Intranational intertemporal introspective perspective
American culture of 1963, the thursday when JFK was assassinated, was a far more monolithic one than we know of today. How often do we consider this?
“On this Thursday, November 21, television’s prime-time lineup included The Flintstones, The Donna Reed Show, My Three Sons, Perry Mason, and The Perry Como Show, but it was the fourteenth-rated show, Dr. Kildare, that made Time magazine’s recommended viewing. The story that week involved a pregnant unmarried teen who had gotten an abortion. She was so psychologically shattered by the experience that even Dr. Kildare couldn’t help. He had to refer her to a psychiatrist in another CBS program, The Eleventh Hour, for an episode that would air a week later. …
“[With its new anchor, Walter Cronkite], CBS might have been number two in evening news, but it was number one in prime-time programming. The Neilsen ratings that week placed eight CBS programs in the top ten, led by The Beverly Hillbillies with a rating of 34.9, meaning that 34.9 percent of all American homes with a television set were watching it. Since 93 percent of American homes had a television set by 1963, the upshot was that the same program was being watched in almost a third of all the homes in the United States. Those same staggering numbers went deep into the lineup. All of the top thirty-one shows had ratings of at least 20. By way of comparison, the number one show in the 2009-10 season, American Idol, considered to be a gigantic hit, had a rating of 9.1.
“The explanation for the ratings of 1963 is simple: There wasn’t much choice. Most major cities had only four channels (CBS, NBC, ABC, and a nonprofit station of some sort) at most. People in some markets had access to just one channel - the monopoly in Austin, Texas, where the lone station was owned by Lady Bird Johnson, was the most notorious example.
“The limited choices in television viewing were just one example of something that would come as a surprise to a child of the twenty-first century transported back to 1963: the lack of all sorts of variety, and a simplicity that now seems almost quaint.
“Popular music consisted of a single Top 40 list, with rock, country, folk, and a fair number of Fifties-style ballads lumped together. No separate stations specializing in different genres, except for country music stations in a few parts of the nation. Except in university towns and the very largest cities, bookstores were small and scarce, usually carrying only a few hundred titles. No Amazon. If you didn’t see a movie during the week or two it was showing in your town, you would probably never see it. No DVDs. With television, you either saw a show the night it played or waited until it was repeated once during the summer. No TiVo.
“People drove cars made in the United States. Foreign cars from Europe were expensive and rare. Cars from Japan had just been introduced in 1963, but had not been greeted with enthusiasm - ‘made in Japan’ was synonymous with products that were cheap and shoddy. You might see an occasional sports car on the road - Ford’s Thunderbird or Chevrolet’s Corvette - but the vast majority of customers chose among sedans, convertibles, and station wagons made by General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler.
“The typical American city of 1963 had appallingly little choice in things to eat. In a large city, you would be able to find a few restaurants serving Americanized Chinese food, a few Italian restaurants serving spaghetti and pizza, and a few restaurants with a French name, which probably meant that they had French onion soup on the menu. But if you were looking for a nice little Szechuan dish or linguine with pesto or sauteed fois gras, forget it. A Thai curry? The first Thai restaurant in the entire nation wouldn’t open for another eight years. Sushi? Raw fish? Are you kidding?”
Charles Murray, Coming Apart
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It reminds me of a Mises quote:
Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the American way of life and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible.
Ludwig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism
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It is easy to forget that things were so much different, so fewer things available, so much less wealth that existed in the decades that preceded today. It is important to remember that wealth is not money, but the things we can exchange for it, and the choices that we have available that were not present before.
A king of 200 years ago could not save his children from diseases that parents of today even have to worry about. A king of 400 years ago considered it a delicacy to have a starfruit from that distant land of Asia. It would take months for even highly skilled sailors to reach long distances and faraway lands. 25 years ago, it was rare to see a cellular telephone (the size of a brick) or a cd player.
With these things in mind, it got me thinking. I would rather be penniless 100 years from now than a millionaire of today; similarly, I would rather be penniless today than a millionaire of 100 years ago.
