Under a labour government shocker
Yea, strange how a government actually investing money in infrastructure and public services improves the lives of people overall.
I wasn’t the person but presumably they thought your point of view was reductionist given that the 90s were a time of widespread global prosperity. Like there was a specific context behind all of the investment.
The government investing in public services was definitely one of the key factors in life being better back then.
I don’t think it’s that straightforward though. Not saying your point is irrelevant, I can definitely see your point. But I feel like most of the Western world where the British government has no reach would have this same opinion.
There were definitely worse things, but we all had way more money. In the 90’s a person on a minimum wage job could get a mortgage, can you imagine?
Nope, can’t picture it at all. Still blows my mind that a family of 4 could live on a single wage.
It’s crazy. I had many friends where only one person worked and they had two children and all bought or build a house. Now i look at my sister and her boyfriend with two kids. He has a good paying job and she works an okay job. There is no way in hell they could just buy a house
So life was better when e didn’t have a tory government absolutely fucking everything up that makes the country worth living in? Colour me shocked. (yes there are international factors at play, and factors beyond the government’s control, but they have absolutely exacerbated every single one of those things)
I mean, I was pretty young at the time, but good god even I can see how we’ve been obliterated by inflation. There’s a specific chocolate here in the UK, a tiny little one for children called Freddo the Frog. Just a little cartoon chocolate frog, nothing fancy.
Their price has multiplied by a factor of TWENTY in the past 20 years. And I know pretty damn well that the amount everyone is getting paid has not increased by a factor of 20. Sure this is just a small irrelevant little chocolate bar and other things have inflated less, but like. It’s probably the easiest thing to notice.
But yeah also playing in the street or taking a bike ride around town with your friends was a thing when I was a kid. Sure we were all probably a nuisance, but these days… I don’t think I’ve seen anyone playing outside in ten years. The places we’d ride bikes got bought up and removed. And even the idea of allowing children to play outside feels… socially unacceptable.
Also early Youtube and Facebook were COMPLETELY different beasts that just didn’t have the millions of hours of design work put into them to suck people in and keep them there. Oh, and flash games were a really big thing too if you wanted to play on the computer. They were amazing. And big-name games were in a really good spot, paid DLC and the pay-to-win blight hadn’t really started, and stuff like World of Warcraft, LAN Halo, and other games you could play over at a friend’s house were at their peaks from a social point of view.
…I know nostalgia is a trap, but god, it really isn’t hard to think of things to be nostalgic for from that time, and I was only born in the very late 90s. At least I’ve got plenty of friends online these days though.
Weren’t Freddos 5p and now about 40p? So 8x. Not that your point isn’t still valid. Wages have maybe doubled.
I didn’t ache in the morning, hairline was better, skin smoother…
Every boomer comic is about old people saying life was better when they were young, or that they hate their wife.
The difference is that even young people say life was better when boomers were young.
Higher wages, cheaper housing, lower cost of living.
Was better in some regards. I think most minorities in the US would agree that they at least feel safe and more free to exist in 2024 than they would in the 1980s or earlier.
