven't seen these

00:01:54.440 episodes.

00:01:55.060 Specifically, what we mean is that the trad wife phenomenon as it is practiced today is

00:01:59.600 more of a cargo cult than representative of how people actually lived in the 1950s.

00:02:04.280 And before, the real family format that has existed for thousands of years is what's called

00:02:08.600 the corporate family, which is more an extended family group of both people and unrelated

00:02:12.820 colleagues.

00:02:13.180 The modern trad wife is more downstream of BDSM culture. 1.00

00:02:17.940 And you don't even know Malcolm, but this is trending now online because there are these

00:02:22.500 trad wives who are now, I don't remember what they call them, but there's this one, there's 0.91

00:02:27.020 one woman who, who calls it the princess treatment and then, or experience or something like that. 0.69

00:02:31.840 And then there's this other one who literally wears a BDSM collar, but calls it like, like

00:02:38.520 she, she thinks that it's a conservative Christian thing, but she had literally bought this collar

00:02:43.240 that a day, a day collar.

00:02:44.800 I think she calls it to signal her subservience to her husband, not realizing that literally

00:02:50.700 she purchased this collar from a BDSM site.

00:02:53.580 And it's so amazing.

00:02:54.460 And the internet's laughing like crazy, but anyway, yeah, it's such a thing.

00:02:57.160 And it's, it's showing up again because it's a thing.

00:02:59.900 No, no.

00:03:00.700 Well, it's so funny because a lot of these people were so hidden from that that they don't

00:03:05.000 realize that it's like, no, these words you're using did not come from the 1950s.

00:03:10.620 They literally came from BDSM culture.

00:03:12.460 Like this is not the things that you're buying, these styles that you're adopting.

00:03:17.240 Not to kink shame or anything.

00:03:18.540 It's just, it's not like the traditional correct way to do family.

00:03:22.640 Yeah.

00:03:22.960 So I think that that's always funny to get into, but continue.

00:03:25.580 Right.

00:03:25.980 So as much as we like to dunk on the 1950s, there were absolutely major elements of it

00:03:31.000 that rocked, including affordability, employment, quality of life, social stability.

00:03:35.700 There were even some commonly highlighted shortcomings of the 1950s that are maybe not as short as

00:03:42.260 I thought they were previously.

00:03:43.800 Yeah.

00:03:44.160 Oh, and hold on.

00:03:44.760 I should also note for people who haven't seen our episode on the 1950s being debauched.

00:03:48.360 It also was way, in many ways, way more sexually debauched than modern times.

00:03:53.340 Yeah.

00:03:54.060 Yeah.

00:03:54.240 Where we point out the prevalence within literature of the period and was in studies run during

00:03:58.680 the period of young male mutual masturbation and the prevalence of nudity, like, like group

00:04:04.880 showers and stuff like that, that people don't do anymore.

00:04:07.020 And the prevalence of-

00:04:08.020 Oh, but it was like, it was no homo group showers. 0.99

00:04:09.920 You know, it was like, people were based enough to not insinuate too much or read too much into it. 0.52

00:04:15.020 Well, yeah, you know, they didn't see it as gay to, like, jack off your friend in the 1950s.

00:04:19.220 They were like, yeah.

00:04:19.760 Yeah, you're just helping out a friend.

00:04:21.600 Come on.

00:04:22.060 And I love people were like, oh, that was like, those studies were debunked.

00:04:26.660 And I was like, bro, if you have actually read a lot of literature from people who grew up in the

00:04:31.640 1950s that describe, like, underground culture, what it was really like, you will very frequently

00:04:37.520 find stories of mutual masturbation among males.

00:04:40.580 I have not read a single, like, non-gay story where that happens in modern times. 0.99

00:04:45.620 I don't have a single friend who has admitted to me, oh, yeah, I did this thing.

00:04:49.560 Yeah, I think even our totally straight doesn't go that far.

00:04:53.360 Yeah, continue.

00:04:54.880 Anyway, I want to make the argument, basically, that, okay, yes, a lot of things about the

00:04:59.260 50s, either totally misunderstood or actually sucked, but there are a lot of things that

00:05:04.040 were great, but I have zero respect for anyone who pines after the 50s, and I will explain

00:05:09.300 why.

00:05:09.720 But basically, midwits crave the 1950s.

00:05:12.360 Well, because you believe it's all recreational.

00:05:13.960 Live the 1950s.

00:05:15.200 The reason she doesn't care is she thinks that you can remake everything that was good in

00:05:18.960 the 1950s within the modern day.

00:05:20.580 Exactly.

00:05:21.140 That's my point.

00:05:21.920 And I'll push back.

00:05:22.820 So make your argument.

00:05:24.180 Yeah.

00:05:24.520 Well, so let's go over what's good about the 1950s, right?

00:05:27.180 So housing and basic goods, the cost of living was dramatically lower, and so that is a clear

00:05:31.860 winner.

00:05:32.620 Housing was affordable, with the average home costing around $15,000 compared to over $200,000

00:05:37.200 today, plus gasoline, food, and cars were also cheaper relative to income, making it easy

00:05:42.800 for a single income to support a family and afford a home and a car.

00:05:45.540 I thought food was dramatically more expensive.

00:05:47.520 I'll walk you through this.

00:05:48.160 I'll walk you through it.

00:05:48.720 Okay.

00:05:48.960 But actually, you know, we recently did a video on AI and social class, and in that

00:05:52.600 video, they show the, we showed this 1957 video on social class in America that shows

00:05:59.260 the lives of a lower class American, a middle class American, and then an upper class American.

00:06:05.540 And there's this one scene where they show the, the, the rundown lower class house.

00:06:11.840 David's father is Michael Benton, an unskilled factory worker who has a meager education.

00:06:17.600 Mr. Benton rents the upper floor of a two-family house in a rundown section of town.

00:06:26.700 In the video, it's like, it looks like the houses would cost a few million in LA.

00:06:37.540 I know.

00:06:37.840 It looked like a $2 million Bay Area house.

00:06:41.240 So yeah, that like only the wealthiest could possibly live in these days.

00:06:44.460 So I get, you know, that that has gotten, we have problems there.

00:06:49.300 We have problems with housing.

00:06:50.640 Plus the median American family had 30% more purchasing power at the end of the decade than

00:06:55.660 at the beginning.

00:06:56.560 And the dollar's buying power was much greater.

00:06:59.340 So college tuition was low enough that student debt was basically not, it wasn't a thing.

00:07:03.900 So as much as even like the GI Bill may have helped a lot of guys, and this, this was something

00:07:08.200 that enabled people who fought in World War II to basically go to college for free.

00:07:11.320 For those who aren't familiar with it, it almost wasn't necessary because school was just

00:07:15.260 affordable.

00:07:15.760 Another element was that employment was, it was cush.

00:07:20.060 Like there was this really short-lived period where it just like getting a job seemed incredibly

00:07:24.500 easy.

00:07:25.660 And it was at the time, unemployment was super low, about 4.5%.

00:07:31.200 And, and low in a way that was like legitimately low.

00:07:34.580 Cause I think now people are juicing the numbers in all sorts of ways, pretending the people who

00:07:38.740 are one, not counting unemployed people who've given up and all these other factors.

00:07:43.040 So yeah, actually low unemployment and there were tons of jobs in manufacturing and industry.

00:07:50.300 You didn't need a high school diploma to have a job.

00:07:52.240 The GI Bill that I mentioned earlier helped millions of veterans access higher education

00:07:56.780 and then buy homes.

00:07:57.920 So there was both, both economic growth and social mobility and incomes went up.

00:08:03.380 Average family incomes rose from 3,300 in 1950s to 5,400 by the end of that decade.

00:08:10.620 So 1950 to 1959, it went up from 3,300 to 5,400.

00:08:16.740 Keep in mind that, you know, wages have been stagnant.

00:08:18.680 And then of course, you know, housing and education, childcare, a whole bunch of other

00:08:22.140 things these days have risen more than income.

00:08:25.660 So it's, it's pretty bad.

00:08:26.960 And then there was also union powers of labor unions.

00:08:29.620 I think we're a little more common than you didn't have, you know, Amazon constantly

00:08:33.720 fighting. 1.00

00:08:34.620 The economic argument for the 1950s, I've always found to be uniquely stupid. 0.99

00:08:39.180 Yeah, because I mean, boomers did absolutely get, and like the greatest generation got 0.98

00:08:44.720 a boost from this.

00:08:45.580 The only reason why the 1950s appeared so wealthy in the United States is because the

00:08:52.980 other world center of economic production had been completely devastated by a world war.

00:08:59.080 And that basically meant like, okay, imagine.

00:09:01.800 Well, Europe's ramping up for World War III.

00:09:03.560 Maybe there's hope milk.

00:09:04.500 Imagine if the U.S. went around and destroyed every factory in China and every factory in

00:09:11.000 Europe, and then they came back. 0.72

00:09:13.000 And over the next 10 years was like, isn't it great how much money you could earn at an

00:09:17.380 American factory job?

00:09:18.780 And it's like, well, no, you know, that's not exactly a replicable scenario was in the

00:09:24.060 modern day.

00:09:24.740 And that wasn't caused by the culture of the 1950s.

00:09:28.360 That was caused by, and this is why I think-

00:09:30.240 It was just chance.

00:09:30.940 It was happenstance.

00:09:32.040 Calling out trad-wise as a cargo cult phenomenon is such an apt comparison. 1.00

00:09:38.000 Because what created the economic benefits that made the, if you're not familiar with the

00:09:43.120 cargo cults, these were Aboriginal people in islands who during the war had troops stationed

00:09:48.400 in the area that would give them food.

00:09:49.660 So they had so much wealth from their perspective, like food and material supplies and technology.

00:09:55.660 During that period, they tried to bring it back by reenacting scenes that they remember

00:10:00.440 from that time period.

00:10:02.020 So they'll build like planes out of like sticks and runways, and then do all the things like

00:10:07.060 their religious ceremonies of the signs that they would make to call down the planes.

00:10:11.800 And it was the very same war that led to the-

00:10:16.800 The cargo cult has its temples almost everywhere nearby.

00:10:20.700 This is one.

00:10:22.380 Its altar is standing 9,000 feet above sea level.

00:10:26.440 The dummy plane is at the edge of the landing strip.

00:10:30.200 At the other end, the control tower.

00:10:33.180 The natives of the Rozo and Mikao tribes are waiting for some plane to land on their strip,

00:10:38.240 attracted by the bamboo model.

00:10:39.740 They believe that planes come from paradise.

00:10:44.500 Their ancestors sent them. 0.62

00:10:46.580 You know, we laugh at these Aboriginals doing this, and then we see, you know, conservative 1.00

00:10:51.360 influencers doing the exact same thing to recreate the economic situations created by that exact

00:10:57.840 same war that had nothing to do with the-

00:11:03.640 Maybe this is why many of them are also so pro-Russia.

00:11:06.140 They're like, come on, guys.

00:11:07.720 Go create that.

00:11:09.740 And so you could say, well, if unions were stronger, you know, we'd have all this.

00:11:16.160 No.

00:11:16.760 Unions worked in the 1950s because we didn't have any competition.

00:11:22.220 Yeah.

00:11:22.660 There was no outsourcing.

00:11:23.760 Like, yeah, people didn't have the option to just turn to something else because the union

00:11:28.260 was formed.

00:11:29.300 That's very true.

00:11:30.180 If unions get stronger in the United States, we simply get out-competed by countries with

00:11:34.160 less union regulation.

00:11:35.120 Exactly.

00:11:35.740 Yeah.

00:11:36.040 Which is exactly what happened. 0.95

00:11:37.860 I mean, I think that's why a lot of companies were like, okay, screw you.

00:11:40.740 I'm going to do my manufacturing.

00:11:43.300 Yeah.

00:11:43.780 In a big part.

00:11:44.880 And they don't realize who killed you.

00:11:46.960 I love it when people are like, oh, well, we had such good jobs because of the unions.

00:11:50.240 And I'm like, yeah, but you don't have those jobs anymore.

00:11:52.420 So why do you think that happened?

00:11:55.380 This is really happening in Hollywood right now where the union, the writers union or 1.00

00:12:00.620 something decided to make some big, stupid push. 0.99

00:12:03.660 Basically everything in Hollywood is unionized. 0.99

00:12:07.420 It is riddled with unions and that has ossified and made the industry so financially unviable

00:12:16.540 and bogged down that it's, they're just completely being trounced now.

00:12:22.820 Yeah.

00:12:23.040 They're pretty much over.

00:12:24.340 And you can read lots of stories about this.

00:12:26.540 The companies are just leaving Hollywood and they're not doing business in Hollywood anymore.

00:12:30.000 Yeah.

00:12:30.220 Even the creative types, because they're just like, we can't deal with this anymore.

00:12:33.080 So I don't think that, no, you can't bring back the economic prosperity.

00:12:37.200 Unions worked in Hollywood when Hollywood had a natural monopoly, i.e.

00:12:40.260 it wasn't easy to produce films in a disparate region of locations.

00:12:44.340 Now it is.

00:12:45.500 Mobility changes things for sure.

00:12:47.660 So unions only work when you have a captive market.

00:12:51.060 When you don't have a captive market, unions have the opposite effect.

00:12:55.380 None of this changes the fact that for the people at the time, it felt pretty freaking

00:12:58.980 good.

00:12:59.520 We can't recreate that.

00:13:01.100 And I'm with you on that.

00:13:01.940 But I'm going to actually point out, I mean, I go into the actual economics of the food,

00:13:06.180 because my understanding is that if you actually look at cost of living of today versus the

00:13:10.120 1950s, it was, it was actually lower today than in the 1950s for your average person.

00:13:15.860 Yeah, I will get into that.

00:13:17.380 I'll get into that.

00:13:18.300 Go.

00:13:18.840 But I'm not, it's no, it's, it's later.

00:13:21.000 This is my episode.

00:13:22.100 We get to do it my way because this isn't, get out of my office.

00:13:26.040 You.

00:13:28.200 Let me cook.

00:13:29.160 Okay.

00:13:29.520 But it's another element of this that was, I mean, it was obviously tied to economic growth

00:13:34.700 and whatnot, but quality of life and social stability were both better.

00:13:38.060 And this is one of those things where I think it should start to become apparent that you

00:13:41.000 can totally recreate this on a family or personal cultural level.

00:13:43.780 But there was a perception of positive change, which we should totally have now.

00:13:47.740 Material comforts were improving.

00:13:49.600 The 1950s saw widespread adoption of new technologies, televisions, cars, home appliances, and these rapidly

00:13:54.560 improved daily life.

00:13:55.520 Like my grandmother was a French war bride.

00:13:57.820 She grew up in France doing laundry with like washboards, you know, and then she just 0.66

00:14:04.040 was so freaking amazed when she got a washing machine.

00:14:06.800 She just thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world.

00:14:09.200 It blew her mind.

00:14:10.380 And I don't think people realize just, you know, how amazing that was for people, but

00:14:14.280 also like how low tech their lives were even in the fifties when, I don't know, when a washing

00:14:19.180 machine is the thing that is the highlight of your year to really crave to go back to that

00:14:24.080 period, but there was more, more community, relatively speaking in social cohesion.

00:14:28.220 There was a strong emphasis, emphasis on social and community life.

00:14:32.420 And this was the era of sending your kids out to play all afternoon until it was dinnertime

00:14:36.740 or the sunset, and then expecting them to come home and everything would be okay.

00:14:40.440 And then of course there was that economic optimism, but also mental health and wellbeing

00:14:43.940 were just better.

00:14:45.300 It was normal to start a successful middle-class life out of high school.

00:14:48.480 Whereas now we infantilize people like crazy, but yeah, I mean, in that social class video

00:14:54.020 that I just referenced earlier, the middle-class character in the video just gets a white

00:14:58.480 collar job straight out of high school.

00:15:00.080 I mean, can you imagine that happening commonly now?

00:15:02.380 I mean, it's going to come back to that soon, which is great.

00:15:05.020 And culture around mental health was better.

00:15:06.740 Emotions were seen as harmful.

00:15:09.220 And I can give you-

00:15:10.240 I think that's a better way to deal with mental health.

00:15:12.380 I can give you a video clip of, there's literally one of those, another one of those 1950s

00:15:16.720 instructional videos where an instructor is connecting emotions to fire, which is just

00:15:21.660 perfect.

00:15:22.440 Like, yes.

00:15:24.000 Before men learned how to control fire and put it to work, it was man's greatest enemy.

00:15:30.780 In much the same way, your emotions can be your own greatest enemy.

00:15:36.000 Or under control, your emotions can make you healthier and happier and improve the lives

00:15:42.020 of people around you.

00:15:43.000 I think of fire in connection with emotions.

00:15:47.940 Because when you become stirred up, when your emotions control your actions, it affects

00:15:53.580 not only yourself, but the people around you.

00:15:56.600 And it did feel a lot more stable and predictable for people.

00:15:59.700 And there were stronger community support networks.

00:16:02.120 Also, clothing. 0.93

00:16:03.780 They had madmen. 0.99

00:16:05.280 We literally have idiocracy. 0.99

00:16:07.420 Right.

00:16:07.800 But here's the thing.

00:16:09.080 In 1950s, what it had in clothing, which by the way, you can still wear if you want,

00:16:14.640 it lacked in food.

00:16:16.440 If you have ever seen pictures of food from the 1950s-

00:16:19.960 Oh, yes.

00:16:20.660 Let me send you some.

00:16:21.360 Let me send you some.

00:16:22.360 Okay.

00:16:22.540 First, I'm going to send you just pictures.

00:16:25.600 Pictures of clothing.

00:16:26.820 Just so you-

00:16:27.600 Because I think you may-

00:16:28.580 It's been a while since we've watched Idiocracy.

00:16:30.540 But when you look at clothing from Idiocracy, it might as well just be clothing from today.

00:16:35.940 Like, we were watching our Walmart this morning.

00:16:37.840 Isn't this literally just what you saw this morning at Walmart?

00:16:40.940 Oh, my God.

00:16:41.980 Right?

00:16:42.720 Oh, my God.

00:16:43.320 We actually dress-

00:16:44.620 Not you and me, but everyone else.

00:16:46.800 And we were like, well, why don't you dress like everyone else?

00:16:49.280 Doesn't this look like the clothing that was on the racks?

00:16:52.400 It is actually-

00:16:53.220 Oh, and the 1950s.

00:16:54.200 So sharp.

00:16:55.000 I know.

00:16:55.400 It's so sharp.

00:16:56.120 But yeah, let me-

00:16:56.680 Okay, I'm going to send you pictures of 1950s food.

00:16:58.600 By the way, people may not know this, but I used to always wear a suit and tie.

00:17:02.480 Yeah, it would be great.

00:17:03.480 And people could say, why did you stop always wearing a suit and tie?

00:17:05.960 And it's because it made me look younger.

00:17:08.560 Like, too young.

00:17:09.440 Like, I look like a kid when I wear a suit and tie.

00:17:12.000 And so I, you know, as-

00:17:14.320 It's funny.

00:17:14.960 Many of our viewers, you know, they take us out to be-

00:17:19.200 And this is the first time in my life where I've really been surprised by this.

00:17:21.660 I think, like, older relative to them than we are,

00:17:24.880 I think many of them perceive themselves as younger than they actually are.

00:17:28.960 I remember one of them was, like, on our episode on 4chan,

00:17:32.660 they were like, oh, this is such, like, a boomer's take on 4chan.

00:17:35.860 And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on here.

00:17:37.940 Like, my generation was the generation that was using 4chan

00:17:41.480 as it was becoming culturally relevant and a thing.

00:17:45.200 You have only lived in the territory we built.

00:17:48.620 Like, 4chan isn't some modern, edgy thing.

00:17:51.580 4chan is my generation, my college, my high school.

00:17:57.200 Like, what are you talking about, man?

00:17:59.040 Well, anyway, now you're sounding like a boomer.

00:18:01.720 Okay, boomer. 1.00

00:18:02.360 But, like, I just sent you a picture of 1950s party food.

00:18:05.340 And what we're looking at is a spread of, like, sliced bread,

00:18:10.400 some, like, meat patties.

00:18:12.120 God, that looks disgusting.

00:18:13.260 There are two cheese sandwiches, and then there's a weird vat of red stuff

00:18:19.120 and some cheese.

00:18:20.960 Then I sent a picture of a very basic modern charcuterie board,

00:18:25.080 which includes dragon fruit, sliced pear, pomegranate, fig jam

00:18:30.700 with toasted pita bread slices, a container of mixed nuts and dried berries,

00:18:36.940 grapes, skewered, like, oh, and star fruit, of course.

00:18:40.360 So there's all these exotic fruits that have been imported from all around the world.

00:18:43.860 I mean, a lot of them are things that you might be surprised used to be rarer,

00:18:47.800 like pineapples or bananas or...

00:18:51.180 Yeah, like, those things, you didn't get them.

00:18:53.400 You know, even the ability to transport things that you do get, like apples,

00:18:57.620 you wouldn't get those all year round in the 1950s.

00:19:00.360 Oh, but here, let me show you a great example of apples in 1950s cuisine.

00:19:04.480 Check out this beautiful...

00:19:06.320 I don't know if it's dessert or if it's a savory dish.

00:19:09.240 Check it out.

00:19:09.660 Jello with shrimp inside.

00:19:12.260 Yes, there's green jello with shrimp inside.

00:19:14.380 There's maybe cottage cheese in the center of the bunt-shaped jello thing.

00:19:18.100 And then some apple, tastefully arranged around the side.

00:19:20.460 Doesn't that look yummy, Malcolm?

00:19:21.760 Oh, my God.

00:19:22.400 But if you haven't, if your appetite isn't completely surging now,

00:19:26.740 let me show you this amazing 1950s casserole highlighting the beauty of the hot dog.

00:19:33.600 What we're basically looking at is some kind of...

00:19:36.920 That is horrifying.

00:19:38.680 Oh, my God.

00:19:39.960 It looks kind of like an ode to brutalist architecture with coleslaw on top.

00:19:44.100 You can't see, because they're watching this on audio, they cut hot dogs in half and then put them on like the outside of a cake of some sort?

00:19:54.620 With coleslaw on top.

00:19:55.920 Yeah.

00:19:56.180 So it's like, I think it's a casserole, but it's like a tall casserole with coleslaw on top.

00:20:02.840 What I mean is even the simplest of dishes, they seem to have been unable to cook.

00:20:06.020 No, no, no.

00:20:06.380 This was a fancy dish.

00:20:07.920 No, this was you showing off, Malcolm.

00:20:09.540 You know what I mean is like, you're like, well, certainly at least they can make good steak or a good burger.

00:20:13.660 And it's like, no.

00:20:15.560 Apparently, somehow they couldn't.

00:20:17.540 Because I've seen pictures of burgers and steaks from the 1950s, and they look terrible.

00:20:22.360 They look like a school cafeteria food.

00:20:24.420 Yeah.

00:20:25.860 And people are like, why was food so bad in the 1950s?

00:20:29.320 A few core reasons.

00:20:30.600 They had only just figured out refrigeration.

00:20:33.160 So they were overusing it in areas they probably shouldn't have been.

00:20:36.540 Yeah.

00:20:37.600 Also, they didn't have cold chain supply chains where you have refrigerated trucks and then refrigerated warehouses.

00:20:44.460 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.

00:20:53.260 So when you had vegetables, it was quite often canned vegetables or canned meat.

00:20:57.060 Canning was way more common for the major source of the food you were eating.

00:21:02.620 And then, of course, there was less globalization.

00:21:04.640 So you weren't getting these foreign things imported from far away.

00:21:07.480 I mean, you had apples because they were domestically produced.

00:21:12.520 You often couldn't get – I mean, even my dad grew up after the 1950s.

00:21:18.700 You know, many stories about him first encountering things like sushi or curry or –

00:21:24.260 In media, you'll often see jokes about how bad white people food is. 0.98

00:21:28.260 And I think within modern times, we can look at this and say, oh, what a silly little racist joke. 0.94

00:21:34.740 But in actuality, when you go to these historic examples and you look at these pictures, you're like, oh, wow.

00:21:40.780 Before we started adopting ingredients in cooking techniques from other cultures, this food does actually look pretty awful.

00:21:48.420 Next ingredient.

00:21:49.360 I have this in my home all the time now.

00:21:50.780 Chili jam.

00:21:51.440 It's what I tell you.

00:21:52.660 It's not Asian ingredient.

00:21:53.920 What are you doing with chili jam?

00:21:55.140 Let's see.

00:21:55.820 Brilliant for cooking.

00:21:57.080 It's got heat, but it's also got the sweetness and it's going to kind of glaze.

00:22:01.040 Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:22:05.220 Putting jam in rice. 0.77

00:22:08.180 This is disgusting.

00:22:10.280 Who put jam?

00:22:11.660 First of all, what is chili jam?

00:22:14.240 Uncle Roger knows fresh chili, chili oil, chili flake.

00:22:18.800 Never heard of chili jam.

00:22:20.460 Is this how you trick white people to eating chili? 0.81

00:22:23.380 You give them fresh chili, they go, no, no, no, I don't actually like chili.

00:22:27.380 Give them chili jam and they go, oh.

00:22:29.540 Other things that we might consider a normal part of daily life.

00:22:32.920 Yeah.

00:22:33.680 Yeah.

00:22:33.960 These were very foreign, exciting things.

00:22:36.560 Also, our aesthetic standards.

00:22:38.060 And this is something that some viewers of this podcast have brought up to me multiple times.

00:22:41.980 It's just like the aesthetic standards we hold to our interior decoration and to our food are just so insanely high now.

00:22:48.480 So I'm going to send you two pictures of just one is a sort of a standard 1950s birthday party.

00:22:53.800 The kids are wearing like clearly homemade paper hats.

00:22:56.900 It looks like they're made from like a newspaper or something.

00:23:00.200 There's like a plastic tablecloth and paper cups and a chip bowl or whatever.

00:23:05.700 And like someone's grandmother's in a corner smiling, you know, looking like she's just the best host ever.

00:23:11.160 Like clearly this is an impressive party for a middle class family.

00:23:14.620 And then I'm also sending a picture of Shirley Temple's birthday party.

00:23:17.740 She's cutting a much larger cake.

00:23:19.680 But I'm going to be honest with you.

00:23:21.900 It looks kind of like a botched homemade cake.

00:23:24.100 It looks like the standard of what I would get from my local grocery store.

00:23:28.940 Well, no, no, no.

00:23:29.580 Let me actually show you the standards of our local area.

00:23:33.260 So I'm just going to show you a picture of the cake counter from Wegmans, which is a local grocery store here.

00:23:40.580 Now we're looking at perfectly executed fruit tarts, cakes, you know, elaborately made cakes to look like cups of hot chocolate.

00:23:50.420 This is the future.

00:23:51.640 And then let me show you just a picture.

00:23:53.040 I just chose a random local bakery in Collegeville in this case.

00:23:57.480 It's from the Collegeville Cakery, I think.

00:24:00.740 This is just a, just one of their class.

00:24:03.000 And I took this from Google reviews too.

00:24:04.480 And you can see it in someone's house.

00:24:05.820 Like there's like sheets in the background.

00:24:08.040 This is not a commercial photo.

00:24:11.340 Wow.

00:24:11.980 That's an impressive cake.

00:24:12.860 This cake ain't got nothing on Shirley Temple's cake. 0.77

00:24:15.000 We're now looking at a lopsided recreation of the, of the sleeping beauty cake from the Disney movie.

00:24:19.860 That has like all these crazy stacked layers held up by a broom.

00:24:24.560 Our standards today for food are incredibly high and incredibly luxury.

00:24:29.780 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.

00:24:38.380 I don't know.

00:24:38.740 Well, movie stars look great, but also they're highly airbrushed.

00:24:42.160 People weren't, people weren't nearly as overweight and obese.

00:24:44.580 So I would actually argue that like women were more attractive because they were not as unhealthy. 1.00

00:24:48.860 Many people would call 1950s movie stars pretty mid by modern standards.

00:24:56.180 Yes, but the average person, like when I look at vintage colorized footage of the 1950s.

00:25:04.300 Yeah.

00:25:04.820 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.

00:25:14.860 So I'm going to push back on that.

00:25:16.680 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.

00:25:27.060 But these were investment pieces.

00:25:28.480 Hold on.

00:25:29.180 Sorry.

00:25:29.560 Go over that statistic again.

00:25:31.080 That's pretty crazy.

00:25:31.820 Nine to 14% of annual income.

00:25:34.440 To get how many garments?

00:25:35.880 To get fewer than 25 garments per year.

00:25:38.920 Wow.

00:25:39.720 Yeah.

00:25:40.180 And most clothing was made in the U.S.

00:25:41.800 It was good looking clothing.

00:25:42.760 You didn't have a lot of it.

00:25:43.860 But yeah, people look good because they spent a lot.

00:25:46.040 And I think this is one of those things where people are like, oh man, like the 1950s was so affordable.

00:25:50.720 You want to guess what percentage of annual income we spend on our clothing now, Malcolm?

00:25:54.400 For approximately 70 garments a year?

00:25:57.260 Seven zero?

00:25:58.680 What do you think?

00:25:59.600 I'm going to guess like 1%, 2%?

00:26:02.060 3%.

00:26:02.520 Around 3%.

00:26:03.340 Come on.

00:26:03.880 But for 70 garments though.

00:26:05.220 But I mean, this is for everyone.

00:26:08.000 If you look at families who are being intentional about it, I'd be almost certain our family spends less than 0.5%.

00:26:13.880 Oh, for sure.

00:26:14.460 Because we're really careful.

00:26:15.620 We have our kid uniforms.

00:26:16.800 I just bought probably all of our kids' clothing for the next foreseeable future because on Prime Day, a bunch of Amazon Basics and kid sizes came out in like our family uniforms.

00:26:27.440 So like the black. 0.99

00:26:28.940 Everything I wear is Amazon Basics.

00:26:31.420 My jeans are Amazon Basics.

00:26:33.420 My wife.

00:26:34.020 And no sponsorship.

00:26:35.220 Come on, Amazon. 0.76

00:26:36.640 Yeah, I wanted Amazon Basics sponsorship.

00:26:39.460 I know.

00:26:40.020 Yeah, if we could just get that in Coors Light, it would be perfect.

00:26:45.020 It'd be so natural.

00:26:46.660 But yeah, one of the arguments that I do want to make here is that as much as people butthurt about the 50s being affordable, we actually spent a lot more in the 50s on certain things and we spend a lot less now.

00:26:58.400 But here's the thing that got me when I was doing research for this episode.

00:27:01.780 I'd also point out that travel was basically impossible in the 1950s for people spent, you know, even with 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.

00:27:15.240 Yeah, so travel was unusual in the 1950s.

00:27:18.460 In general, it was typically domestic.

00:27:20.240 It was car-based and it was not luxurious.

00:27:22.320 Airfare, if you did do it, was 6% of annual income.

00:27:25.940 Now airfare is less than 1% today.

00:27:28.340 And 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 7% to 10% of annual income for a middle-class family taking a single significant trip a year.

00:27:48.960 A two-week trip, though.

00:27:50.220 And families who traveled less or took shorter trips would only spend 2% to 5%.

00:27:54.600 So yeah, we definitely spend less on it.

00:27:56.380 I've heard stories about them from my dad.

00:27:58.120 They would get in a car and they'd drive for like 14 hours to like at some ocean house.

00:28:03.100 Yeah, your family used to drive from Texas to the Jersey Shore every summer, right?

00:28:07.560 And just kind of camp out there.

00:28:08.520 Yeah, I think it was like a multi-day drive.

00:28:10.320 I can imagine miserable when you don't – keep in mind, they didn't have phones to read in the car.

00:28:15.060 They didn't have – you couldn't read a book because you'd get car sick.

00:28:18.080 You would, as they call it these days, raw-dog it.

00:28:21.660 Yeah, raw-dogged it for multiple-day journeys.

00:28:24.540 That's – yeah, without – this was before air conditioning.

00:28:28.260 This was when you had to roll down your windows with a crank.

00:28:30.840 I remember how much it transformed travel to have screens in front of you.

00:28:36.140 Oh, my God.

00:28:36.560 To be able to –

00:28:36.920 The luxury, yeah.

00:28:38.420 I mean, throughout my entire childhood, there were no – there were no screens.

00:28:42.900 But so, yeah, I mean, so if we want to talk about affordability, it is true too, like to the point of housing, that housing costs were more.

00:28:52.620 And we can't fix that because, okay, in the 1950s, American families spent, we'll say, 17% to 22% of their annual income on housing.

00:28:59.840 And now the percentage of income spent on housing has risen to 25% to 30% for most American households.

00:29:05.840 But given that 9% to 14% of income was spent on clothing in the 50s, whereas 3% is spent today, that alone in savings costs the cover – sorry, covers the cost of increased housing.

00:29:18.580 Like, it's super unfair that people are like, oh, it was too expensive because now we're spending so much less on other things.

00:29:26.500 And if people are like, well, why do clothes cost so much less today?

00:29:30.260 It's in part because we did do the outsourcing thing.

00:29:33.220 Exactly, yeah.

00:29:33.920 We need benefit.

00:29:34.400 The same reason why we don't have unions.

00:29:37.500 Yeah.

00:29:38.020 Yeah, I want a starving child in China making my shirts, not some starving child in America.

00:29:45.500 Yeah, well, America has better, you know, support services for the starving children.

00:29:49.760 There's SNAP and EBT and, like, all those, you know, and free healthcare in most states for children at low incomes, whereas in China, you know,

00:29:56.220 they need the income, okay?

00:29:57.460 Let them have it.

00:29:58.800 And also, like, there's a lot of other sort of misleading things.

00:30:02.000 I feel like I'm being gaslit about the 50s.

00:30:03.900 Like, technically, gasoline and cars were less expensive in the 50s, but it's not the full picture because overall,

00:30:11.120 transportation today doesn't meaningfully cost more.

00:30:14.860 In the 50s, American families spent around 15% of their household income on transportation, which included cars and public transport.

00:30:21.040 But in recent years, families spend 15% to 18%, so only as much as 2% want more of their household income on transportation.

00:30:28.680 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.

00:30:37.220 We have deep freezers if we want them that are more widely available.

00:30:40.540 You can get bulk food delivery.

00:30:41.700 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 weren't in a city.

00:30:50.580 So, yeah, I just don't think things are being adequately presented.

00:30:54.900 And also, to your point about food, if you still prepare it yourself, especially in 1950s style, like if you're eating canned vegetables and hot dog towers.

00:31:03.580 I'd also point out that people romanticize the gender relationship in the 1950s.

00:31:09.320 Yeah. 0.86

00:31:09.620 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 wives was pretty normalized. 0.90

00:31:18.320 Can you imagine having to spank your wife, like, outside of a sexual context? 0.99

00:31:23.940 It just seems like such an effort. 0.94

00:31:25.920 Like, you have what, you treat your wife like an additional child?

00:31:29.180 How does that make your life easier or better?

00:31:31.480 Like, do you actually want to imagine that it actually happened that much?

00:31:35.160 I feel like it happened in the media is, like, a cute thing.

00:31:37.720 It happened in movies.

00:31:39.080 So, clearly, it was happening in people's houses.

00:31:40.820 It was not treated as, like, oh, my God, I can't believe he did that.

00:31:43.360 It was like, that's a normal part of being married.

00:31:45.480 So, you know, clearly, it was happening.

00:31:48.120 Yes, maybe.

00:31:49.360 I don't know.

00:31:49.840 I just don't think most men want it to go.

00:31:51.260 And then women, you know, you had this big problem in the 1950s with all these housewives being on all these drugs. 1.00

00:31:56.440 Penzos.

00:31:57.060 Yes, yes, yes.

00:31:58.620 To get through the day. 0.98

00:31:59.400 So, what, I've got this drugged up, childlike wife who I need to spank to get in line. 1.00

00:32:06.800 I prefer that my wife just does this stuff herself. 1.00

00:32:09.520 And I think that people also, as men, over-romanticize the concept of the wife just staying at home and doing all the childcare.

00:32:19.180 I really prefer sharing childcare duties with my wife because I really like being around my kids.

00:32:24.620 I know.

00:32:25.040 I know you'd be missing out if you were being a trad wife dad. 0.98

00:32:29.260 And most of the families we know who are really, you know, prenatalist, the men of the houses love spending time with their kids.

00:32:36.680 But, yeah, I mean, like.

00:32:38.600 Yeah, no more time with the kids for you.

00:32:41.000 I can't even imagine.

00:32:42.460 Think about the world that we're entering today where you have more work from home, you have more gig work, you have more.

00:32:49.820 Even if 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 long.

00:32:59.940 And then you came home and you had a wife and some kids and that was your interaction with them.

00:33:06.980 And then on weekends you'd go to, I don't know, barbecues or something, which I wouldn't like doing anyway.

00:33:14.280 I'd have to talk to people.

00:33:15.600 It's so funny, parties, like children's parties today, because I go to them and other people in the comments, please tell me if this is your experience.

00:33:21.600 None of the parents talk.

00:33:23.980 All the parents just stand around looking awkwardly at their phones or something.

00:33:27.660 And I remember when I was a kid and you had the children play stuff, the parents would do it so the parents could interact.

00:33:33.460 Yeah, we have video footage of it.

00:33:34.740 Like, we have proof.

00:33:35.480 The parents are hanging out and talking.

00:33:37.180 The day it's, and I want Simone to go with me to one.

00:33:40.360 Simone never goes to any of this stuff because that's my responsibility.

00:33:42.800 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. 0.99

00:33:51.040 Because it's weird.

00:33:52.620 I do kind of, I should witness this because I find it hard to believe.

00:33:55.440 And people are going to be like, oh, that's horrible.

00:33:57.040 But, you know, the reality is I don't want to talk to these people.

00:34:01.300 I don't.

00:34:02.640 I've got friends online who I'm better matched for.

00:34:05.500 And I've got my wife at home and my kids.

00:34:09.100 Yeah, but still, my point remains that you can, if you want to, recreate this life.

00:34:15.300 Like, education, sure, it's unsustainably expensive now, but it also can be circumvented with AI.

00:34:20.340 And we talked about this at length in the AI and social class episode that we released.

00:34:25.740 And same with employment.

00:34:27.060 AI is going to wipe away the need for a university degree.

00:34:30.460 So we're getting back to that 50s, you can start right out of high school or even before scenario.

00:34:35.880 And 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 50s.

00:34:42.680 You still had to work for it to have upward social mobility.

00:34:46.460 So don't think that people weren't working their butts off to get anywhere in the 50s because they absolutely were.

00:34:51.520 They worked really hard.

00:34:52.360 And then this quality of life thing, this, this, this, oh, well, the 50s were this time of optimism and there was all this techno optimism and everything.

00:34:59.980 We, you can absolutely unplug from negative media channels and you'll see things are actually getting better.

00:35:05.580 And they're way better than they were in the 50s.

00:35:07.600 Just look at those food pictures.

00:35:09.220 And with, with mental health too, you can opt into better mental health.

00:35:12.900 Stability and predictably, if you thoughtfully own your objective function, like, you know what your values in your life plan are and you live within your means, you can have a stable and predictable life.

00:35:21.500 It's all these people who are trying to opt into a clearly unsustainable culture that they don't even own.

00:35:27.780 Like they haven't thoughtfully chosen it for themselves who are living precariously.

00:35:32.320 Well, and I point out a few things here.

00:35:34.440 If you're like, I want cheaper rent, right?

00:35:37.560 Like that's what the 1950s had that I want.

00:35:40.060 Well, you actually have options for that today.

00:35:41.880 You can go to a rural area and get a house.

00:35:44.620 I mean, that's what we did.

00:35:45.560 We, we got our house in our house.

00:35:47.840 If it was in the Bay area, my God, what would it cost?

00:35:50.420 Do you think $10 million?

00:35:51.500 $10 million, at least.

00:35:53.340 $13 million, I would guess.

00:35:54.820 Maybe, yeah.

00:35:55.940 But out here, it was less than half a million when we got it.

00:36:00.240 You know, so like, great house and everything like that.

00:36:06.560 You, you, I mean, and now you might have to go further rural than we went, or you go to a developing country, which you couldn't easily do or live in the 1950s and you can today.

00:36:14.820 Yeah, that is 100% an option.

00:36:16.820 So yeah, I mean, you can live the 1950s fantasy.

00:36:20.180 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.

00:36:26.900 But I mean, even better than that, you can literally live the techno-optimist 1950s future.

00:36:32.160 So you can live the fantasy that people had in the 1950s.

00:36:36.140 Like, you can have more sustainable marriages in which most, like, both partners contribute professionally.

00:36:40.960 And even the kids, you can have greater social mobility because if, well, at least if you ride the AI wave properly and you can have way more luxury given modern tech.

00:36:50.540 Plus, we need to really be grateful for all the medical advancements that were not available in the 1950s.

00:36:56.160 Like, keep in mind, the first kidney transplant was in the 50s.

00:36:59.100 That was experimental and they were not, like, organ transplants in general were not widespread.

00:37:04.040 We didn't have Ozempic.

00:37:04.880 We didn't have advanced antibiotics.

00:37:06.180 We didn't have modern chemotherapy or targeted therapies, no gene therapy, no IVF.

00:37:11.320 So, you know, we would be childless and miserable.

00:37:14.200 No statins, no cardiovascular medications that are anywhere close to what we have now.

00:37:18.800 No modern imaging.

00:37:20.220 So no PET scans, no CT scans, no MRIs.

00:37:24.260 There was no endoscopy.

00:37:25.460 So, like, you couldn't have a really simple surgery where they just kind of went in with a tiny precision cut.

00:37:32.480 They just had to slice you all the way open.

00:37:34.560 And I just, I can't emphasize enough, like, also, like, just advanced antibiotics.

00:37:40.960 You know, you only had some really simple stuff.

00:37:42.800 So, I just, it's so bizarre to me that people crave this when you can have it.

00:37:48.000 You can have the fantasy they wanted.

00:37:51.900 And yet you're, here you are bitching about it? 0.99

00:37:54.120 No.

00:37:54.580 Don't give me that.

00:37:55.360 Like, live it.

00:37:55.960 What gets me is I think it's the culture of the 1950s that people want, even that, even the thing that people think was really working wasn't.

00:38:06.320 They think, oh, well, we had economic stability, which we only had because the rest of the world was destroyed at that time, which changed our economy.

00:38:12.500 Yeah.

00:38:12.660 And so, you can't really pine for it for those reasons.

00:38:15.760 That's pining for something that you cannot recreate.

00:38:17.960 Yeah.

00:38:18.300 Or they pine for it for, oh, well, you know, women back then, you know, really knew their place in a relationship.

00:38:23.900 And I'm like, or you can find a woman who is in a modern context who is willing to build the type of relationship that you want to build, right?

00:38:33.220 Like, and those women are out there. 1.00

00:38:36.260 They're absolutely, Simone wasn't like, when I found, because there were a number of women I considered marrying before Simone.

00:38:42.780 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?

00:38:50.140 Like, because back then I was a progressive, right?

00:38:51.880 Most highly educated women are progressive and you pretty much exclusively looked. 1.00

00:38:56.580 None of them were like, oh, I'm against, you know, women having a different role than men, or I would expect X or Y. 0.98

00:39:04.180 Like, 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.

00:39:15.160 Oh, absolutely.

00:39:16.760 Not just women. 0.67

00:39:18.120 Yeah.

00:39:18.380 I mean, imagine if we were super rigid about it, you would have to do our taxes and finances.

00:39:23.780 You don't want to do that.

00:39:25.660 You don't want to do that.

00:39:27.120 You wouldn't, you would have had to muck out the sink this morning.

00:39:29.960 Oh my God, Malcolm.

00:39:31.460 Like I'm used to mucking out drains, but the smell of this, I like almost vomited.

00:39:38.940 It was, I don't know what was going on with it, but it was not good.

00:39:41.800 Hey, at least the drain cleaner worked.

00:39:43.140 I know that thing, clean it out like a ramrod because it basically was family motto. 0.93

00:39:50.000 It was on a thing my family used to run called Crazy Water Crystals on the radio station.

00:39:55.720 They'd say they'll clean you out like a ramrod.

00:39:59.080 Yeah.

00:39:59.680 Because what was it called?

00:40:00.940 Healing Springs, Texas?

00:40:02.600 Crazy Water, Crazy Water Mineral Wells, Texas.

00:40:05.300 Mineral Wells, Texas.

00:40:06.360 Yeah.

00:40:06.480 They had some kind of like retreat thing and product out of.

00:40:09.900 I love that my family, actually, that'd be a fun thing to bring back Crazy Water.

00:40:12.840 I think that that would do well with modern branding.

00:40:15.240 There's literally, like we bought for your brother for his birthday.

00:40:18.180 You can literally find on eBay, Crazy Water Crystals memorabilia, like little pamphlets about it.

00:40:25.060 You can buy model train pieces.

00:40:27.400 Well, because they owned almost the entire town.

00:40:29.740 So they created basically a resort town, like an Aspen before an Aspen.

00:40:34.380 And they, because you could commute to it from Dallas, this was before Plains.

00:40:38.440 And they owned almost everything in the town is my understanding.

00:40:41.500 And so it was like, imagine, imagine of a Malcolm world, like a Hershey Park or something like that. 0.90

00:40:48.440 Come and enjoy yourself at the wonderful crazy town for crazy people.

00:40:52.760 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, 0.62

00:40:58.860 Welcome to the home of crazy was crazy in giant, wacky yellow font.

00:41:04.540 And the big company looming in the background that the family owned was Crazy Well Water Company.

00:41:11.060 And so I think, you know, I've mentioned before, like the backwoods culture or tradition that my family comes from really didn't like attempting to look, you know, pretentious or overly high status or overly like normalized.

00:41:24.960 And vulgarity was seen as authenticating, like showing that you don't think that you're better than people.

00:41:30.680 And this is very much the 1950s way of doing that, or the 1950s way of being Malcolm. 0.78

00:41:38.600 The mineral water there just gave you massive diarrhea.

00:41:42.600 It was secure.

00:41:43.560 That's where Cleans You Out Like a Ramrod came from.

00:41:47.020 Like you just, I don't know, you took it and it was like a major, it just, everything came out.

00:41:54.200 But sometimes you need that.

00:41:55.740 Cleans you out like a ramrod.

00:41:56.760 That's the way you communicate with Texas audience, rural Texas audience.

00:41:59.780 That's great.

00:42:00.720 Cleans you out like a ramrod.

00:42:02.180 Yeah.

00:42:02.740 Yeah.

00:42:03.160 But I mean, yeah, the thing is too, I love retrofuturism.

00:42:06.840 And the funny thing is, is we have that.

00:42:09.580 I mean, I was just talking with you yesterday about how I loved the fact that I heard our

00:42:14.340 kids griping downstairs after bedtime.

00:42:16.180 And I was just too exhausted from cleaning up after dinner and everything and making dinner

00:42:20.640 to go down and figure it out what was going on.

00:42:24.120 But I could drop in.

00:42:25.440 I could just like get on my phone and drop in on the Alexa device.

00:42:28.380 It was in their room playing them like sleep noises and just be like, okay, guys, what's

00:42:33.720 up?

00:42:34.040 And then, you know, so we negotiated what they wanted hugs.

00:42:36.940 I was like, well, how about I sing you a song?

00:42:38.440 And then what song?

00:42:39.120 And I'm just like, this is the future.

00:42:40.980 We live in the retrofuturist environment.

00:42:43.380 There's all these videos you can watch about the retrofuturistic house, the house of the

00:42:47.500 future.

00:42:48.140 There were so many of those videos in the 1950s, you know, advertising various things and

00:42:51.520 the power of plastics.

00:42:53.480 And while there's not an exact translation and Elon Musk loves to quote his son, Saxon,

00:43:00.420 who once said, why does the future not look like the future?

00:43:03.420 Or why does today not look like the future?

00:43:05.340 But it does.

00:43:06.400 Like, it's not an exact, we don't have flying cars, but that's because.

00:43:10.020 Who wants to get a pilot license to get a car?

00:43:12.600 You know, like that.

00:43:13.420 You don't understand the air traffic control problems you would have with that, that it's

00:43:17.020 just not a practical solution.

00:43:18.740 And so, yeah, I just, it really, it bothers me.

00:43:22.320 But I'm also, so I'm bothered by the fact that people aren't just living the type of

00:43:26.280 1950s they want.

00:43:27.340 And this is also a really common complaint that we have about culture in general.

00:43:31.200 Like people get really mad about, oh, like there's this culture and I don't like that

00:43:36.040 they're winning or whatever, but they don't just, the point about culture is if you see

00:43:40.140 something you like, don't complain about it.

00:43:43.540 Take the parts you like it, incorporate it into your culture and live it and thrive.

00:43:47.780 This is, I think, a problem with, you know, the people who fantasize about the 1950s again,

00:43:53.040 they're like, well, you know, dating would have been easier for me in the 1950s or something

00:43:56.660 like that, you know, they'll say.

00:43:58.040 And I'm like, it reminds me of the communists who are like, I want communism.

00:44:02.280 And I'm like, you understand that if this was a communist system, you would be the underclass. 0.65

00:44:07.520 Like you wouldn't be in the ruling.

00:44:09.500 You're the same people in the ruling regime.

00:44:11.460 They just have more power.

00:44:12.780 It'd be Trump head of the communist, you know, dictatorship.

00:44:15.940 You know, this doesn't put you in a better position vis-a-vis where you are now.

00:44:20.940 You just imagine yourself as somebody who has a position of power within this new ecosystem.

00:44:26.540 And I think when people reflect back on the 1950s, they don't realize if you're watching

00:44:31.400 this show, you probably would have been one of the nerds playing like Dungeons and Dragons.

00:44:36.260 I don't think that existed yet, but you know what I mean?

00:44:38.040 Something like that, right?

00:44:38.900 Yeah.

00:44:39.140 You wouldn't have been, you know, captain of the football team.

00:44:42.520 Okay.

00:44:43.420 The girls wouldn't have noticed you. 0.51

00:44:45.620 You wouldn't have had an easier time.

00:44:47.700 You know, they were playing with their own difficulties within that time period as we

00:44:51.160 have within ours.

00:44:52.500 Yeah, absolutely.

00:44:54.460 Yeah.

00:44:54.960 Although, I mean, again, there's, there's a lot of, it's a lot of bad stuff that I thought

00:44:59.980 was really, really, I mean, and it was like, for example, this is, it's just, you might

00:45:04.380 want to cut this out, but I was like, well, of course, like the thing I can really

00:45:07.940 dunk on is the experience of black Americans in the 1950s.

00:45:12.860 And I'm trying to find all the stats and I look at their marriage rates and I'm like,

00:45:16.160 oh, okay.

00:45:16.800 Well, in the 1950s, 64% of black women were married, roughly comparable to white women.

00:45:23.260 Marriage rates were higher before the 1960s was 61% of black adults married in 1960.

00:45:27.460 And their kids born out of wedlock were, we were half the white rate today.

00:45:31.640 It's like 86%.

00:45:32.780 Yeah.

00:45:33.140 By 2008, only 32% of black adults were married, a 44% decline from 1960.

00:45:38.380 And there was a much smaller drop among white adults.

00:45:42.020 They just went from 74 to 56.

00:45:44.320 And also fertility and out of wedlock births way worse after the 1950s.

00:45:48.800 In the 1950s, only 4% of us births overall were out of wedlock.

00:45:52.000 And for black infants, the rate was approximately 70 to 25% in the early, 17 to 25% in the early

00:45:57.820 1960s.

00:45:58.720 Note, she misspoke here. 0.98

00:46:00.120 I went back and double checked the amount of black births in the Americas in the 1950s,

00:46:06.620 where they were born out of wedlock was less than 5%.

00:46:10.000 By 2023, 24% of all US births were out of wedlock.

00:46:14.260 But black infants soared to, born out of wedlock, soared to 77.3% up from 25% in 1965.

00:46:23.420 So, I mean, and also like in the 1950s, mental health stigma was severe, but also like people

00:46:30.360 didn't, they didn't make it a thing.

00:46:32.220 And there's just, there's just some like.

00:46:33.800 Which is actually mentally healthier than making it a thing.

00:46:36.660 Yeah.

00:46:36.980 And I mean, I think some of that still kind of lingers in black culture today.

00:46:40.080 Like, I actually think black culture today is more resilient to the mental health toxicity 0.96

00:46:44.280 that we see, especially among white. 0.63

00:46:47.500 Women? 1.00

00:46:48.400 White urbanized female, yeah, gynocracy culture today. 1.00

00:46:53.560 And there's, there's this YouTube shorts channel called Subway Takes, where this guy talks about

00:46:58.780 like, white people need to stop, like, calling people autistic and just like, sort of medicalizing

00:47:05.040 everything. 0.84

00:47:05.420 And he, he describes like an autistic, like if, if there were like a black dude, like a 0.83

00:47:10.820 black or a black household with someone who's autistic, they'd just be like, I don't know, 1.00

00:47:14.400 that's Clark, like whatever. 0.94

00:47:15.420 Like, that's just him.

00:47:16.280 Like, but like he's, he's, he's doing him, you know, like he's just, they just leave it

00:47:20.580 alone.

00:47:20.800 They don't make it a thing.

00:47:21.880 And when I, when I think about all the autism, autism interventions we've, we've had for our

00:47:27.020 kids so far, I mean, I kind of feel like just helping them deal with life in a,

00:47:32.360 in a more normal way is, is just as effective as like the really expensive therapies we've

00:47:37.820 tried.

00:47:38.220 Interesting point, which is the integration of, and, and sort of destruction of black culture 1.00

00:47:44.380 in the United States since the 1950s.

00:47:46.260 So it can be completely subsumed by the urban monoculture.

00:47:50.520 Yeah.

00:47:50.660 It's really broken the idea of a unique black American identity.

00:47:55.040 Oh my God.

00:47:55.620 Yeah.

00:47:55.740 No, speaking of Subway Takes, I'll share this with you too.

00:47:57.920 There's another one where this, this woman is, it's a black woman and she's like, no, 1.00

00:48:03.000 bring back segregation.

00:48:04.320 Like, I'm serious.

00:48:05.260 Like one, I want to know if I'm not welcome. 1.00

00:48:06.760 And two, also like white food sucks. 0.99

00:48:09.380 Like bring, bring the spice, bring the flavor. 0.99

00:48:12.140 So what's your take?

00:48:13.040 Bring back segregation. 0.69

00:48:14.240 A hundred percent disagree.

00:48:15.540 Dead act.

00:48:16.280 Bring it back.

00:48:17.180 I want to know where I'm not welcome.

00:48:18.760 Okay.

00:48:19.320 Put them signs back up.

00:48:21.100 Colors only, whites only. 0.94

00:48:22.840 Let's do it.

00:48:23.880 All right.

00:48:24.420 Rip the bandaid off, especially for a restaurant.

00:48:26.980 Are you kidding me?

00:48:27.700 Whites only.

00:48:28.300 What do I want to do in there?

00:48:29.500 Okay.

00:48:30.260 You were saying that the black excellence, the segregation is to get the.

00:48:33.740 The colored excellence.

00:48:34.600 Okay.

00:48:35.160 Okay.

00:48:35.600 What's the playlist in the whites only spot?

00:48:37.420 They playing Carrie Underwood and Kid Rock.

00:48:39.120 We playing baby face and diggable planets.

00:48:41.560 Ain't no overhead lighting.

00:48:43.020 Black people spend over a trillion dollars a year.

00:48:45.120 I would love for the government to force us to spend it on our own people.

00:48:48.900 This is very good.

00:48:50.480 Yeah.

00:48:50.660 I like this a lot.

00:48:51.640 Like it's sort of this, this, this desire to bring back black exceptionalism as well.

00:48:56.740 And yeah, you're right.

00:48:57.920 This like forced integration that, and therefore cultural erasure, homogenization, like, okay.

00:49:04.440 So now like is, is, is black culture better off now? 0.84

00:49:09.080 Like, I mean, it's obviously there were horrible things about, about like pre-civil rights, the

00:49:14.600 United States and post-civil rights.

00:49:15.920 I mean, systemic racism is real, et cetera.

00:49:18.980 You know, I acknowledge all of that, but okay.

00:49:21.680 So like fertility is worse out of, out of wedlock births are worse.

00:49:25.640 And, you know, having two parents really does make a difference in kids' outcomes.

00:49:28.580 So like, this is kind of a big deal.

00:49:30.740 Mental health is worse, even if it's not as bad as, as white mental health, even today. 0.90

00:49:35.340 Wealth too.

00:49:36.280 The, the, the black, in the 1950s, the black white wealth gap narrowed after world war II. 0.75

00:49:41.460 So it, it actually improved a lot in the fifties.

00:49:44.460 How, how is it compared to that?

00:49:45.340 It hasn't improved really.

00:49:46.740 It remains entrenched.

00:49:47.700 And, and, and black household income is 58% of white households, which is unchanged

00:49:53.300 since 1953.

00:49:54.520 So despite all the improvements, like black families aren't more wealthy. 0.99

00:49:58.380 Oh yeah.

00:49:58.980 The, the, the black people have it so much better than in 1950. 1.00

00:50:01.300 That is wild to hear that the, actually the, the wealth gap has not improved since 1950.

00:50:05.360 No, no.

00:50:06.000 It actually, I like, I heard her say all this and I was like, this can't actually be true.

00:50:10.360 Right?

00:50:10.640 Like this doesn't sound true to me.

00:50:12.160 So I decided to start Googling it and oh my God, it's so much worse than I thought.

00:50:17.700 If you look at this graph by the Washington Post, which is looking at medium household wealth

00:50:23.300 adjusted for inflation since the 1950s, white wealth has gone up about three X black wealth, median adjusted

00:50:31.980 household for what household is approximately the same as it was in the 1950s.

00:50:37.800 Then look at this graph, which is median net worth adjusted by household.

00:50:42.940 Again, you see the same thing.

00:50:45.540 And this time it more than triples for white wealth and black wealth again, goes up by significantly

00:50:52.220 less, maybe one 10th.

00:50:54.920 I then thought to myself, well, okay, maybe when in relation to whites, blacks were better 1.00

00:51:00.840 off than they are today.

00:51:01.980 And in relation to their relationships or probability of being born out of wedlock, but certainly

00:51:07.640 that's offset by the risk of racial violence.

00:51:10.520 And so then I decided to go back and say, okay, so what was the actual rates of racial

00:51:14.000 violence in the 1950s?

00:51:15.540 And throughout the 1950s, there were six people killed by lynchings.

00:51:20.980 That's a lot less than I thought.

00:51:24.160 And so then I was like, okay, well, what if we then move that to all forms of racial violence

00:51:28.960 against black communities over the course of the entire 1950s?

00:51:32.560 You then get 24 victims, which while a tragedy is significantly less than I had been led to

00:51:38.800 believe by popular media, the same AI that gave me that 25 number for the 1950s, when I asked it

00:51:45.460 how many blacks had been killed in the past 10 years due to racial violence, it gave me a number

00:51:51.260 of 50 to 100 anti-black hate crime homicides over the last decade, which, okay, it may be that it is

00:52:00.060 more sensitive, what counts as an anti-black murder today than back then.

00:52:04.700 I will give it that.

00:52:06.460 But I think it at least challenges this preconception we have that hate crime has gone significantly

00:52:13.520 down or racial inequality has gone significantly down over the last 50 years.

00:52:19.620 And what I find funny is that I'm sure some people will take this to be a racist point

00:52:24.200 for us to be saying, actually, racism hasn't gone down as much as is publicly perceived, which

00:52:30.900 is just hilarious to me.

00:52:32.560 Also, to put that in context for you, if you take that higher 25 number there, if I contrast

00:52:39.080 that with the number of kids, and I send my kids to a public school every weekday, the

00:52:44.500 number of kids who have died in school shootings in the past 10 years, that number is 188 children

00:52:51.480 have been killed in school shootings in the last 10 years, so since 2024.

00:52:55.680 No, but like, but like, culturally, all these things are worse.

00:52:59.260 And this is after, you know, really after like a lot of white colonization, to be honest with

00:53:05.860 you.

00:53:06.140 So also, like, I was looking at that, I was like, oh my god, I've just, I've been lied to

00:53:08.900 about the 50s, like, oh, so much more expensive, except, well, we spent like 15% of our income

00:53:13.240 on clothes.

00:53:14.560 So I don't know.

00:53:15.660 But I mean, when I talk about the colonization, this is important to know, like within the

00:53:19.880 BLM movement, when they said they were fighting for like black values being normalized, and

00:53:25.520 they listed among them, non-standard marriage structures, like polyamory and everything like 0.94

00:53:30.940 that.

00:53:31.500 When, if you go back to 1950s, black communities were more pro that stuff than white communities 0.73

00:53:37.740 were.

00:53:38.000 Sorry, that was a little unclear.

00:53:39.600 When I said that stuff, I was referring to marriage and traditional family structures.

00:53:45.040 Black culture was more pro traditional family structures than white culture was in the 1950s.

00:53:51.320 Right, you know, so they're using the black communities corpse as a skin suit to push values 1.00

00:53:59.360 that are antithetical to the historic nature of these communities, I think shows how much

00:54:05.480 it has been sort of slain and puppeted by the very people who deteriorated it in the first

00:54:11.340 place.

00:54:12.000 Absolutely.

00:54:12.800 Yeah.

00:54:13.260 It, it, so yeah, I just, again, take what you like from any period of time, from any culture,

00:54:21.260 integrate it into your own, stop complaining.

00:54:24.120 Like if you want it, take it and, and, and, and don't believe the 1950s propaganda, good

00:54:31.620 or bad, basically.

00:54:33.020 Like if people are talking about the fifties being great.

00:54:35.640 Okay.

00:54:35.980 Well, yeah, but it wasn't that great.

00:54:37.600 Just, just think about the hot dog tower.

00:54:40.700 Okay.

00:54:41.300 And the jello, the shrimp jello. 0.92

00:54:43.100 Okay.

00:54:43.760 Imagine having to eat that.

00:54:45.100 It's like, oh, in the 1950s, women cooked for their husbands and they came home to a 0.98

00:54:49.600 warm meal.

00:54:50.200 It's like, yeah, but what did that meal look like?

00:54:52.620 Okay.

00:54:53.340 I might not be so excited if I knew I had to eat shrimp inside of some weird jello thing.

00:54:59.200 It's like, so yeah, like the, okay.

00:55:00.640 Yes.

00:55:00.940 You know, we're talking about like, yeah, you had a job, but these were large, like a huge,

00:55:05.080 there was a lot of industrial jobs.

00:55:07.760 So these are jobs that were, were so rough that remember like Ayla writing about her

00:55:11.620 experience working at a factory before she sort of found her career was so miserable

00:55:17.380 at her factory job that, you know, she, she would like drink herself to, into a stupor

00:55:22.860 every night, you know, it was deeply unhealthy.

00:55:24.560 And now it makes sense why everyone thinks there's this like fantasy of like, oh, you work

00:55:29.120 all day and then you come home to your beautiful wife who gives you a kiss on the cheek and,

00:55:33.660 you know, takes your shoes off and you put on your slippers and you kick up your feet

00:55:37.300 and you, you drink your cocktail as she's making dinner while your kids prattle around.

00:55:42.340 But like, no, you're getting blitzed. 0.99

00:55:44.400 Cause you are miserable in your fricking factory job, which is just so boring. 0.92

00:55:49.540 And you're not listening to podcasts while you're working on the factory line at all. 0.99

00:55:54.520 Your wife gives you jello with shrimp.

00:55:56.660 Yeah.

00:55:56.820 Yeah.

00:55:57.000 Yeah.

00:55:57.160 And then finally dinner's ready.

00:55:58.520 And like, thank God you're blitzed because now you need to eat your green jello with infused

00:56:03.300 shrimp.

00:56:03.800 And this is on a special day.

00:56:05.340 Okay.

00:56:05.700 Malcolm steak with ketchup.

00:56:07.860 It's your birthday.

00:56:09.040 No, you don't get steak on them.

00:56:10.880 No, man.

00:56:11.180 That's a, that's very special.

00:56:12.760 Maybe you get some.

00:56:14.560 Can't be ham.

00:56:16.460 And ham.

00:56:17.440 And ham.

00:56:17.860 Yeah.

00:56:18.120 Maybe, maybe on a special day, but yeah. 0.99

00:56:22.300 Proof that 1950s food sucks. 0.56

00:56:24.180 But if you're like, what was, how bad was 1950s food? 0.91

00:56:28.400 The food that in America that we eat on holidays, because it's traditional, it often

00:56:32.120 mimic the food of the past.

00:56:34.400 Yeah.

00:56:34.800 That's often like honey would have been like the peak of food back then.

00:56:41.040 And I find it to be quite boring for me or like Turkey. 1.00

00:56:45.400 And you eat that today and you're like, this is disgusting.

00:56:48.800 Why are we eating this on Thanksgiving?

00:56:50.860 Cause that used to be the best of the best.

00:56:52.780 Yeah, man.

00:56:56.860 At least the British had it right with like beef Wellington on Christmas. 1.00

00:56:59.780 Beef Wellington still.

00:57:01.360 Beef Wellington still pretty dope.

00:57:02.720 Yeah.

00:57:03.000 You know what I'd love to try is beef Wellington with wasabi instead of foie gras.

00:57:11.420 Lightly, like just a little bit inside the pastry crust.

00:57:14.540 I think it could be pretty good, but it's hard to get good wasabi.

00:57:17.460 Like, remember we tried to for our sushi.

00:57:18.980 I know the counterfeit market's too big.

00:57:20.460 I mean, I'll stick with blue cheese.

00:57:21.900 I think blue cheese instead of a flour.

00:57:23.840 I think it's a counterfeit market.

00:57:24.840 I just don't, it's hard to get anything.

00:57:26.200 That's like even that sort of crumbly wasabi you get at Japanese restaurants. 1.00

00:57:28.940 Yeah.

00:57:29.100 You would even take good counterfeit wasabi.

00:57:31.600 You can't.

00:57:32.600 Yeah.

00:57:32.920 I don't know why you can't get like restaurant counterfeit wasabi.

00:57:37.880 Yeah.

00:57:38.700 Yeah.

00:57:39.340 Love you, Simone.

00:57:40.220 You are an absolute princess.

00:57:41.820 This was a great topic.

00:57:42.780 You did a very good job.

00:57:43.920 Talking about it.

00:57:44.380 Getting into the spiciest of topics.

00:57:49.640 Yeah.

00:57:50.000 Yeah.

00:57:50.120 I, I, yeah.

00:57:50.700 I wouldn't even go with a, how much worse was it?

00:57:53.600 Well, wow.

00:57:55.220 Good job.

00:57:55.980 You have educated me for dinner tonight.

00:57:58.420 I just want reheats.

00:57:59.980 Yeah.

00:58:00.320 So we're doing one taquito, guacamole and rendang reheated sauteed.

00:58:06.200 Yeah.

00:58:07.120 Yeah.

00:58:07.620 With, do you want rice or no rice?

00:58:08.960 I think I would just say some corn chips.

00:58:10.500 Do you have corn chips?

00:58:10.960 I can, I can open a new bag if you need more.

00:58:14.000 Corn chips.

00:58:14.500 I've got corn chips.

00:58:15.760 Are you sure?

00:58:15.980 Cause I, oh, I can also make some with MSG, sea salt and corn tortillas if you want.

00:58:20.900 But if you have a bag open, we should.

00:58:22.760 I've got a bag.

00:58:23.480 Don't worry about it.

00:58:24.100 Okay.

00:58:24.340 Yeah.

00:58:24.580 Cause I don't, and I heating the oven right now doesn't sound appealing.

00:58:28.500 It's so hot down there.

00:58:30.320 So hot.

00:58:31.580 I'm sorry, Simone.

00:58:32.660 You're such a diligent worker on behalf of the family, making me food every night, my meal

00:58:37.980 of the day.

00:58:38.860 Yeah.

00:58:39.220 You're, that's why it matters.

00:58:40.620 I really don't want to, there's the pressure.

00:58:42.080 I don't understand how other people eat three effing meals in a day.

00:58:46.960 Yeah.

00:58:47.420 I can't either.

00:58:48.640 What?

00:58:49.960 What?

00:58:50.320 And a snack.

00:58:51.120 That's like considered super normal.

00:58:52.920 Apparently get, I mean, okay.

00:58:55.680 Who am I to talk?

00:58:56.620 Because I'm eating constantly in this pregnancy.

00:58:59.140 I can't get enough.

00:59:00.460 Well, good.

00:59:01.220 I mean, you do need to eat with this pregnancy and yeah, but I mean, I'm a guy, right?

00:59:05.740 Like I shouldn't be so indulgent.

00:59:09.520 No.

00:59:10.620 You must be stoic and minimalist and I don't, I don't know what, whatever it is guys do.

00:59:18.960 Did you do that?

00:59:20.660 All right.

00:59:22.180 That's perfect.

00:59:23.160 Perfect guy.

00:59:23.860 Oh yeah.

00:59:25.200 Go get your helmet.

00:59:26.060 Go get your Praetorian.

00:59:27.340 Oh yeah.

00:59:28.320 Yeah.

00:59:28.480 Love you.

00:59:29.020 Love you too.

00:59:32.700 It's a star that looks big because it's so close.

00:59:35.660 Do you know what the sun is?

00:59:36.700 No.

00:59:36.940 No.

00:59:37.040 No.

00:59:37.260 No.

00:59:37.360 No.

00:59:37.560 No.

00:59:37.640 No.

00:59:37.760 No.

00:59:37.860 No.

00:59:38.360 No.

00:59:38.860 No.

00:59:39.860 No.

00:59:40.360 No.

00:59:40.860 No.

00:59:41.360 No.

00:59:41.860 No.

00:59:42.360 No.

00:59:42.860 No.

00:59:43.860 No.

00:59:44.860 No.

00:59:45.860 No.

00:59:46.860 No.

00:59:47.860 No.

00:59:48.860 No.

00:59:49.860 No.

Based Camp - July 23, 2025

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

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